When politics and morality mixed in print - author John O'Hara

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 12, 1994 | by Rex Roberts

O'Hara knew politics. He began his career as a journalist and would research his novels by driving to Harrisburg, say, to examine files from the local newspaper and gossip with reporters covering the Legislature. Similarly, O'Hara's fascination with wealth stemmed from early experiences. His father, a prominent Pottsville surgeon, firmly believed in the old virtues - loyalty, duty, honor - and his son, although often falling short of these ideals in his own life, believed in a gentleman's code of conduct.

Few authors today write convincingly of matters involving public life and private morality - they tend to do one or the other. But O'Hara could intertwine them in a five-page sketch or an 800-page epic. He looked to the world for material, not merely into himself; he embraced his time and tried to make sense of it for posterity.

For all his obvious flaws, I'm glad that fate forced me to look into O'Hara's books, and I'm glad those books remain in print, now in the respectable Modern Library as well as all those paperbacks with the tawdry covers.