John O'Hara

The writer Fran Lebowitz called “the real F. Scott Fitzgerald” makes his Penguin Classics debut with this beautiful deluxe edition of his best-loved book One of the great novels of small-town American life, Appointment in Samarra is John O’Hara’s crowning achievement. In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction. Brimming with wealth and privilege, jealousy and infidelity, O’Hara’s iconic first novel is an unflinching look at the dark side of the American dream—and a lasting testament to the keen social intelligence if a major American writer.

A bestseller upon its publication in 1935, BUtterfield 8 was inspired by a news account of the discovery of the body of a beautiful young woman washed up on a Long Island beach. Was it an accident, a murder, a suicide? The circumstances of her death were never resolved, but O’Hara seized upon the tragedy to imagine the woman’s down-and-out life in New York City in the early 1930s. “O’Hara understood better than any other American writer how class can both reveal and shape character,” Fran Lebowitz writes in her Introduction. With brash honesty and a flair for the unconventional, BUtterfield 8 lays bare the unspoken and often shocking truths that lurked beneath the surface of a society still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. The result is a masterpiece of American fiction.

De los casi cuatrocientos cuentos que el prolífico John O’Hara escribió en vida, y de los que esta editorial publicó veinticinco en la antología La chica de California y otros relatos, el autor de Pottsville, Pensilvania, optó en diversas ocasiones a lo largo de su obra por el género de la novella: relatos largos, que abarcan un periodo de tiempo generalmente superior al de un cuento, aunque inferior al de una novela, y que incluyen diversas subtramas y personajes. Este volumen recupera dos novellas portentosas que hasta ahora permanecían inéditas en castellano: «Natica Jackson», publicada originalmente en 1966 en su colección de cuentos Waiting for Winter, es un sobrecogedor retrato del Hollywood de los años treinta y de la vida ligera de sus estrellas, que, a partir de un encuentro azaroso, desencadenará una tragedia griega. El segundo, «A noventa minutos de aquí», que apareció en el compendio de 1963 The Hat on the Bed, es un triángulo amoroso fascinante entre el protagonista —un trasunto del propio O’Hara en su etapa como reportero de diarios de provincias—, una jovencísima prostituta y la hija de un célebre periodista. En ambas novellas, O’Hara da rienda suelta a su técnica predilecta —el diálogo—, del que fue un maestro indiscutible, y da vida a dos de los mejores personajes femeninos de su obra.

‘Superb... These thirty-two 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 mid-century society’ Wall Street JournalJohn O'Hara remains the great chronicler of American society, and nowhere are his powers more evident than in his portraits of New York's so-called Golden Age. Unsparingly observed, brilliantly cutting and always on the tragic edge of epiphany, the stories collected here are among O’Hara’s finest work, and show why he still stands as the most-published short story writer in the history of the New Yorke r.

When the beautiful, imperious and moneyed Grace Caldwell Tate wants something she goes after it. Her affair scandalises Pennsylvania's elite and she must face the costs to her marriage and the man she really loves. A bestseller on publication in 1949, A Rage to Live, is a candid tale of idealists and libertines, tradesmen and crusaders, men of violence and goodwill, and women of fierce strength and tenderness.

These are refreshingly frank, sparely written stories that expose the world of bartenders and 'b-girls', car washers and criminals. John O'Hara dissects the subtleties that bind humans together and the pressures that separate them.

Three generations of the Chapin family, prominent citizens of Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, struggle with the prides and passions in this epic saga of the American experience

Collected for the first time, the New York stories of John O'Hara, "among the greatest short story writers in English, or in any other language" (Brendan Gill, Here at The New Yorker) Collected for the first time, here are the New York stories of one of the twentieth century’s definitive  chroniclers of the city—the speakeasies and highballs, social climbers and cinema stars, mistresses and powerbrokers, unsparingly observed by a popular American master of realism. Spanning his four-decade career, these more than thirty refreshingly frank, sparely written stories are among John O’Hara’s finest work, exploring the materialist aspirations and sexual exploits of flawed, prodigally human characters and showcasing the snappy dialogue, telling details and ironic narrative twists that made him the most-published short story writer in the history of the New Yorker.