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Thus O'Hara lost touch with his best self-the outsider, permitted far enough inside various closed, interesting worlds to observe them acutely but not so far in that he made any special commitments to their inhabitants. His first great success had been 1934's Appointment in Samarra, a savage little study of how a few careless social gestures could destroy a pillar of smalltown, upper-middle-class WASP society. O'Hara knew that world well, but was not truly of it, being Irish and Catholic and the son of a man desperately insecure about his social...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: The Real Malloy | 4/23/1973 | See Source »

...Broken Clown. In his film adaptation, Luchino Visconti (The Damned) pays his utmost disrespect to the original by maintaining Mann's fustian and removing his intention. In the novella, the aging Author-Philosopher Gustave Aschenbach seeks renewal in Venice. But like the fugitive with an appointment in Samarra, he finds death awaiting him. An elusive and beautiful youth, Tadzio, attracts the writer. Though he never touches his beloved, never even speaks to him. Aschenbach is rendered immobile by his platonic affair. A plague of cholera racks the city. At any time the writer is free to leave...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Cinema: Soul Destroyed | 7/5/1971 | See Source »

Since 1934, when his first book, Appointment in Samarra, was published O'Hara had been astonishingly productive. At his death, he had written twelve novels, between 300 and 400 short stories and a large assortment of essays, novellas and plays; he had recently completed a new novel, The Ewings, scheduled for publication next February and was 70 pages into a sequel as well. His tough, spare prose, crackling dialogue and gift for creating mood and atmosphere won him a worldwide audience (his works have been translated into at least 19 languages, including Dutch and Vietnamese). He was, almost certainly...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: JOHN O'HARA: The Rage Is Stilled | 4/20/1970 | See Source »

...prodigious drinker-he quit altogether in 1953 after suffering a massive internal hemorrhage-with a concomitant talent for being fired. But by 1929 the first of his short stories started appearing in The New Yorker. Four years later, his literary reputation solidly established, he set to work on Samarra. Between August and November he rattled out 25,000 words, then ran out of money. He promptly sent copies of the early chapters to three publishers, asking for an advance. Harcourt, Brace responded with $500 and a $50-a-week allowance...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: JOHN O'HARA: The Rage Is Stilled | 4/20/1970 | See Source »

Never a Pet. Appointment in Samarra, recounting the last days of Julian English, a doomed young member of the upper middle class, was a great success. O'Hara's career was truly launched. Novels like Butterfield 8, A Rage to Live and From the Terrace flowed from his restless typewriter. In 1940 he wrote the libretto for Pal Joey, an instant Broadway sensation. Though he got the National Book Award, he never won either the Pulitzer or the Nobel Prize, to his unconcealed annoyance. "It used to hurt, never winning an award, but I've never been...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: JOHN O'HARA: The Rage Is Stilled | 4/20/1970 | See Source »

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