Hunting with Dad

Enid, a bit before my time!

As I've written here before, my father grew up on an Oregon farm, where he was born in 1913.  Throughout his early life, he did lots of hunting and fishing, not generally for fun.  He had a large family (more than ten siblings), and his own father died in 1931.  There is no good time for the loss of a father, but the Great Depression offered only its grim face as solace for the death of the grandfather I never knew.

While my brothers and I were growing up, Dad still occasionally went hunting--rabbits and quail his principal targets in north-central Oklahoma.  He went rabbit hunting on a farm in Garrettsville one Thanksgiving Day in the late 1950s.  He got one.

Fishing was a little more common, though only when we traveled back to Oregon to visit his family.  I remember camping near the car, Dad going down to the stream early in the morning, pulling out some trout, cleaning and frying them for breakfast.  My mother was not much interested in cleaning fish--or rabbits--or quail.  So Dad did it all.

Dad owned four firearms.  A .22 pistol he kept in the glove compartment on long cross-country trips.  (I never saw him use it, ever.)  A 12-gauge shotgun.  A 30.30 deer rifle.  A .22 rifle.  They lived in his closet, leaning in the corner.

He believed we boys ought to learn about them.  But Richard was not the slightest bit interested (opera was his life, and there are no guns in Aida); Dave was too young.  I was perfect.

Cisco Kid (right) and Pancho (left)

I loved cowboy shows and movies, and in the late 1940s and early 1950s, network television was chockablock with cowboys.  Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, the Range Rider, the Lone Ranger, the Cisco Kid ... and on and on and on.  These were my heroes.  Not Radames and his tenor ilk.  If the show had gunfire, I watched it.

Dad bought me a Daisy air rifle (bb gun) when I was in elementary school, a very bad move, as my little brother's legs and the wildlife near 1706 East Elm Avenue, Enid, Oklahoma, can testify.  (I'm ashamed to report that not all the wildlife there was capable of testifying, not after their deadly encounter with Little Danny Sureshot.)

One day, Dad decided I could go rabbit hunting with him.  He would take his 12-gauge; I, my air rifle.  We drove out to some guy's farm near the metropolis of Billville, Oklahoma, a place that neither Googlemaps nor MapQuest recognizes today.  I seem to recall a crossing of two red-dirt roads, a run-down general store.  But there could have been less.

We tramped around a bit in the crisp air (it was November, I think).  Suddenly, a rabbit ran ahead of us.  While I was raising my trusty Daisy, Dad's 12-gauge roared.  The rabbit stopped running but was thrashing around on the ground in agony.

I was feeling sick.

Dad told me to go over and finish him off.

I walked over, stood right over the rabbit, aimed, fired.  Missed.  Twice more, I cocked, aimed, fired, missed.  I could not believe it.

And the rabbit, realizing he was in the presence of something weaker than he, leaped to his feat and was heading off down the Bunny Trail when Dad's shotgun converted him to supper.

Dad walked over to the rabbit, picked it up, put it in his pouch, consoled me ("can happen to anyone"), though he was surely wondering at that moment what sort of world this was: one son home listening to opera, another missing three point-blank shots at a reclining rabbit.  Later, I read about "buck fever" (noun: "nervous excitement of an inexperienced hunter upon the approach of game") and was not consoled to learn that a male rabbit is also a buck.

Washington Irving

Many years later, a shock of recognition--and fraternity: I read Washington Irving's account of his 1832 buffalo hunt in what now is Oklahoma.  It's from A Tour on the Prairies, a wonderful little book, and I'll let Irving have the final word--for in his account, I recognized the grandfather of my own.  From Chapter XXIX:

"... galloping along parallel, therefore, I singled out a buffalo, and by a fortunate shot brought it down on the spot. The ball had struck a vital part; it could not move from the place where it fell, but lay there struggling in mortal agony, while the rest of the herd kept on their headlong career across the prairie.

Dismounting, I now fettered my horse to prevent his straying, and advanced to contemplate my victim. I am nothing of a sportsman; I had been prompted to this unwonted exploit by the magnitude of the game, and the excitement of an adventurous chase. Now that the excitement was over, I could not but look with commiseration upon the poor animal that lay struggling and bleeding at my feet. His very size and importance, which had before inspired me with eagerness, now increased my compunction. It seemed as if I had inflicted pain in proportion to the bulk of my victim, and as if it were a hundred-fold greater waste of life than there would have been in the destruction of an animal of inferior size.

