Word: hara
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...JOHN O'Hara's latest work, Assembly, is another colossal waste of talent. For years, we have waited for O'Hara to live up to the considerable promise he showed in Appointment in Samarra and Butterfield 8; but, with an occasional exception, he has been content to turn out slick, meaningless potboilers...
...short stories in Assembly, only three are particularly good. The rest are mediocre, bland, and forgettable. They are, at least, easy to read, because O'Hara possesses a writing style that is always fluid and entertaining. His fast-moving, uncomplicated, pleasant prose will always find a publisher; but work dealing with the same ideas and content, expressed haltingly, would get shoved down its author's throat. And it is because of this same magnificent facility that those who have had hopes for O'Hara are so frustrated at his refusal to grapple with larger challenges than the unseen sex life...
...Assembly, O'Hara is at his best in "The Cellar Domain," a portrait of the tight, status-conscious little world of Peter Durant's barber shop, and the tale of its destruction. Durant, the head barber, runs his miniature community with a social-register sense of propriety. Certain customers get preference over others, and some are told, when they begin to realize they are being ignored, "Better go down the street. You got a good barber down towards the rail-road station." Those who finally make the inner circle are fitted for the symbol of acceptance--a $2 beer...
...other stories-- "Mary and Norma" and "First Day in Town"--also come off well. In both, O'Hara's celebrated sense of the language, which is actually defective a good deal of the time, produces unmatchable dialogue. And the characters--the two hateful, cheating wives in "Mary and Norma" and the two young movie stars in "First Day in Town"--have a life and a freshness that so many of O'Hara's other people lack...
...three-quarter mark, the clock was only .3 sec. behind Beatty's world record time. But an anxious over-the-shoulder look was a mistake; Beatty breasted the tape at 4:00.9, 10 yds. ahead of O'Hara...