—There
were other writers whose haunts we saw flashes of—August Wilson, Sherwood
Anderson, Edward Bellamy, Walt Whitman, and on and on and on. As long as I was
teaching, there seemed an endless supply of places to go, sites to see.
And
then in June 2011, I retired.
Now what? Am I doomed to endless
hours on the porch swing reading publications of the AARP?
Nope.
John O’Hara rode to the rescue.
For
a number of years I’d taught a short story by John O’Hara—“Do You Like It Here?”—a
story about a new kid at a prep school, a kid whom the headmaster accuses of
stealing a watch. I’d first read it back in college in a creative writing class
taught by my favorite professor, Abe C. Ravitz. We were working on dialogue at
the time, and dialogue is one of O’Hara’s strengths. But I didn’t really know
much about O’Hara (1905–1970). I knew he’d written BUtterfield 8 and From the
Terrace and some other racy and popular novels (novels my parents did not
read, did not have in the house), but I knew virtually nothing about his life,
his career.
So
I’d bought Geoffrey Wolff’s 2003 biography, The
Art of Burning Bridges: A Life of John O’Hara, and consumed it. Then I
thought I’d read O’Hara’s first book, the short novel Appointment in Samarra, 1934, just to see. I liked it. So I moved
on to the next title, The Doctor’s Son
and Other Stories, 1935.
And
then I was hooked. I was ordering all his titles, driving—several times—over to
Pottsville, Pennsylvania, where he grew up (and which is the “Gibbsville” of
much of his best fiction), to Princeton (his final home is there, his simple
grave at Princeton Cemetery), and to State College, Pennsylvania, where the
Special Collections Library holds many of O’Hara’s papers—and where they have
re-built O’Hara’s study from his Princeton home, Linebrook, using his original
furniture, books, knickknacks, wall adornments, and so on.[1]
I’ve
missed my students, my colleagues, the classroom colloquies. In some ways, retirement
has meant a painful separation.
But
I always remember a line from the mouth of Macbeth: “The labour we delight in
physics pain.”
And
so it does. And so, in some ways, I continue the “labour” of my career, “labour,”
which of course, also goes by the name of “love.”
“The
affectionate recollection and admiration of the dead,” wrote Godwin in Essay on Sepulchres, “will act gently
upon our spirits, and fill us with a composed seriousness, favourable to the
best and most honourable contemplations.”[2]
Or
so we can hope … and so I’ve always found … and so I hope always to find.
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