January 31, 1905—John O’Hara, an Irish-American fiction writer who anatomized American social classes with the precision and skill his father brought to medicine, was born in Pottsville, Pa., a mining town he would transform into “Gibbsville.”
Richard Yates, who has experienced something of a revival since his death nearly two decades ago, had little use for O’Hara—rather ironic, since the two had so much in common, including a desperate thirst for drink (at least in O’Hara’s younger days), a consciousness bred from experience of how precarious social standing can be, and a deep, abiding appreciation of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
But most of all, they shared a crotchiness of near-legendary proportions. An early Seinfeld episode, guest-starring Lawrence Tierney as Elaine’s perpetually pissed-off papa, was based on Yates, father of the onetime girlfriend of the sitcom’s co-creator, Larry David.
O’Hara could be even tougher, as he was likely to flare out at someone at a moment’s notice. One of the most-used expressions in his work is the phrase “cut him dead,” an abrupt and unbending silent treatment given a former friend—a technique used by the writer as much as it was used against him.
And yet, this pill of a man was capable of strong and enduring friendships. His best friend, to the latter’s death, was Philadelphia Story playwright Philip Barry; he worshipped Fitzgerald’s talent so much that he even got over watching his friend making a drunken pass at O’Hara’s ex-wife; and he came constantly to the hospital to read to John Steinbeck when the Grapes of Wrath novelist had an eye operation.
But of all his contemporaries, the one with whom he might have had the most in common was Ernest Hemingway. (Again, he was willing to overlook an annoyance made at his own expense: Papa's jibe that a collection should be raised for the status-conscious O'Hara to send him to Yale.)
Richard Yates, who has experienced something of a revival since his death nearly two decades ago, had little use for O’Hara—rather ironic, since the two had so much in common, including a desperate thirst for drink (at least in O’Hara’s younger days), a consciousness bred from experience of how precarious social standing can be, and a deep, abiding appreciation of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
But most of all, they shared a crotchiness of near-legendary proportions. An early Seinfeld episode, guest-starring Lawrence Tierney as Elaine’s perpetually pissed-off papa, was based on Yates, father of the onetime girlfriend of the sitcom’s co-creator, Larry David.
O’Hara could be even tougher, as he was likely to flare out at someone at a moment’s notice. One of the most-used expressions in his work is the phrase “cut him dead,” an abrupt and unbending silent treatment given a former friend—a technique used by the writer as much as it was used against him.
And yet, this pill of a man was capable of strong and enduring friendships. His best friend, to the latter’s death, was Philadelphia Story playwright Philip Barry; he worshipped Fitzgerald’s talent so much that he even got over watching his friend making a drunken pass at O’Hara’s ex-wife; and he came constantly to the hospital to read to John Steinbeck when the Grapes of Wrath novelist had an eye operation.
But of all his contemporaries, the one with whom he might have had the most in common was Ernest Hemingway. (Again, he was willing to overlook an annoyance made at his own expense: Papa's jibe that a collection should be raised for the status-conscious O'Hara to send him to Yale.)
Both, you see, were the sons of doctors, men who figure prominently in their children’s thinly disguised fiction about the initiation of youth into the mysteries of life. Both fathers left their sons psychic legacies burdensome in the extreme, though for different reasons. They must have had some great conversations at the bar about this.
Dr. Clarence Hemingway practiced in Oak Park, Ill., a railroad suburb of Chicago. On numerous nature outings into Michigan, he taught his son about the importance of ritual—a right way and a wrong way to do things, even something as seemingly simple as catching and cooking fish. He appears as doctor-father in several stories about Hemingway’s alter ego Nick Adams, “Indian Camp” and “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife.”
Dr. Patrick O’Hara enjoyed a thriving practice in the Schuykill River coal-mining section of eastern Pennsylvania, about 100 miles away from Philadelphia. While Dr. Hemingway tended to the needs of Native-Americans in “Indian Camp,” Dr. O’Hara labored on behalf of Irish and Eastern Europeans in “The Doctor’s Son.”
From the beginning, critics noticed similarities between the terse styles of Hemingway and O’Hara. They certainly admired each other’s work. O’Hara couldn’t have asked for a better blurb for his first novel than the one provided by Hemingway: “If you want to read a book by a man who knows exactly what he is writing about and has written it marvellously well, read Appointment in Samarra."
Nothing if not loyal, O’Hara returned the favor 16 years later, at the nadir of Hemingway’s career. While virtually every other critic on the planet was panning Papa’s first novel in a decade, Across the River and Into the Trees, O’Hara planted his feet and, in a doughty review for The New York Times Book Review, declared—right in his first sentence!--that his friend was “the most important author living today, the most outstanding author since the death of Shakespeare.”
Both authors’ fictional stand-ins—Hemingway’s Nick Adams, O’Hara’s James Malloy—learn about two realities of adult life—sudden, unexpected death and infidelity—by following around their father in the course of his practice. Yet the stories feel—and are—different, because of narrative point of view.
“Indian Camp” is seen through the eyes of Nick Adams as a child and is told in the third person. Moreover, it depends crucially for making us understand the impact of what Nick learns about nature from the sensory detail that Hemingway loved. The story, then, though written in the past tense, feels immediately lived and reported.
“The Doctor’s Son” appeared in O’Hara’s first book of short stories and was written about the same number of years after the events it chronicles as “Indian Camp.” However, it’s written in the first person, reflecting the author’s experience as an adolescent.
