This immensely powerful novel by one of the modern masters of fiction is the fascinating story of one man's life and times--America form the turn of the century to the 1950s. Alfred Eaton wanted the wealth, power, and beautiful women he believed to be his birthright. He got everything he thought he wanted--except the one thing that really mattered. Originally published in 1958.
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Chronicles one man's rise to wealth, power and prominence - and the sense of failure at his heart.
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Von Unique ViewPoint
Format:Taschenbuch
John O'Hara once said that one of his driving instincts in writing was to chronicle the first half of the 20th Century. A great deal of his large body of work does just this. "From the Terrace" is not only one of his best novels, but is sound history as well. We are introduced to poor Alfred Eaton who overcomes a bad childhood to become a success as an adult to become .... perhaps what he was meant to be all along. It's part Man in a Gray Flannel Suit and part Greek Tragedy. As to what it chronicles: the old boy WASP network of prep school / Harvard or Yale or Princeton / club life. One's early life provides networking forever for the fortunate upper class white male in that upper class. One sees how these same males get tapped during WW2 to fill the better positions opening up in Washington thanks to the war effort. O'Hara excells at the tiny details that expand in your mind to tell an entire story. His dialogue (particularly between men and women) sounds true. Given the time in which he wrote, O'Hara got away with a lot of explicit sex. The lead character commits adultery and is all the more happy for it. If you've seen the movie with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, you should know that the book ends does not end with Paul Newman walking down a Manhattan street happy to be able to marry his mistress. In the book, he marries a second time, his naval career ends, and he finds his life taking a new turn.
Von hardly_b
Format:Taschenbuch
It's a turgid, self-important piece of trash, but I found it impossible to put down. (I also felt vaguely bilious after reading it, rather like I had eaten too much cheap candy at one sitting). It's not nearly as entertaining as the movie, and it isn't even great trash (e.g., "David Copperfield"), but he knows how to spell and can describe things fairly well (unlike Steele and Balducci) and he can tell a story (unlike Harold Robbins) reasonably well. One thing that interests me about these "organization man" novels of the 50's is how alike they are in "texture" (or something), even when they are about very different things. For example, there is something about "Cash McCall", "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit", and this book that seem quite similar, but the plot summaries of these books don't overlap at all. I think that it's a sort of existential nausea that permeates the pretentious popular writing of the time. (It doesn't get into the movies made from these books, though.)
Anyway, this book is about a guy who is so damaged by his childhood that he throws away his integrity to be a "success", and then throws that away, too. But since you don't like the guy, it doesn't bother you to watch him self-destruct. (Paul Newman plays an entirely different person in the movie, as you would guess.)
Von Ein Kunde
Format:Taschenbuch
Long before there was a Jackie Collins, a Harold Robbins, or any of the others, John O'Hara was proving, again and again, that the sins and secrets of the so-called "beautiful people" could be presented with style and subtlety. He proved this in "Butterfield 8" and "Ten North Frederick," but never better than in "From the Terrace." Alfred Eaton, his driving, driven anti-hero, ranks with his earlier Joey Evans in terms of being a rogue with style. You like and envy him while despising everything he stands for. More than anything, though, you pity him. You realise, long before he himself does, that what's driving him is his desire to outshine his domineering father and over-achieving older brother, dead of meningitis at age eleven. Alfred Eaton is a rogue, but one with a conscience, something he doesn't realise ultil it's almost too late. A stunning character study and a stunning book, which, some 41 years after it was written, still packs a wallop.
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