The American novelist and short-story writer John O'Hara (1905-1970) had an extraordinary ability to reproduce the look and sound of contemporary America.

John O'Hara was born on Jan. 31, 1905, in Pottsville, Pa., the eldest of eight children. He was brought up as a Catholic. Expelled from Fordham Preparatory School and the Keystone State Normal School, he graduated, as class valedictorian, from the Niagara, N.Y., Preparatory School in 1924, but his father's death prevented his entering college.

For the next 10 years O'Hara worked as ship steward, railroad freight clerk, gas meter reader, amusement park guard, soda jerk, and press agent but, more importantly, as a journalist, first in Pottsville and then in New York City. He also wrote magazine pieces for Time and the New Yorker and worked briefly as a literary secretary and as a press agent.

Appointment in Samarra (1934), O'Hara's first and best novel, is the tragedy of...