Word: bruccoli
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Instead of tackling this question, Biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli takes up the late O'Hara's cudgels and flails away at the writer's "enemies." "For the record," declares Bruccoli...
...HARA CONCERN by MATTHEW J. BRUCCOLI 417 pages. Illustrated. Random House...
...Hara Concern is intentionally biased by my conviction that John O'Hara was a major writer who was underrated by the critical-academic axis sometimes called The Literary Establishment." If such an axis existed, Bruccoli would be a card-carrying member; as a professor of English at the University of South Carolina and director of the Center for Editions of American Authors (a far-flung scholarly empire churning out overfootnoted and overpriced texts), he is a totally critical academic...
...fact, such an axis is wholly imaginary. Bruccoli's own research reveals that estimates of O'Hara's work ranged from raves to pans throughout his long career. If a conspiracy was afoot, it was singularly anarchic. What is worse, the unfriendly reviews that Bruccoli quotes are invariably more persuasive than his own dust-jacket gushings about works that are "superb," "brilliant," "powerful" and "extraordinary...
...over shadowed by greater talents, and he was preoccupied with surfaces in an age that plumbed the depths. His habit of using brand names (Franklin cars, Brooks Brothers shirts) to indicate character al ready seems quaint, done in by the likes of Ian Fleming. Despite his huffing ef forts, Bruccoli does not prove that O'Hara was underrated as a writer. But he offers telling evidence that O'Hara was underrated...