To add to these after-qualms of conscience, the poor animal lingered in his agony. He had evidently received a mortal wound, but death might be long in coming. It would not do to leave him here to be torn piecemeal, while yet alive, by the wolves that had already snuffed his blood, and were skulking and howling at a distance, and waiting for my departure; and by the ravens that were flapping about, croaking dismally in the air. It became now an act of mercy to give him his quietus, and put him out of his misery. I primed one of the pistols, therefore, and advanced close up to the buffalo. To inflict a wound thus in cold blood, I found a totally different thing from firing in the heat of the chase. Taking aim, however, just behind the fore-shoulder, my pistol for once proved true; the ball must have passed through the heart, for the animal gave one convulsive throe and expired.

While I stood meditating and moralizing over the wreck I had so wantonly produced, with my horse grazing near me, I was rejoined by my fellow-sportsman, the Virtuoso; who, being a man of universal adroitness, and withal, more experienced and hardened in the gentle art of "venerie," soon managed to carve out the tongue of the buffalo, and delivered it to me to bear back to the camp as a trophy."

Why Does My Mother Still Speak to Me?

When I was in high school, I once went to a Tribe double-header with friend Johnny Kelker.  When we got home, I found out it was Mother's Day.

When I was in high school, I once tossed a couch pillow at my brother Dave.  I misfired.  It hit an antique lamp with a Tiffany shade that showed prairies and mountains.  The lamp had belonged to my mother's uncle Bill.  The lamp toppled to the floor, the glass shade breaking into a score of pieces.

When I was in high school, I decided my mother didn't understand me.  So I quit speaking to her, tried to avoid being in the room with her.

When I was in high school, I had my mom's car out on a date.  I decided it was a good night to "park" up on cemetery road in Hiram.  It was January.  The drifts were chest high.  I got about 200 feet before the car stopped and would not budge.  My girlfriend and I had to walk back to her house (about a mile, in bitter cold); then I had to walk home, wake up my parents, and tell them what I'd done.  They called a tow truck.  It got stuck before it could reach the car.  Which stayed out on the road all night.  Next day, a township snowplow got to it, pulled it out.

When I was in high school, my mother (a high school English teacher in Garrettsville) had her school newspaper staff over on a Saturday morning to work on editing some stories.  When I passed through the dining room (where they were working), she asked me if I'd go get the thesaurus.  I said I didn't know that that was.  And headed on out the door.

When I was in high school ...

I was an asshole.

I eventually matured, in some ways--I got older, anyway.  That's something, right?

I've spent a lot of years--decades, really--trying to atone for those long-ago misdeeds.  My mother certainly deserved none of it.  She is quite a woman.

Her father was a minister, seminary professor, author; her mother was among the finest women I've ever known--a farm girl from Austintown, Ohio, who had more talents than I can even name.  My mom's brother became a minister and seminary professor and author.

Mom married my dad in 1939; she had just turned twenty.  When Dad went off to World War II, she had a young son, Dickie, and I was on the way.  Fortunately, she could live with her parents there in Enid, and they were an enormous help with two little ones.  Dad came home from the war--another son arrived in 1947.  So now there were three little boys running around, each very different from the other.

Meanwhile, my mom had finished her bachelor's degree at Vanderbilt (before sons arrived to ruin all--for a while).  And she began teaching part-time at Enid's Emerson Junior High School--but not until all the boys were in school.

When we moved to Hiram, she taught full time at Garfield High School in Garrettsville, got a master's at Kent, a Ph.D. at Pitt.  Published articles and books.  Managed my father--who, to his credit, encouraged her tirelessly--dealt with three sons, two of whom (the older two) became increasingly assholeian in adolescence.

In 1966, the year I graduated from college, the year Dave graduated from high school, my parents both took jobs at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and began enjoying the happiest, most productive years of their lives.

Was it a coincidence that the three boys were gone?

When they retired, they built a little place out in Cannon Beach, Oregon, where they lived happily until medical problems began their attack on my father.  They moved to Massachusetts, to be closer to my two brothers.  And my mother took care of Dad--for years with very, very little help--as he made the decline from cane to walker to wheelchair.  It wasn't until the very end, when he was absolutely helpless, that he moved to a nursing facility.  His mental acuity had also softened; his last few years he talked about food, the weather, his car, football.  That was it.  My mother listened to his same expressions and stories, over and over and over again.