More important, unlike much of the rest of O’Hara’s early fiction, it is not compressed and telegraphic in style, but novella-length, almost ruminative in style. It anticipates the major development of his life in the 1950s: a near-death experience that forced him to give up drink, turn his energies almost entirely to his writing, and resolve that, before he was through, he would get down on paper, for the generations to come, a vanishing world—“The Way It Was,” to use the title of one of the handful of plays he wrote.
Both writers’ bildungsroman stories are informed by ambivalence toward their fathers. “The Doctor’s Son” depicts Patrick O’Hara as heroic to the point of absolute exhaustion in dealing with the flu epidemic of 1918, yet the father in the story—like his real-life counterpart—is also brusque and annoyed that his son might not be fulfilling his potential. In “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” Nick decides not to spend time with his mother, even though his father is already showing signs of being weak and dominated.
Finally, Drs. Hemingway and O’Hara started their sons on perilous paths into adulthood. Clarence Hemingway had to depend on his wife’s income from teaching music to make ends meet. In increasingly frail physical and mental health, he committed suicide in 1928. Patrick O’Hara was actually prosperous, but by dying intestate he left his oldest son unable to attend the college of his choice: Yale.
Their upbringings left Hemingway and O’Hara with a vertiginous sense of their place in the world. Hemingway complained that Oak Park was a place of “wide lawns and narrow minds.” As for O’Hara, he couldn’t wait to leave Pottsville early, but, particularly in the last 15 years of his life, he returned to it almost obsessively in his Gibbsville novels and short stories. (The latter, by the way, might constitute the most substantial contribution to that form in 20th-century letters. How many other American writers have ranged so widely through the different American classes?)
Dr. Clarence Hemingway practiced in Oak Park, Ill., a railroad suburb of Chicago. On numerous nature outings into Michigan, he taught his son about the importance of ritual—a right way and a wrong way to do things, even something as seemingly simple as catching and cooking fish. He appears as doctor-father in several stories about Hemingway’s alter ego Nick Adams, “Indian Camp” and “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife.”
Dr. Patrick O’Hara enjoyed a thriving practice in the Schuykill River coal-mining section of eastern Pennsylvania, about 100 miles away from Philadelphia. While Dr. Hemingway tended to the needs of Native-Americans in “Indian Camp,” Dr. O’Hara labored on behalf of Irish and Eastern Europeans in “The Doctor’s Son.”
From the beginning, critics noticed similarities between the terse styles of Hemingway and O’Hara. They certainly admired each other’s work. O’Hara couldn’t have asked for a better blurb for his first novel than the one provided by Hemingway: “If you want to read a book by a man who knows exactly what he is writing about and has written it marvellously well, read Appointment in Samarra."
Nothing if not loyal, O’Hara returned the favor 16 years later, at the nadir of Hemingway’s career. While virtually every other critic on the planet was panning Papa’s first novel in a decade, Across the River and Into the Trees, O’Hara planted his feet and, in a doughty review for The New York Times Book Review, declared—right in his first sentence!--that his friend was “the most important author living today, the most outstanding author since the death of Shakespeare.”
Both authors’ fictional stand-ins—Hemingway’s Nick Adams, O’Hara’s James Malloy—learn about two realities of adult life—sudden, unexpected death and infidelity—by following around their father in the course of his practice. Yet the stories feel—and are—different, because of narrative point of view.
“Indian Camp” is seen through the eyes of Nick Adams as a child and is told in the third person. Moreover, it depends crucially for making us understand the impact of what Nick learns about nature from the sensory detail that Hemingway loved. The story, then, though written in the past tense, feels immediately lived and reported.
“The Doctor’s Son” appeared in O’Hara’s first book of short stories and was written about the same number of years after the events it chronicles as “Indian Camp.” However, it’s written in the first person, reflecting the author’s experience as an adolescent.
More important, unlike much of the rest of O’Hara’s early fiction, it is not compressed and telegraphic in style, but novella-length, almost ruminative in style. It anticipates the major development of his life in the 1950s: a near-death experience that forced him to give up drink, turn his energies almost entirely to his writing, and resolve that, before he was through, he would get down on paper, for the generations to come, a vanishing world—“The Way It Was,” to use the title of one of the handful of plays he wrote.
Both writers’ bildungsroman stories are informed by ambivalence toward their fathers. “The Doctor’s Son” depicts Patrick O’Hara as heroic to the point of absolute exhaustion in dealing with the flu epidemic of 1918, yet the father in the story—like his real-life counterpart—is also brusque and annoyed that his son might not be fulfilling his potential. In “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” Nick decides not to spend time with his mother, even though his father is already showing signs of being weak and dominated.
Finally, Drs. Hemingway and O’Hara started their sons on perilous paths into adulthood. Clarence Hemingway had to depend on his wife’s income from teaching music to make ends meet. In increasingly frail physical and mental health, he committed suicide in 1928. Patrick O’Hara was actually prosperous, but by dying intestate he left his oldest son unable to attend the college of his choice: Yale.
Their upbringings left Hemingway and O’Hara with a vertiginous sense of their place in the world. Hemingway complained that Oak Park was a place of “wide lawns and narrow minds.” As for O’Hara, he couldn’t wait to leave Pottsville early, but, particularly in the last 15 years of his life, he returned to it almost obsessively in his Gibbsville novels and short stories. (The latter, by the way, might constitute the most substantial contribution to that form in 20th-century letters. How many other American writers have ranged so widely through the different American classes?)
Both O'Hara and Hemingway lived into late middle age, but only O'Hara published prolifically in the last 15 years of his life. His work comes to feel more memorial than that of his fellow doctor's son.
1 comment:
Mike I'm with you on O'Hara. One of my favorites.
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