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- Butterfield 8
-
-
- (October 21, 1935)
-
- The generation that stumbled into a slightly intoxicated
- maturity in the 1920's found in F. Scott Fitzgerald a spokesman
- who dramatized their emotional problems, made articulate their
- aspirations, and told some excellent stories while doing so.
- Last week the publication of John O'Hara's second novel made him
- the strongest candidate among U.S. novelists for the part that
- Fitzgerald has vacated by growing out of the ranks of the young.
- A more impressive ambitions volume than Appointment in Samarra,
- his first novel, Butterfield 8 suggest that John O'Hara is well
- on his way to becoming the voice of the hangover generation that
- awakened in the gray down of 1930. Writing principally of
- speakeasy, country-club, fairly well-to-do crowds similar to
- those Fitzgerald wrote about, he presents them as much less
- tender, much more bitter, much more worried about money,
- casualty frank in their acceptance of the more burial realities
- of sexual experiences. And their stories be finds, almost
- without exception, grim.
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-