My mother was always physically active.  When they were in Oregon, she and her friends regularly hiked the trails along the coast.

She hates being the way she is now, at 92.  She can walk only very slowly.  With a cane.  Getting out of a chair, across the room, is a wrenching effort.  Making her bed can take an hour.  But she will not go to assisted living.  Will not go gentle into that good night.

And so I remember forgotten Mother's Days and slighted birthdays and insults and rudeness and cruelty and neglect with the most piercing regret and an unrelenting self-loathing.  Who was that person I was?

When I was in high school, I had a wonderful mother.  And I am soaringly grateful that I have had the opportunity to tell her so for the ensuing fifty years.

What Did I Do to Deserve This? Part Two

Yesterday, I posted about how little I (and, presumably, many other white-male-Christian Americans--WMCAs) have to brag about.  I mentioned that if life is a race (which it isn't--see below) we have had since Jamestown (1603) a grotesquely unfair head start.  I also mentioned my nature-and-nurture advantages--advantages which further weaken my claim to "doing it all on my own."

I do not in the slightest want to diminish the efforts of WMCAs, however.  I did work hard; I did pay my own way through grad school (with some help from the Aurora City Schools, who offered some grad-school tuition help).  I did go to work every day, grade all the papers, prepare all the lessons, etc.  Countless other WMCAs in other ways--in other careers--have done the same.

But we mustn't forget those advantages we've had since 1603.

I pled yesterday--and the day before--for humility.  And for gratitude.  I thanked my parents and those myriads of ancestors whose genes contributed to the person who is writing these words.  I suggested some of us could use a bit more imagination--What if I had not had such advantages?  What if I had been born in another place?  Another time?  What if I were not a WMCA?

But now I want to get into why I don't like to consider life as a race.  It's obvious.  In races, there are winners and losers.  And, depending on the nature of the race, we can find ourselves in either category--usually in the latter.

Imagine this: Junior high school gym class.  Your teacher decides he (I'm going on my own experience--all my gym teachers were men) will start each class with a fifty-yard dash.  Every day, rain or shine.  After the first race (and probably before it), everyone knows who will win, who will come close, who will not.  Yet on and on and on the "races" go.

I had an actual teacher in eighth grade who had a spelling bee every Friday.  Guess what?  Same kid (or two) won every single week; same kids went out in the first round, every Friday.  Some "race."

In "races" based on physical or intellectual prowess, the same folks "win," the same "lose."  And so--when such "races" are forced, it is not really a competition, is it?  It's a humiliation.

I can train all I want, try as hard as I want, I'm still going to lose in a sprint with Troy Bouts (the fastest kid in my class).  I can study all I want, I'm still going to lose a spelling bee to Sally Benedict (the best speller in our class).

In the economic and social world it's not really any different.  Folks who have advantages at the start generally become the "winners"--and for every Silicon Vally nerd from a modest background who makes a fortune there are a jillion who don't.  For every Horatio Alger, a jillion Horatio Omegers (never heard of him? me, either).

We fortunate ones can be arrogant about our fortune, attributing it to our, somehow, being "chosen" (we love that idea--being chosen), to our superior work ethic, to our overall awesomeness.  We can look at those folks who live in the worst neighborhoods, who attend the worst schools in the country, who live in families under enormous stress, and we can convince ourselves that, you know, they just want a handout ... they don't want to work hard, not the way we do!

But, of course, that's cruel and ignorant, isn't it?  Condemning them is no different than chastising the "losers" of  the daily foot race, the weekly spelling bee.

I want to live in a country where we help, not devour, one another.  Of course there are people who betray us, who cheat, who game the system, who do as little as they can, who look out only for themselves.  Of course.  And they are everywhere, from Main Street to Wall Street to Tobacco Road to Madison Avenue.  But we can't base our policies of humaneness and generosity on those who will take advantage of us.  We can be circumspect, realitistic--but we can't judge everyone by the worst example we can find.  (It's no more true the other way, is it?  It would be like, oh, looking at the most ethical car salesman (or whatever) in the country and then behaving as if all were like him/her.)

But I still want to live in a country where we help, not devour, one another.

In this country, I like to think that we have a contract with one another.  We will help, not condemn.  We will offer a hand, not the finger.  We will share a bit of what we have so that others will have something.  We will do our best to put hope in the hearts of our brothers and sisters.  For hope is, well, all in all.

