John O'Hara
John Henry O'Hara (January 31, 1905 – April 11, 1970) was an American writer. He earned a reputation first for short stories and became a best-selling novelist by age thirty with Appointment in Samarra and BUtterfield 8.. He was particularly known for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue. O'Hara was a keen observer of social status and class differences, and wrote frequently about the socially ambitious.
A controversial figure, O'Hara had a reputation for personal irascibility and for cataloging social ephemera, both of which frequently overshadowed his gifts as a storyteller. Writer Fran Lebowitz called him "the real F. Scott Fitzgerald." John Updike, one of his consistent supporters, grouped him with Chekhov in a C-SPAN interview. By contrast, Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times dismissed him as "a well-known lout."
Read more about John O'Hara: Life, Columns, Adaptations
Famous quotes containing the word john:
“People named John and Mary never divorce. For better or for worse, in madness and in saneness, they seem bound together for eternity by their rudimentary nomenclature. They may loathe and despise one another, quarrel, weep, and commit mayhem, but they are not free to divorce. Tom, Dick, and Harry can go to Reno on a whim, but nothing short of death can separate John and Mary.”
—John Cheever (1912–1982)