The Art of Burning Bridges : A Life of John O'Hara

Rating:
Summary: Not worth it
Review: How Geoffrey Wolff, the author of the very precociously exciting BLACK SUN 25 years ago, could have come up with such a loser of a biography of John O'Hara is probably a book all in itself. It's no fun reading a literary biography where the biographer doesn't seem to like his subject very much or think his fiction is very good, and Wolff has little good to say about what most people consider O'Hara's better achievements: BUTTERFIELD 8, A RAGE TO LIVE... even his praise for APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA is fairly tepid. Why read a biography if the author himself doesn't care very much for the subject?

Rating:
Summary: Stunning disappointment for O'Hara fans
Review: I am a passionate proponent of O'Hara and was bitterly disappointed in the new bio, which, aside from telling us absolutely nothing factually new about this great underappreciated writer, waxes self-indulgent, neglects O'Hara's major achievement in the novella, skimps on the last 20 years of its subject's life, provides none of the historical context for O'Hara's fiction, and betrays a lack of comprehensiveness and comprehension.

Wolff adds nothing new to previous biographies, though his prose style is superior. He evidently spoke with very few people, or gathered little from those he did speak to. He completely relies on previous biographies for his facts.

The cardinal flaw is that Wolff discusses relatively few of O'Hara's writings, and only these in terms of how they reflect the writer's personality. A personality Wolff seems to loathe. Wolff concedes that he originally intended to write a totally different book about O'Hara, then got sidetracked. Much like Edmund Morris in his Reagan biography, Wolff imposes his own neuroses on the subject, occasionally making his own concerns as a writer central. Who cares?

Of the many reviewers so far, only John Updike offers any insight and some redress. His is the only review that has confronted Wolff's ill-advised approach. Interestingly, writing in the New Yorker, Updike also takes Wolff to task for misrepresenting the magazine and its editors. Lord knows how many other inaccuracies there are in the book. It is outrageous that such commentators as Jonathan Yardley, Charles McGrath and even Larry McMurtry have taken this book at face value and used it as an occasion to derogate O'Hara.

Typically, Wolff repeats ad nauseam O'Hara's many drunken exploits, but does not examine at all the impact of O'Hara's going permanently on the wagon the last 17 years of his life. Surely, if his besotted condition contributed to his loutishness, then his sobriety must have had some effect as well.

Most lamentable is that Wolff doesn't venture an intelligent reassessment of O'Hara. He just retails the usual complaints, thinks O'Hara peaked with Appointment and Samarra and the early stories. He offers no explanation as to how this evidently inept novelist became so popular, nor does he provide even a token traversal of the some 400 short stories and the magnificent novellas. In fact, he seems only to have read McShane's selected story collection.

It is telling that Wolff devotes more pages to O'Hara's two much-maligned essay collections than to The Lockwood Concern, Ourselves to Know, Elizabeth Appleton or any of the phenomenal late short story collections.

There was no purpose for this book. It adds no information not provided elsewhere, provides no insight into O'Hara's preoccupatino with suicide and lesbianism, indeed, provides no reason why anyone should be interested in O'Hara.

The big loser here is probably Random House. This book will make them little money and the opportunity for a well-deserved O'Hara revival has been shot.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth it
Review: I delayed writing this review because I don't like trashing anyone's work. But this book is so infuriatingly bad that I finally felt compelled to blow off steam. O'Hara deserves better. The reader certainly deserves far better. And Knopf, a one-great publisher in sad decline, should have either done extensive editing on this horribly self-indulgent mess or simply not published it. As an O'Hara fan (who recognizes his flaws as a writer and, certainly, as a man) and a born-in-"Gibbsville" insider, I assure readers that the author did not do the most basic research on O'Hara's home town. On the contrary, Wolff appears to have fabricated a number of quotes he claims to have collected in Pottsville/Gibbsville. But the voices don't sound like the voices I know, in tone or content, and the quotes suspiciously support the author's utterly inaccurate thesis that O'Hara's never been accepted "back home." Well, in downtown Pottsville, there's a handsome statue of O'Hara. Every year, there's a "John O'Hara Weekend," with performances, readings and seminars. O'Hara still appears so often in local newspapers and magazines that you'd think he was still living and writing. I grew up reading his work--and never heard any of the silly, parochial--and, of course, anonymous--criticism Wolff claims to have encountered immediately upon arrival during his apparently brief visit to Pottsville, the inspiration for so much of O'Hara's greatest fiction. And Wolff even gets basic facts wrong, from ethnic composition to the location of hotel bars. Later in the book, as well, he continues to indulge his habit of quoting anonymous sources who perfectly support his eccentric, self-adoring themes. And the prose itself is a mix of trash bio that makes Kitty Kelly read like Boswell and gonzo-tone scream-of-my-precious-consciousness slop that should have been submitted to the author's psychiatrist, not to a publisher. Poor O'Hara--his own worst enemy during his life, now afflicted with biographers who are his worst enemies after death. O'Hara was a great, if flawed, author, currently underestimated. Indeed, he merits a serious critical biography that does more than simply repeat the traditional wisdom that his late, sprawling novels had little merit; on the contrary, despite their flaws, novels such as A Rage To Live and From The Terrace offer incomparable social portraits of America during the first half of the 20th century--and his first novel, Appointment In Samarra, is flawless, a middle-class (though not middle-brow) Gatsby. I recommend reading his own work, rather than this appallingly bad pretense at biography. Finally, I apologize to all, even to the author, for writing such a negative review...I would rather praise a book. But this biography is so disgracefully bad that I felt obliged to warn other readers off. Any of the earlier O'Hara bios would be a much better choice for those interested in O'Hara's troubled, troubling but remarkably productive life.

