Collected Stories of John O'Hara

Book excerpt: These are the stories, unavailable for some years and still amazingly fresh and arresting, that influenced a whole generation of short-story writers, not one of whom capped O'Hara's mastery of the genre. The selection includes: the "Pennsylvania stories" which describe the men and women in the countryside where O'Hara grew up; the "Hollywood stories" that show that fabled land in the years of its greatest glory when O'Hara was working there as a screenwriter; and the "New York stories" which come from the days when O'Hara was a familiar figure in cafe society. ISBN 0-394-54083-2 : $19.95.