Appreciation …

… Doctor’s Son. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

O’Hara’s personality was almost comically Irish. Like his father, he was touchy about his ethnic background even as he sometimes seemed eager to embody its worst stereotypes. Even his eventual break with the New Yorker, the magazine that published much of his best work, seems traceable to the early loss of his father, the bad temper and sense of perpetual grievance mingled with an underlying sensitivity. No matter how much success he had—owning Rolls-Royces, winning a National Book Award, and cultivating celebrated friends—he was haunted by a shadow life he could never achieve: Yale; gentlemen’s clubs; the Social Register. Those grievances gave him the energy and drive to achieve but not the equanimity to enjoy his achievements. Poor John indeed.