I want to end with an image from Dickens' A Christmas Carol.  An appropriate book to look at year-round, by the way, not just over the holidays.  It often seems to me that we like the converted Scrooge on Christmas--and many of us behave like the other Scrooge the rest of the year.  The miser.  The man who will not share.  The man who believes he has done it all himself.

Anyway, early in the story, Scrooge is barking his humbugs about Christmas, and his nephew says that Christmas is "the only time, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

I wish we felt like this every day, not just on that one holiday.  I wish we all could realize that we are all on the same train, bound for the same place.  We are not in a race to get there, are we?

And, by the way, I want to live in a country where we help, not devour, one another ...

What Did I Do to Deserve This? Part One

Yesterday, I wrote a bit about humility--about our tendency to attribute our success to ourselves, to blame our failures on others.

I want to expand that a little today, mostly because I find what's lacking in a lot of political debate these days is humility.  And imagination.  Some public figures seem to imply (and some even state) that it was their work ethic and piety that earned them their lofty status.

Please.

We have to be humble about our accomplishments (such as they are); we have to be able to imagine what things would have been like if we had been born into different circumstances.  Sure--individual initiative is important; sure--some people work harder than others.  But just listen ...

I'm going to use myself as an example.

In many ways I've had a successful life.  I had a career I loved.  (Never got fired, never laid off.)  I've had some success in publishing.  (I'm going to leave Joyce and our son out of this for a while.)  I own a home (almost! the bank still claims a chunk).  I have a decent retirement income.  Medicare.  And so on.  I can really say that I don't have much to worry about--except, of course, time's winged chariot, hurrying near ...

So ... have I earned the right to say: "I earned all that.  I worked hard.  I didn't count on others to take care of me"? 

No.

Here's why: If life is a race (it isn't--but for now), I got to start way, way down the track from most other folks in this world.  Here's how.

First, I was born a white male in a Christian family in the mid-twentieth century in the United States, a country that was using World War II to become a world military and economic power.  What did I do to "deserve" that?  Nothing.  My parents had a good time one night; nine months later came the smelly, noisy consequence.

My white maleness--and my family's Christianity--put me in the class that has pretty much been in power in this country ever since, oh, 1603.  Jamestown.  I didn't do anything.  But all my life I've enjoyed the privileges that those genetic and historical accidents have provided.  For too long, I'm embarrassed to say, I thought I'd earned them.

Let's look more closely at the "whiteness" a second.  I was born in Enid, Oklahoma, a city that was racially segregated, divided by Market Street.  I had no black friends, no black classmates--not until college.  Black youngsters could not attend the schools I did, use the Carnegie Public Library, sit in the same section of the movie theaters, ride in the front of the city bus, use the same restrooms, drink from the same drinking fountains, use the same sections of the city parks, and on and on and on.  Oh, and black children in 1944 had to be born in the basement of the city hospital--not up in the maternity wards where I was born.  I thought, as a child, that all of this was unremarkable.  Normal.  The way it was supposed to be.

Yet over on the other side of Market were kids every bit as bright as I, every bit as ambitious.  But in Enid, Oklahoma, 1950, their "race" with me was no race at all.  Jim Crow forced them to start so far behind me that I could stroll around the track.  Stroll.  Which I did.  No need to work up a sweat.

So did I "deserve" all those advantages?  (That's a rhetorical question.)

And now one more thing before pausing for today.  My family.  My father and mother both believed deeply in education.  My father grew up on a farm in Oregon, then worked his way through college, served in both theaters in World War II.  After the war, Dad went on to graduate school.  He enjoyed all the perks of being a white male war veteran.  (Have you read what black war veterans faced when they returned?  What happened to women who'd held jobs while men were away at war?)  My mother was the daughter of a preacher and professor.  She grew up around books and to this day (she's 92) spends much of her time reading.  She eventually earned her Ph.D. and ended her career, with Dad, teaching at Drake University.  I wouldn't call their marriage idyllic, but few are.  I had two healthy brothers, one older, one younger.  We grew up with lots of books and music and art in the house and with parents who stayed married and encouraged all three of us in our endeavors.  They took us on trips, insisted we do our schoolwork, taught us to be civil, and so on.

What did I do to "deserve" that?  (Another rhetorical question.)

As I said yesterday, I can take credit for none of this.  Nor for the genes from both sides of the family that have given me whatever natural talents I possess.  About all I could have done--as I've said--is screw that all up.

