Word: haras
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...latest of those churlish, wistful prefaces that he has taken to writing, John O'Hara seems to be saying that he is going to quit doing short stories until he is properly thanked for his novels...
This announcement, in which one of the best U.S. authors now active contrives to sound like a ten-year-old refusing to eat his dinner, is followed by a tasteful discussion of John O'Hara's very large income. The effect is that of a wealthy car dealer boasting in the locker room of the second-best country club in Gibbsville...
Bombast aside, however, O'Hara's decision to stop writing short stories for a while seems wise. The Horse Knows the Way (the title has overtones of weariness and self-mockery) is his fourth large collection of short stories in four years. O'Hara's imagination is astonishingly agile, and his view of society and psychology is much broader than it is generally supposed to be. These stories, taken by themselves, have the sting of fresh work by a fine writer. But he has written so many stories that his fresh, vigorous writing is debased...
...still very much ahead. One of the best stories in the new collection lacks any trace of sameness. It is about the suicide of a bass-fiddle player, and with beautiful simplicity it conveys a sense of sadness and longing more intense than any work of O'Hara's since Appointment in Samarra...
Gnats & Cigar Smoke. O'Hara is right in thinking that his standing as a novelist has been misjudged. But critics have some excuse for slighting him: his last three novels have been poor. Ourselves to Know, a period piece, did not work very well; Elizabeth Apple ton was insignificant; and The Big Laugh collapsed in a foosh of elderly cigar smoke...