Second Hand

Love used bookstores.  So many authors from the recent past fall out of favor and just don’t make it on to my radar.  They’re not discussed much in the periodicals and blogs I read, and their books aren’t available in the usual bookstores. Often it’s the generation or two before the current one that is most ignored.  Those writers seem so old and passé, often trite, and why read what we’re so busy reacting against? But in used bookstores I often come across authors whose names I recognize, and I might know a little something of their reputation, but I've never read a word. 

John O'Hara 1905-1970

A recent find: a collection of 26 short stories, Assembly, by John O’Hara.  It was originally published in 1960.  About half of the stories had appeared in The New Yorker.  The others were new.  Over 200 of his stories were published in The New Yorker, starting in 1928.  That’s a remarkable achievement that may never be duplicated.  I didn’t start reading The New Yorker until the 70’s (O’Hara died in 1970), so I entirely missed his long run there.

Most striking to me is O’Hara’s incredibly sensitive ear for dialogue.  Many of the stories are just about all dialogue, almost screenplays in essence. It’s amazing how in what passes for a literal transcription of a conversation O’Hara can deliver so much information about character, social and economic status, and state of mind.  I’m not at all sure how he manages it.  Rereading some of the stories I realize that though the dialogue reads with a natural flow, it’s not actually very natural.  People really don’t talk like that (true also of many plays).  But nonetheless it seems absolutely true-to-life.  That takes talent and effort.

The stories that are more plot driven were for me less pleasing ('In a Grove', 'The Free').  My favorites are more static, a snapshot in time rendered through conversation.  'Call Me, Call Me' is just two conversations (hence the title), that’s all.  The similarities and differences between the two conversations are fascinating.

'Weakness' is a telling portrait of a boxer, and 'In The Silence' is a stunning depiction of veteran with what we would now call PTSD. 

Now that we’re so wrapped up in avoiding ‘realism’ with all kinds of literary devices, subterfuge, and yes sometimes gimmicks, it is instructive to read someone from a few generations ago how mastered an old-fashioned approach to realistic storytelling.  I’m reminded that it’s not in fact very realistic.  It’s perhaps just as artificial, just as carefully constructed and balanced and hence unnatural.  But it’s better at concealing the artifice, and quite a bit less self-conscious.  The writer isn’t calling attention to himself quite so directly, and he’s not trotting out techniques with the self-satisfied smile of a young magician that has just learned a new trick.  But it’s just as artful in a more modest, less obvious way.

True, today new and experimental non-mainstream fiction is much more accessible than 40 years ago.  But if reading eventually becomes all digital, what will become of the used bookstore?  With nothing new being printed, will the trickle-down process from new to used eventually dry up completely? How will we discover these worthy authors who just don’t get much exposure in today’s world?  I hope the work of writers like O’Hara will be somewhere for readers to stumble across. Fifty years from now the works of many of today’s hot young writers may well dwell in similar obscurity. Where will we find them?