The New York stories - John O'Hara

John O'Hara was born in Pennsylvania on 31 January 1905. His first novel, Appointment in Samarra (1934), won him instant acclaim, and he quickly came to be regarded as one of the most prominent writers in America. He won the National Book Award for his novel Ten North Frederick and had more stories published in the New Yorker than anyone in the history of the magazine. His fourteen novels include A Rage to Live, Pal Joey, BUtterfield 8 and From the Terrace. John O'Hara died on 11 April 1970.

"You can binge on O'Hara's collections in the way some people binge on Mad Men, and for some of the same reasons"
Paris Review - Lorin Stein

"Among the greatest short story writers in English, or in any other language"
Here at The New Yorker - Brendan Gill

"O'Hara practices the classic form of the modern short story developed by Joyce and perfected by Hemingway... His coverage is worthy of a Balzac"
E. L. Doctorow

"O'Hara occupies a unique position in our contemporary literature.... He is the only American writer to whom America presents itself as a social scene in the way it once presented itself to Henry James, or France to Proust"
The New York Times - Lionell Trilling

"Superb... The 32 stories inhabit the Technicolor vernaculars of taxi drivers, barbers, paper pushers and society matrons... O'Hara was American fiction's greatest eavesdropper, recording the everyday speech and tone of all strata of midcentury society"
Wall Street Journal