Gibbsville, Pa: The Classic Stories [Hardcover]

John O'Hara (Author), Matthew Joseph Bruccoli (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1992

The author of Butterfield Eight faithfully and sympathetically portrays the people--miners, shopkeepers, bartenders, collegians, and country club members--of the coal region of his hometown in the five novels and more than fifty short stories collected here.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Like Thomas Hardy, who created his fictional Wessex out of his native Dorset, and William Faulkner, who used Lafayette County, Mississippi, as the basis for his imaginary Yoknapatawpha County, O'Hara transformed his hometown of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, and its surrounding anthracite coal region into one of literature's great fictional landscapes. Setting five novels and more than 50 stories in what he called his "Pennsylvania Protectorate," O'Hara recorded with great honesty the lives of Gibbsville's inhabitants--from Polish coal miners and Irish Catholic shopkeepers to the Protestant country club set. Editor Bruccoli, who championed O'Hara as one of America's great short writers in his biography The O'Hara Concern ( LJ 9/15/75), has gathered into one volume 55 Gibbsville stories written over a 30-year span. Included are some of O'Hara's most famous tales, including "The Doctor's Son," "Imagine Kissing Pete," and "The Bucket of Blood." Since many of these stories are drawn from previous collections, libraries already owning such anthologies as The Collected Stories of John O'Hara ( LJ 4/15/85) might want to consider this an optional purchase. Otherwise, this is an excellent introduction to a writer who has been unjustly ignored.
- Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 864 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub (November 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0881848999
• ISBN-13: 978-0881848991
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 2.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #826,635 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A glance backward through time, December 1, 2003

By 

John m Sugrue - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gibbsville, Pa: The Classic Stories (Hardcover)

John O'Hara has been and remains one of the great secret treasures of 20th Century American literature. Period. Any reader who would comment "to read one story is to have read them all" would no doubt say the same of Faulkner, Hemingway or Fitzgerald.

O'Hara captures not only the voice of rural Pennsylvania circa 1910, but indeed recreates an entire new world based on his experiences in this place and time. As one who has walked the streets of Pottsville, Shamokin and Tamaqua I can assure you that echoes of O'Hara's Gibbsville still resinate throughout the region.

Discover O'Hara for yourself.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quite a Collection!, February 28, 2009

By 

Weesel "TJ" (Balmer, MD) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Gibbsville, PA: The Classic Stories (Paperback)

I am from O'Hara's Collieryville and can recall English / Literature teachers in high school saying: There's not a John O'Hara among the lot of you!

Well, who was/is John O'Hara, why should I care, and if he's so great why aren't we reading his stuff in class? All good questions with very good answers when you get into this collection which contains some first-class 'adult' themes which clearly kept John out of the school library!

This is a collection of short stories. One of my favorite genres. Sometimes the story is so short it can end in 17 or even fewer pages and be finished like the slam of a door or leave you wandering down your own 'what if' trails. Continuing some of these to 200+ would be a disservice to storyline and reader alike.

This collection is a great look at the Schuylkill County coal region during the period my grandparents grew up in and during the younger days of my parents. The argot is spot on if yiz know wut I mean.

The chararcters are human. Perhaps too human at times. The era is just after the Great War and into the Great Depression. It opens with a longish story set during the time of the Spanish Flu pandemic and is just too real at times. I can actually visualize many of the roads travelled, literally, and see the locales under discussion even if many of them were mostly ruins when I was younger. This helps bring alive the stories from many relatives as to what a 'swell place' this used to be to hang out.

I'm hooked. I'm looking for more O'Hara and plan to start on this guy called Updike. I advise you to join the reading party if you like true realism in literature from that period. It's better than F. Scott Fitzgerald IMO.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Paperback trims third from hardcover collection, December 6, 2004

By 

sorry bummerlin (North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gibbsville, PA: The Classic Stories (Paperback)

Great collection -- a seamier Fitzgerald. If it's available used, consider the out-of-print 834 pg. hardcover, compiling more than 50 stories, instead of this 40-story, 500-page edition.