The Dedication of John O'Hara

Abstract

THE RELICS OF A WRITER, his manuscripts, typescripts and memorabilia, have no life of their own, but they give life: they generate and resurrect. Too often they are abused, their products peddled to advance a thesis of no virtue, but this is the nature of things. Yet without them, properly handled, as they should be in an archive, there is no revelation: and not just for scholars either, less for them than for those who love O'Hara. Just a contemplation of them can bring some of him back to those who love and have some inkling of the concern and the care he had for his craft and his creation. He was a concerned man; he had a conscience. He sought and engaged the craft and sullen nature of his gift until it became as much a part of him as his fist. It became as much a part of him as his mind and body; it became his life. No photostat, microform, information retrieval can ever, will ever, replace the true relics, so that the place that holds them becomes for all who need or desire them a singular place, a side altar as well as a memorial. This is both meet and proper, for John O'Hara was a religious writer. He was not unique in this—all good writers are, one way or another—but he was one, especially; a moralist, in a Brooks Brothers shirt, in his bespoke shoes off Peal Brothers. Writing was his rod and his staff. To die in harness, shining in use, was his good luck that we must be thankful for. Requiescat in Pace, as he wrote of Philip Barry, another of them, in his dedication to him of The Farmers Hotel, a book that notched me. O'Hara knew what he was about. He was like one who keeps the deck by night, bearing the tiller up against his breast; he was like one whose soul was centred quite in holding course although so hardly pressed. And veers with veering shock now left now right,

Citation

Ready, W. (1971), "The Dedication of John O'Hara", Library Review, Vol. 23 No. 1/2, pp. 33-37. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb012557