BUtterfield 8 - (Penguin Classics) by John O'Hara (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The bestselling novel that became an Oscar-winning film starring Elizabeth Taylor about New York's speakeasy generation

A masterpiece of American fiction and a bestseller upon its publication in 1935, BUtterfield 8 lays bare with brash honesty the unspoken and often shocking truths that lurked beneath the surface of a society still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. One Sunday morning, Gloria wakes up in a stranger's apartment with nothing but a torn evening dress, stockings, and panties. When she steals a fur coat from the wardrobe to wear home, she unleashes a series of events that can only end in tragedy. Inspired by true events, this novel caused a sensation on its publication for its frank depiction of the relationship between a wild and beautiful young woman and a respectable, married man.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Review Quotes

"A man who knows exactly what he is writing about and has written it marvelously well." --Ernest Hemingway

"Like Henry James, O'Hara could create a world where class and social structures are all-important but not openly discussed." --The Village Voice

"O'Hara understood better than any other American writer how class can both reveal and shape character.... [His] genius was in his unerring precision in capturing the speech and the milieus of his characters, whether the setting was Pennsylvania, Hollywood, or New York." --Fran Lebowitz

"O'Hara occupies a unique position in our contemporary literature... He is the only American writer to whom America presents itself as a social scene in the way it once presented itself to Henry James, or France to Proust." --Lionel Trilling, The New York Times

"An author I love is John O'Hara. . . . I think he's been forgotten by time, but for dialogue lovers, he's a goldmine of inspiration." --Douglas Coupland, Shelf Awareness

"One of the great novels of New York in the Depression . . . [O'Hara's] novels of the mid-thirties are his classics, and they deserve to be much more famous than they are." --Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review, from the Introduction

About the Author

John O'Hara (1905-1970) (1905-1970) was one of the most prominent American writers of the twentieth century. Championed by Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Dorothy Parker, he wrote seventeen novels, including Appointment in Samarra, his first; BUtterfield 8, which was made into a film starring Elizabeth Taylor; Pal Joey, which was adapted into a Broadway musical as well as a film starring Frank Sinatra; and Ten North Frederick, which won the National Book Award. He has had more stories published in The New Yorker than anyone else in the history of the magazine. Born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, he lived for many years in New York and in Princeton, New Jersey, where he died.