Vintage O'Hara :: Random House UK

tomer :: writer John O'Hara was a keen observer of social status and class differences, and wrote frequently about the socially ambitious.

Appointment in Samarra - in December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville social circuit is electrified with parties and dances, where the music plays late into the night and the liquor flows freely. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English—the envy of friends and strangers alike. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.


the sentiment that lingered after reading the book is of someone being smothered to death by luxury and I wanted the composition to reflect that with a big oppressive shape closing in on a face.

BUtterfield 8- was inspired by a news account of the discovery of the body of a beautiful young woman washed up on a Long Island beach. Was it an accident, a murder, a suicide? The circumstances of her death were never resolved, but O’Hara seized upon the tragedy to imagine the woman’s down-and-out life in New York City in the early 1930s.


the sketch is from a specific scene in the book that seemed to summarize it all, the vulnerable human flesh, naked, under an oversized mink.

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