Rating:
Summary: Dreadful, slovenly, inaccurate
Review: I delayed writing this review because I don't like trashing anyone's work. But this book is so infuriatingly bad that I finally felt compelled to blow off steam. O'Hara deserves better. The reader certainly deserves far better. And Knopf, a one-great publisher in sad decline, should have either done extensive editing on this horribly self-indulgent mess or simply not published it. As an O'Hara fan (who recognizes his flaws as a writer and, certainly, as a man) and a born-in-"Gibbsville" insider, I assure readers that the author did not do the most basic research on O'Hara's home town. On the contrary, Wolff appears to have fabricated a number of quotes he claims to have collected in Pottsville/Gibbsville. But the voices don't sound like the voices I know, in tone or content, and the quotes suspiciously support the author's utterly inaccurate thesis that O'Hara's never been accepted "back home." Well, in downtown Pottsville, there's a handsome statue of O'Hara. Every year, there's a "John O'Hara Weekend," with performances, readings and seminars. O'Hara still appears so often in local newspapers and magazines that you'd think he was still living and writing. I grew up reading his work--and never heard any of the silly, parochial--and, of course, anonymous--criticism Wolff claims to have encountered immediately upon arrival during his apparently brief visit to Pottsville, the inspiration for so much of O'Hara's greatest fiction. And Wolff even gets basic facts wrong, from ethnic composition to the location of hotel bars. Later in the book, as well, he continues to indulge his habit of quoting anonymous sources who perfectly support his eccentric, self-adoring themes. And the prose itself is a mix of trash bio that makes Kitty Kelly read like Boswell and gonzo-tone scream-of-my-precious-consciousness slop that should have been submitted to the author's psychiatrist, not to a publisher. Poor O'Hara--his own worst enemy during his life, now afflicted with biographers who are his worst enemies after death. O'Hara was a great, if flawed, author, currently underestimated. Indeed, he merits a serious critical biography that does more than simply repeat the traditional wisdom that his late, sprawling novels had little merit; on the contrary, despite their flaws, novels such as A Rage To Live and From The Terrace offer incomparable social portraits of America during the first half of the 20th century--and his first novel, Appointment In Samarra, is flawless, a middle-class (though not middle-brow) Gatsby. I recommend reading his own work, rather than this appallingly bad pretense at biography. Finally, I apologize to all, even to the author, for writing such a negative review...I would rather praise a book. But this biography is so disgracefully bad that I felt obliged to warn other readers off. Any of the earlier O'Hara bios would be a much better choice for those interested in O'Hara's troubled, troubling but remarkably productive life.

Rating:
Summary: The Art of Confusing the Reader
Review: John O'Hara was evidently not a very nice man. He had more than his share of problems with alcohol, jealousy, and anger. He bore grudges, physically bullied others, and frequently lied. Those who knew O'Hara or have studied his life seem to agree on all these points.

Geoffrey Wolff, however, seems to think that these characteristics justify him in contradicting himself, failing to verity facts, devoting only one paragraph to the last three and a half years of O'Hara's life, and generally using a biography of John O'Hara as a platform from which to pronounce his opinions on subjects ranging from Norman Podhoretz's Making It (page 315) to the likelihood that James Thurber threw a second glass of whisky at Dashiell Hammett after throwing one at Lilian Hellman - during an incident at which O'Hara seems not to have been present (page 131).

The laziness and poor quality of the research and editing are evident throughout the book. Let these stand as examples:

On page 52, Wolff writes "According to at least two biographers, O'Hara's grade of 97 was the highest ever recorded at Niagara (an absolute that this biographer, who confesses to a lazy failure to chase down and pin facts of this nature, absolutely disbelieves)." I would have thought that, if the grade was worth reporting, it would be worth researching. As it is, Wolff turns his own, self-described laziness into an excuse to call into question the accuracy of two other biographers.

On page 42, Wolff describes O'Hara at age fifteen as "taller than six feet". On page 179, he states that O'Hara "caused to be reported that 'he was married once, is six feet one inch tall and weighs 184 pounds.' (So he added an inch; doesn't everyone?)" Well, was O'Hara "taller than six feet", or was he exactly six feet tall? I don't really care, but since Wolff is accusing O'Hara of dishonesty, shouldn't the facts on which his claim of O'Hara's dishonesty rests not contradict each other?

O'Hara was a great author, even though he was far less than a great person - a statement that can accurately be made of his earlier contemporaries Hemingway and Fitzgerald. He deserves better than this.

Rating:
Summary: Embarrassingly bad
Review: This book is so embarrassingly bad that it's beyond comprehension how the Book Review editor of the New York Times could give it a good review.