John O'Hara, Sermons and Soda-Water

Steven Goldleaf (Pace University)
Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Tweet Report an Error

The narrator of all three intertwined novellas in this collection is a middle-aged writer named James Malloy, who narrates much of John O'Hara's most intensely personal fiction and who is plainly O'Hara's fictional alter-ego. Originally appearing in “The Doctor's Son”, an all-but-explicitly autobiographical short story written in the early 1930s, Malloy recurred in O'Hara's first three novels as a minor character, a major character, or as the narrator, but disappeared entirely from O'Hara's work for over a decade beginning in 1949, when he broke with the New Yorker magazine, his main publishing market, over a lukewarm review of a novel. Throughout the 1950s, O'Hara, whose reputation as the inventor of the archetypal

1355 words

Citation: Goldleaf, Steven. "Sermons and Soda-Water". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 November 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2135, accessed 29 March 2024.]

2135 Sermons and Soda-Water 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.