I have yet to see this movie, but I was given a vivid picture from reading this book. Being placed in the 1930's, I was almost expecting to be taken to a time and place alien to me. I was astounded in the way O'Hara's society hasn't changed much from the one today. The only difference is that the issues in this novel are more plevalent today than in the hidden crevices of yesterday.

I attribute this comparison to his level of writing. If everyone could write like this, all books would be timeless. As well as the lush descriptions of New York, from the start, it is difficult not to feel for Gloria. The rest of the story tries to explain why she is such a person to feel for.

I enjoyed seeing a colorful portrait of the thirties as well as getting swept up in the tragic story of a girl who has an inevitable future.

In his astoundingly productive career, John O'Hara wrote 402 stories and 14 novels. Reportedly, he drove fellow staffers at The New Yorker to fury because he could sit down at a typewriter and just bang away at the keys nonstop until a finished story rolled out. (These facts come from John Sacret Young's intro to this book.) I've read several of the story collections and a couple of the novels and O'Hara's style is fairly distinctive. He plumbs the faultlines of society where the slumming rich meet with the aspiring poor. His stories are driven by dialogue and crisp, witty, trenchant dialogue at that, much like the hard-boiled private eye novels of Hammett and Chandler. His tone is cynical; his subjects doomed. You get the sense that if he knew a pedestrian was about to be run down in front of him, he wouldn't even turn his head. And after witnessing the accident he'd race to a typewriter to share the ugly scene with his readers. He is a kind of an upscale noir writer, a tony purveyor of pulp fiction.

BUtterfield 8 is a roman a clef (based on a real incident) and you can see why the story appealed to him. On June 8, 1931, the dead body of a young woman named Starr Faithfull--no seriously, her name was Starr Faithfull--was found on Long Beach, Long Island. Subsequent reporting uncovered a life of easy morals and much time spent in speakeasies and such piquant details as her childhood molestation by a former mayor of Boston. Despite rumors of political motives for her murder and a supposed secret diary, no one was ever charged in her death.

O'Hara recreates her as Gloria Wandrous, and introduces her on the novel's first page as follows:

On this Sunday morning in May, this girl who later was to be the cause of a sensation in New York, awoke much too early for her night before. One minute she was asleep, the next she was completely awake and dumped into despair.

This is no happy go lucky flapper he offers up. From that first despairing morning, when she steals a mink coat from the apartment where she wakes in order to replace the dress that her date tore off of her the night before, O'Hara details a brutal, unhappy, ultimately empty life that spirals down towards the inevitable senseless death.

O'Hara said that in Gloria Wandrous he created Elizabeth Taylor before there was an Elizabeth Taylor (she starred in a movie version), just as in Pal Joey, he created Sinatra before Sinatra. In hindsight, the better comparison is probably to Marilyn Monroe. Regardless, his portrayal of a city girl on the edge, and of her eventual destruction, is iconographic and, if it did not create Taylor and Monroe, it certainly influenced writers from Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany's) to Jay McInerney (Story of My Life).

I wouldn't recommend trying to tackle his entire ouvure in one fell swoop, but you should definitely try out this one, Appointment in Samarra, From the Terrace and some of the stories. For my money, the incisive savagery with which he lays bare his generation should rank him with F. Scott Fitzgerald.

GRADE: B+

I have enjoyed O'Hara in the past and I had always wanted to read this book. When I saw that Fran Leibowitz wrote the introduction, I thought "it's time."
O'Hara sets the book in the early 1930's in New York City. He focuses his sharp powers of observation on the "speakeasy" class of New York: those individuals with still enough wealth to spend time in illegal bars drinking their worries away. At first, you think "ah, these are the beautiful people." Of course, soon you realize that these individuals are anything but beautiful.
The heroine, or anti-heroine, Gloria, is a beautiful, young woman of loose morals and some inherited wealth. She is smart-we're told she could have gone to Smith-and underneath everything, kind. But sexual abuse early on triggered a rampant promiscuity.
O'Hara specializes in delineating the subtle class differences-the Catholics who went to Yale as opposed to the Wasps-that existed at this time. He structures class systems in his novels as rigidly as any Brahmin.
I would recommend this book for individuals who enjoy contemporary fiction, particularly books set in New York that depict wealthy, beautiful people. (If you like Fitzgerald, you'll like this book.) Both men and women can enjoy this book-as Fran Leibowitz says in her introduction, "it's a young man's book" in many ways.
I would not recommend this book for individuals who dislike "dated" fiction (though this book is surprising fresh in many ways) or books that verge on melodrama.
One note about the Leibowitz's introduction: I found it excellent. She has some acute observations-sex is an animal desire, the perception of it human and changing according to mores in vogue-that have stayed with me.