Tomorrow ... Some thoughts about what this means for me--and, maybe, for the rest of us ...

Teacher Appreciation Week?

My son reminded me that this is Teacher Appreciation Week.  Not directly--but he blogs for Innovation Ohio (Link), and he mentioned it in his post yesterday.

I did a little (only a little) research on the subject and learned that it's been a PTA-sponsored event only since 1984, my fifteenth year in the classroom.  I don't recall that the community where I taught did much about it ... were there little treats in our faculty mailboxes?  Something like that?  For the kids, it was pretty much a non-event.

I think there's a Teacher Appreciation Day, too.  May 8 this year.

I'm fighting the impulse to be cynical about all of this.  It all reminds me of what that wonderful cowboy-comedian-social commentator-journalist (and fellow Sooner) Will Rogers once said about Mother's Day--also approaching: He talked about how it must  have been someone with a "hurting conscience" who thought up the idea for a day--"and in return," quipped Rogers, "Mother gives you the other 364."  (Here's an audio link to Rogers on Mother's Day: Will Rogers on Mother's Day 1935)

I showed very little appreciation for my teachers when I was in school  Probably none, actually.  Sure, there were some who deserved little appreciation--people who were there for the paycheck, for the job security.  It was obvious who they were; they might as well have been wearing T-shirts bearing the message in bold letters: THIS IS MY JOB, NOT MY PROFESSION, NOT MY PASSION.

But I had other wonderful teachers--many of them--from kindergarten through graduate school.  And all of those wonderful teachers of mine had at least one thing in common: I never let any of them know how I felt about them.  Not directly.

Later on, I did have the chance to tell some--and I have done so in this blog, too.  Several are now Facebook friends.  But others have passed away ...

When I was teaching, there were always some very thoughtful parents--from my very first year--who let me know they were pleased with what I was doing in class with their kids.  (This was remarkable: Early in my career I had little idea what I was doing from one day to the next--hell, from one moment to the next.)  And there were the other sorts of parents, too--the ones who were never satisfied.  Some became downright antagonistic, and my conferences with them (and phone calls and correspondence) remain fixed in my memory like severe injuries.

Many students I've had over the years--especially with the advent of Facebook--have told me some kind things.  Many were good about doing that when they were children, too--far, far better than I was at their age.

So I guess what I'd offer about Teacher Appreciation Week is this: We all need to be humble.  And grateful.  Sometimes we are guilty of taking credit for our virtues and achievements, of blaming others for our weaknesses and failures.  We think, in some ways, that we invented ourselves--as if we scooped up our own clay, breathed into in the breath of life.  We didn't.

I was born into a family so wonderful, so supportive, that, really, I should take no personal credit for anything.  About all I could have done was screw it all up--which, from time to time, I did. 

I went to good schools and had mostly good teachers (with a handful of duds and a handful of superstars mixed in).  Some inspired me, amused me, terrified me, abused me (not many), bored me, challenged me, ignored me, angered me, puzzled me, loved me.  And I was never the easiest puppy in the litter to deal with.

So be humble today (every day, if you can manage it).  Give credit to your genes, your family, your community, your good fortune.  And, yes, your teachers .

John O'Hara--Columnist (and not a good one)

As I wrote yesterday, John O'Hara had several gigs as a columnist--and with some major publications.  Newsweek ("Entertainment Week," 1940-1942), Trenton Sunday Times-Advertiser ("Sweet and Sour," 1953-1954--collected in a book with the same title), Collier's ("Appointment with O'Hara," 1954-1956), Newsday ("My Turn," 1964-1965--collected in a book with the same title), and Holiday ("The Whistle Stop," 1966-1967).

O'Hara began as a journalist back in his hometown of Pottsville, PA, where he was fired--as he was from numerous other newspaper jobs--for drunkenness and failing to appear before noon.  All his editors knew he could write--and quickly, too (a good thing in that profession), but they all soon tired of his habits and canned him.  (After he'd already bottled himself!)

Later on, he dried himself out--stopped drinking altogether and became a far more reliable fellow.  But by then, he was self-employed, churning out novels and short stories that earned him (and Random House) a fortune.

So ... it's no mystery why a magazine would employ him.  He had a journalism background; he could write quickly and on deadline; he was a popular writer ... what could go wrong?

Plenty.

