Word: haras
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...Cape Cod Lighter, by John O'Hara...
...Cape Cod Lighter, by John O'Hara. The author writes better than ever of heels and down-at-the-heels in Gibbsville. Pa., and small-town New Jersey in this collection of short stories...
Vacant Depths. What of the book that follows? The stories are among O'Hara's best. If there is nothing very new, neither is there anything repetitive, a testament to the ingenuity with which O'Hara mines the invented earth of Gibbsville, Pa., and the ugly towns of eastern New Jersey. As usual, the social range of his characters-from the carriage trade to tradesmen who sell carriages-is wider than their moral range, which is the few degrees between halfway-decent and not-very-nice...
Also as usual, O'Hara appears not to see deeply into the characters whose surface he describes so well. This may be deceptive. It can be argued that he has caught their souls' likenesses well, that in their depths there is just not much to be seen...
...perhaps, is a novella called Pat Collins. Like the author's brief, bitter novel. Appointment in Samarra, it follows the decline and fall of a Gibbsville auto dealer. Some readers may find it better than Samarra, and that is saying a lot. In fact, if John O'Hara were not so good at writing prefaces, it might be hoped that he would continue to devote himself to short stories...