John Henry O'Hara was one of America's most prolific writers of short stories, credited with helping to invent The New Yorker magazine short story style.
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17 Facts About John O'Hara
2.
John O'Hara became a best-selling novelist before the age of 30 with Appointment in Samarra and BUtterfield 8.
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3.
John O'Hara achieved substantial commercial success in the years after World War II, when his fiction repeatedly appeared in Publishers Weekly's annual list of the top ten best-selling fiction works in the United States.
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4.
John O'Hara was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania to an affluent Irish-American family.
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5.
John O'Hara attended the secondary school Niagara Prep in Lewiston, New York, where he was named Class Poet for Class of 1924.
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6.
John O'Hara's father died about that time, leaving him unable to afford to attend Yale, the college of his dreams.
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7.
Over four decades, John O'Hara published novels, novellas, plays, screenplays and more than 400 short stories, the majority of them in The New Yorker.
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8.
Many of John O'Hara's stories are set in Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, a barely fictionalized version of his home town of Pottsville, a small city in the anthracite region of the northeastern United States.
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9.
John O'Hara named Gibbsville for his friend and frequent editor at The New Yorker Wolcott Gibbs.
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10.
John O'Hara contributed more of them to The New Yorker than any other writer.
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11.
John O'Hara published seven volumes of stories in the final decade of his career while complaining that they took his time away from writing novels.
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12.
Some criticism of John O'Hara's writing is attributed to dislike of John O'Hara personally because of his abrasive ego and lack of humility in dealing with others, his vigorous self-promotion, his obsession with his social status, and the politically conservative columns he wrote late in his career.
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13.
Many leading characters in John O'Hara's novels are alcoholics who live as emotional zombies, anesthetized by drinking and unable to ponder the human heart in conflict with itself.
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14.
John O'Hara's legacy has many literary heavyweight admirers, including authors Updike and Shelby Foote.
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15.
John O'Hara died from cardiovascular disease in Princeton, New Jersey, and is interred in the Princeton Cemetery.
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16.
Also in 1960, John O'Hara's best-selling 1935 novel BUtterfield 8 was released as a film with the same name.
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17.
John O'Hara complains that the colleges write him "highly complimentary" letters asking him to perform "chores" such as officiating as writer-in-residence, judging literary contests, and give lectures, yet do not give him degree citations.
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