O'Hara had ... issues.  Because he'd never been to college, he had a sort of a volcanic truculence that bubbled away below the surface--what used to be called (let's mix a metaphor) "a chip on the shoulder." (In his earlier days, he'd been in bar fights.)   He constantly wrote about characters who had Phi Beta Kappa keys, characters who were often assholes.  He had obnoxious characters correct other characters' usage and grammar.  He professed, in his columns, to dislike Shakespeare and other "establishment" literary figures.  And on and on.

Throughout his columns, this attitude emerged as a sort of I'm-right-everyone-else-is-wrong certitude that was excessive, even for a columnist, who, of course, is supposed to be opinionated.

He also brayed occasionally about how much money he made as a writer, about the awards (not that many) he'd won, about how many millions of books he'd sold.

He also had a sense of humor that few shared.  When he tried to be funny (not often), he just wasn't funny.  It was forced.  Clumsy.

And another real problem: He refused to be edited.  After he became a bestseller, he typed one draft of his stories and novels, made a tiny handful of corrections (mostly typos), and insisted that his text go to press as it was.  He was publishing what you and I would call a rough draft.  This bespeaks a towering confidence--but a sad foolishness, too.  Editors could have helped him--a lot.  But he would rather pull a story--not have it published at all--than have an editor make changes.

In his columns for Collier's, which I just finished reading the other day (an act of determination, not affection), are some real gems ...

3 Sept 1954: says he smokes "because I like to smoke" (note--his death was smoking related ... oh well)

1 Oct 1954: "If I'd had my choice, I'd have gone to Yale."  Well, he did have the choice.  He was number one in his high school class and was set to go--then he got in drinking trouble at graduation and his father pulled the plug on Yale plans until he settled down.  Which he didn't do.

29 Oct 1954: O'Hara liked and admired Hemingway but advised him against acting in a film (which he was apparently thinking of doing) ... If it doesn't work out, wrote O'Hara, "he will have nobody to shoot but himself."  Oops.

4 Feb 1955: "I feel ashamed of myself for liking money as much as I do."

2 Sept 1955 (about the new Stratford Festival in Ontario): "I would not drive fifty miles to see an all-star cast in Hamlet or any other play by the Bard ...."

Laurence Olivier as Richard III

25 Nov 1955 (about the Olivier RICHARD III on TV): "Production too often seems to have been placed in the hands of educated illiterates."

You get the idea.

O'Hara did have some good things to say now and then--some sensitive things.  Once, writing about all the books in his study, he said: "It also makes me sad to realize that I can never know all that is in print in just this one small room" (11 May 1956).  I like that.  It shows a flash of humility--and humanity.

1956--A Good Year for John O'Hara

Yes, 1956 was a good year for writer John O'Hara.  He had already established himself as a bestselling writer of novels and short stories.  Both Butterfield 8 (1935) and  A Rage to Live (1949) sold well, and he was routinely placing stories in The New Yorker, a magazine which then (as now) was the publication that writers sought.

He'd also had a hit on Broadway--Pal Joey (Rodgers and Hart did the music and lyrics), a 1940 musical based on his series of New Yorker stories about a low-on-the-totem-pole nightclub emcee and performer.  O'Hara had spent some time in Hollywood, too, working on film scripts--and even (briefly) appearing in The General Died at Dawn (1936), a film that certified that O'Hara's strengths lay off-screen.

In 1956, he also received word that he'd won the National Book Award for Fiction for Ten North Frederick, his 1955 novel about generations of a prominent Pennsylvania family.

And--a bonus as far as he was concerned--he had a bi-weekly column ("Appointment with O'Hara"--a playful variation of the title of his first novel, Appointment in Samarra, 1934) in a large-circulation magazine, Collier's.  He'd already had stints with Newsweek ("Entertainment Week," 1940-42) and the Trenton Sunday Times-Advertiser ("Sweet and Sour," 1953-54--the pieces he collected in a book that appeared in 1954--Sweet and Sour).

Later, he would write columns for Newsday (1964-65--collected in his book My Turn, also the title for the column) and for Holiday magazine (1966-67), the only group I've not yet read.

As readers of these posts know, I have been steadfastly reading my way through all of John O'Hara--all his novels and short stories and plays (he was not a good playwright).  And as I near the end of my journey, I've been reading his journalism, as well.  I've read all the newspaper columns, all the Newsweek pieces, and just yesterday I finished the Collier's columns he wrote from 5 February 1954 to 28 September 1956.

They pretty much suck.  As did his other columns.

And tomorrow--I'll tell you why ...

11 May 1956