From the Terrace: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary historical novel with relevant themes...
Review: I discovered this book by looking up a clue in a crossword puzzle and felt intrigued to read it. What I found interesting which I haven't picked up in other reviews is the relevancy of emotional themes to our own lives. The complex relationships Alfred Eaton has with his father, mother, wife, mistress, nearly everyone he has a relationship with could be attributed to an emotionally distant father during his childhood however it's his self-centeredness on his career and social standing that contribute to his miserableness and the sheer lack of appreciation of his family and especially his children is akin to our generation of white-collar workers who are obsessed with material success. Alfred Eaton reminds me of at least half a dozen friends who are in loveless relationships with their spouses, leveraged to the hilt in debt, strangers to their children, and in a word, desperate. As depressing as this sounds, this is an enlightening read.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent introduction to John O'Hara's work
Review: I was interested in reading this novel after seeing the Paul Newman-Joanne Woodward movie on American Movie Classics one evening. To my surprise and great pleasure, the book is far better than the movie -- although it doesn't hurt one's appreciation of the characters to imagine those two talented movie stars speaking their dialogue. At nearly 1000 pages in length, the book requires a major commitment on the part of the reader, but O'Hara never disappoints. His story moves along at just the right pace, and the growth -- or lack thereof -- of his characters is a revelation. I particularly recommend this work to anyone who seriously wants to write a historical novel, because its structure and style are very instructive of how to work in the genre to maximum effect. This book introduced me to a writer whose work is no longer very accessible, either in libraries or on web sites such as these -- and more's the pity for it. What appeared to be a dry, overwritten potboiler of no special distinction turned out to be an engrossing story of one man's desperate search for the love that had always eluded him. I recommend this novel enthusiastically to anyone who finds contemporary popular fiction dissatisfying. And for the average reader, the best part of finishing this book is the knowledge that there's more of John O'Hara's work yet to be discovered.

Rating:
Summary: not for the fainthearted
Review: It's a turgid, self-important piece of trash, but I found it impossible to put down. (I also felt vaguely bilious after reading it, rather like I had eaten too much cheap candy at one sitting). It's not nearly as entertaining as the movie, and it isn't even great trash (e.g., "David Copperfield"), but he knows how to spell and can describe things fairly well (unlike Steele and Balducci) and he can tell a story (unlike Harold Robbins) reasonably well. One thing that interests me about these "organization man" novels of the 50's is how alike they are in "texture" (or something), even when they are about very different things. For example, there is something about "Cash McCall", "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit", and this book that seem quite similar, but the plot summaries of these books don't overlap at all. I think that it's a sort of existential nausea that permeates the pretentious popular writing of the time. (It doesn't get into the movies made from these books, though.)

Anyway, this book is about a guy who is so damaged by his childhood that he throws away his integrity to be a "success", and then throws that away, too. But since you don't like the guy, it doesn't bother you to watch him self-destruct. (Paul Newman plays an entirely different person in the movie, as you would guess.)

Rating:
Summary: O'Hara keeps his promise to be a 20th Century chronicler
Review: John O'Hara once said that one of his driving instincts in writing was to chronicle the first half of the 20th Century. A great deal of his large body of work does just this. "From the Terrace" is not only one of his best novels, but is sound history as well. We are introduced to poor Alfred Eaton who overcomes a bad childhood to become a success as an adult to become .... perhaps what he was meant to be all along. It's part Man in a Gray Flannel Suit and part Greek Tragedy. As to what it chronicles: the old boy WASP network of prep school / Harvard or Yale or Princeton / club life. One's early life provides networking forever for the fortunate upper class white male in that upper class. One sees how these same males get tapped during WW2 to fill the better positions opening up in Washington thanks to the war effort. O'Hara excels at the tiny details that expand in your mind to tell an entire story. His dialogue (particularly between men and women) sounds true. Given the time in which he wrote, O'Hara got away with a lot of explicit sex. The lead character commits adultery and is all the more happy for it. If you've seen the movie with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, you should know that the book does not end with Paul Newman walking down a Manhattan street happy to be able to marry his mistress. In the book, he marries a second time, his naval career ends, and he finds his life taking a new turn.

Rating:
Summary: O'Hara keeps his promise to be a 20th Century chronicler
Review: John O'Hara once said that one of his driving instincts in writing was to chronicle the first half of the 20th Century. A great deal of his large body of work does just this. "From the Terrace" is not only one of his best novels, but is sound history as well. We are introduced to poor Alfred Eaton who overcomes a bad childhood to become a success as an adult to become .... perhaps what he was meant to be all along. It's part Man in a Gray Flannel Suit and part Greek Tragedy. As to what it chronicles: the old boy WASP network of prep school / Harvard or Yale or Princeton / club life. One's early life provides networking forever for the fortunate upper class white male in that upper class. One sees how these same males get tapped during WW2 to fill the better positions opening up in Washington thanks to the war effort. O'Hara excells at the tiny details that expand in your mind to tell an entire story. His dialogue (particularly between men and women) sounds true. Given the time in which he wrote, O'Hara got away with a lot of explicit sex. The lead character commits adultery and is all the more happy for it. If you've seen the movie with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, you should know that the book ends does not end with Paul Newman walking down a Manhattan street happy to be able to marry his mistress. In the book, he marries a second time, his naval career ends, and he finds his life taking a new turn.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining & Cynical View of Successful American 1900-1950
Review: This was my favorite book for about a decade, so it is difficult to write this review. I read it four times - all between the ages of 18 and 27. What did I love? It's tough, funny, and creates a vast and quite realistic panorama of northeast Pa. society in the early 1900s, Long Island society in the 1920s, NY investment banking, Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s, Washington during WWII. The writing is sharp, acerbic, extraordinary in its thorough descriptions of people's faces, haircuts, favorite drinks, cars, hats, umbrellas, cufflinks, watches, gloves, and what they signify socially. O'Hara is justly famous for the realism and biting wit of his dialogue, the great and easy flow of his narrative. One feels that there are ALWAYS many characters in his novels and short stories about whom others will say "oh, smart guy, eh?" and "take a poke at him", which is fun. It was all thrillingly adult when I was that age to read these - "ah, so that's the kind of sophistication I have to look forward to".

Elements I've since noticed: - O'Hara seems to feel that to tack on bleak endings for his most-liked characters is to be smart and naturalistic - yet in this case, the (quite vivid) Alfred Eaton character simply seems stronger than this. O'Hara also has a conventional sense of "normal sex", outside of which the reader is to know the character is truly evil (i.e., unable to love). O'Hara packs his novels with coincidence - as an adult, I have been truly disappointed that I DON'T run into acquaintances in restaurants, theaters, trains all the time! Finally, O'Hara's virtuous characters do not come across nearly as realistically.

In summary, O'Hara is limited - perhaps most by his times and his perception of the permanence of what are really quite transitory measures of quality in people. However, he's still very enjoyable to read. I think Updike wrote once that in the Orient, he'd be known as "Old Man Who Loves Writing" and that is perfectly true - the reader feels it. He's VERY readable, intelligent, but perhaps not truly wise in the more abiding of matters.