Short Story Wednesday: "How Old, How Young", John O'Hara

I have always thought I read a lot of John O'Hara as a kid until I looked at his list of publications. I may have only read FROM THE TERRACE, or was reading it when my father pitched it out the door. This action necessitated a late night retrieval because it was a library book. And I really can't believe my father had any idea about who O'Hara was or what the book was about. Maybe the cover scared him.

At any rate, I think I mostly read O'Hara short stories He published hundreds of them. But I did read a lot of novels by three other Johns as a teen: Steinbeck, Marquand and Dos Passos. As well as Sinclair Lewis, Thomas Wolfe, Willa Cather, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen and Theodore Dreiser. No mysteries at all. I don't think I knew they existed then.  My mother had a few in our one tiny bookcase, but I was more attracted to the romances there.

Anyway this story is collected in the Library of America collection of a few years ago. It is a nine-page story. O'Hara wrote both very short and very long stories. It begins with a young man (Jamie) noticing a young woman crying in the street. He recognizes her and has a immediate desire to cover her up because her deep distress is like nakedness to him. People didn't often cry in the streets. 

He looks for her at a swimming party that night (this is probably set in Gibbsville- a stand in for O'Hara's own hometown in PA) Nancy has begged off coming; she was supposed to bring 12 ears of corn, someone complains. A discussion takes place over how girls mature earlier than boys. How he shouldn't fall for her since although the same age, he was too immature for Nancy. "She needs someone who can take care of her," someone says.

But he looks for her again the next day at the club swimming pool and finds her. He is very attracted to her and watches as she climbs out of the pool to see where the swimsuit sticks to her body. (I had never thought of this as a "thing" before). The dialog between them is snappy. 

She has been crying because her father has been charged with misappropriation of funds and she asks him if he assumed she was crying because she was pregnant. 

Again there are references as to how he is not mature enough for her. He offers to marry her and she says he isn't even finished with college. The story ends with the lines. 

"I don't want to have to wait that long," he said.

"We don't have to wait, for everything," she said. 

Although only nine pages, you come away from the story feeling you know a lot about these two twenty-one year olds.  They come from the privileged class and I think that was the typical group O'Hara wrote about. He came from that class  (father was a doctor) although he always felt like an outsider apparently because he was Irish and Catholic. There are lots of phrases in the story that date it, but the story isn't dated at all. Something very like it is in The New Yorker most weeks. 

 

Cullen Gallagher 

George Kelley 

Monday, Monday

 Supposed to be 100 degrees here on Tuesday. It must have reached that before but I don't remember it. 

Saw TOY STORY 5 and enjoyed but did not love it. Seems like the are using story lines from earlier films in the series and it is also a lot like INSIDE OUT. 

Reading YESTERYEAR by Caro Claire Burke, which is very funny and original.

Watching, MY FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS, THE BEAR, PORTRAIT ARTIST OF THE YEAR, SUGAR.

Megan is in Hollywood, serving as the consulting producer for a new Netflix show called NEXT DOOR. She will be back and forth from LA To New York for five months. She just finished her next book so it came up at the right time.  

What's new in your backyard? 

 

FFB: THE VEILED ONE, Ruth Rendell

I always loved the Wexford series and he had a good first lieutenant with Mike Burden. This book also has a strong secondary story with Wexford's daughter's activism causing issues.  

The Veiled One is a 1988 Inspector Wexford mystery novel. The  story follows Chief Inspector Wexford as he investigates the murder of a woman found garroted in a shopping mall parking garage, but the case is handed to his partner, Mike Burden, after Wexford is hospitalized by a car bomb intended for his activist daughter. The novel explores themes of obsession and secrets, with Burden delving into a twisted case involving a strange mother and son.

 

As I look through my diary for 1988, I am amazed at how many Rendells I read in that year alone.  

 

Short Story Wednesday: "Stories: Annie Ernaux

 

This is one of the many stories in TNY that I can't quite make sense of. Sometimes it is probably part of a larger work by the writer, but sometimes the author and me inhabit different worlds. 

A ten -year old walks a five- year old to school every day. The way there is calm but on the way back, the ten-year old tell the kindergartner scary stories. The younger one screams and cries when the story is told. It's a game, but it isn't. One day, she isn't there in the morning and the ten-year old is told the younger one is now going to public school. She is grief stricken. Translated from the French. Perhaps that's why I didn't get it. Or maybe it's a religious thing (they are Catholic). But why did the kindergartner go along with it? Why did the older child derive satisfaction from the game? Just not enough information for me. 

 George Kelley

Jerry House 

Monday, Monday

 I probably shouldn't have rewatched CLOSE ENCOUNTERS the night before I saw this because it paled in comparison. It was certainly watchable but there were a lot of loose threads and so many references to his own work, it got annoying. Of course there are some great action scenes and great acting. And music!

Watching STAR CITY (very good) on APPLE. Finished WIDOW'S BAY (Apple) which was great and the first episode of the second season of SUGAR (Apple) .

Went to a concert with a harpist and cello player from the DSO. We do have a great Senior Center. 

Started THE IVY TREE by Mary Stewart (as recommended by Tracy). Seemed like a nice palate cleanser after THE GRIFTERS. 

Great weather mostly sunny and in the seventies. 

What's up with you 

FFB: THE GRIFTERS, Jim Thompson

 

I've been told for years if I like Charles Willeford, I would like Jim Thompson. Well, I liked this book a lot, but there is not an ounce of humor in it unlike the Hoke Mosley books. The writing is terrific and what a trio inhabits these pages. It begins with Roy Dillon getting clubbed in the stomach. He is a grifter, a man of mostly small cons. His mother and girlfriend form the trio and it's hard to say whose the most noirish but I am betting on Lilly, his mother. This has so much atmosphere, and good settings and great dialog, you can hardly turn the pages fast enough. La Jolla never seemed so dark to me. Like a play almost, each of these characters has their own little story and the other back away and let them tell it.