BUtterfield 8 (novel)

The novel explores the life of Gloria Wandrous, a young woman having an affair with Weston Liggett, an older, married businessman. Set in New York circa 1931, it fills in her family background and sexual history, and it locates her within a circle of friends, their relationships, and economic struggles, providing a closely observed tour of "the sordid and sensational lives of people on the fringe of café society and the underworld".{{cite book | title = The Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature| access-date = March 30, 2019 | first = James D. | last = Hart | page=[https://archive.org/details/conciseoxfordcom00hart/page/295 295]| url = https://archive.org/details/conciseoxfordcom00hart | url-access = registration| date= 1986| publisher =Oxford University Press }} The minor character of Jimmy Malloy, a junior newspaper reporter, serves as O'Hara’s alter ego; he has the style of a Yale University graduate but not the means.

The title of the novel derives from the pattern of telephone exchange names in the United States and Canada. Until the early 1970s, telephone exchanges were indicated by two letters and commonly referred to by names instead of by numbers, with the BU represented on the telephone dial as "28," followed by four digits. In December 1930, an additional digit was appended to the exchange name. BUtterfield was an exchange that provided service to Manhattan's well-to-do Upper East Side, and BUtterfield 8 was still new when the novel was published.

Clifton Fadiman's review in The New Yorker was titled "Disappointment in O'Hara", and Heywood Broun said O'Hara's characters all spoke with the same voice. Ernest Hemingway supplied the publisher with a blurb: "John O'Hara writes better all the time."

The New York Times said it provided "the ultra-ultra in fictional depiction of the willful degradation of sex".{{cite news | work=New York Times | access-date = March 29, 2019 | url = https://www.nytimes.com/1935/10/17/archives/books-of-the-times.html | date= October 17, 1935 | title = Books of the Times | first= John | last = Chamberlain}}

The novel was adapted for a film of the same name that was released in 1960.{{cite news |access-date = March 29, 2019 | work = New York Times | first=Bosley | last= Crowther |url = https://www.nytimes.com/1960/11/17/archives/the-screen-elizabeth-taylor-at-butterfield-8film-based-on-ohara.html| title = Elizabeth Taylor at 'Butterfield 8':Film Based on O'Hara Novel in Premiere|date= November 17, 1960}} It starred Elizabeth Taylor, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Gloria Wandrous. O'Hara did not participate in writing the adaptation, and publicity for the film did not mention his name.

With the release of the movie, more than 1 million paperback copies of the novel were sold. In a review of the movie, the Harvard Crimson described BUtterfield 8 "one of O'Hara's few good novels" and "one of the truly great chronicles of the 1930s".{{cite news | work= Harvard Crimson | access-date = March 29, 2019 |first=Michael S. | last = Lottman | url = https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1960/11/30/butterfield-8-pthe-movie-industry-seems/ | date = November 30, 1960 | title = Butterfield 8}}

In 1960, at the time of the movie and paperback edition, O'Hara described his ambition in writing this novel: "I was determined to make plain what I had seen." He claimed to have suppressed the more shocking details of the story and enjoyed that it was nevertheless "a shocker to the literary cocktail party set". He wrote:{{cite book | pages=123–5, 285 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=UyS4B9Ffn4AC&pg=PA125 | access-date = March 29, 2019 | date= 1975| publisher = University of Pittsburgh Press | first = Matthew J. | last = Bruccoli | title = The O'Hara Concern: A Biography of John O'Hara|isbn = 9780822974710}}

{{Blockquote|The novel is not remarkable for the differences so much as for the similarities to 1930 in 1960.... I am inclined to believe that my novels may all be as reliable as the work of the formal historians of our time.}}

O'Hara donated the typescript of the novel to Yale, and complained when an article in the Yale Alumni Magazine about the school’s holdings in American literature omitted mention of him.{{cite book |pages= 188, 201 | first =Pamela Carol | last = MacArthur| publisher = Peter Lang | title =The Genteel John O'Hara | year =2009 | isbn =9783039105151 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=XYyJGB_5AV8C&pg=PA188}}

When Random House republished the novel in 1995, Margo Jefferson criticized its prose but wrote that O'Hara was

"full of passion and honest spleen, driven to show why we live and act the way we do. And how he understands class structure, American-style! The comedy of it and the meanness, the social climbing and the downward plunges, the tricky business of balancing your ethnic debits against your physical or financial assets."{{cite news | work= New York Times | access-date=March 29, 2019 | url = https://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/18/books/books-of-the-times-reissues-of-2-novels-by-o-hara.html |title=Reissues Of 2 Novels By O'Hara| first = Margo | last = Jefferson | date= January 18, 1995}}

In 2013, writing in The New Yorker, Lorin Stein called BUtterfield 8 "one of the great novels of New York in the Depression". He noted that the novel remains fresh in presenting a wide range of sexual behaviors from the point of view of a woman and also allowing her an intense friendship–love on his part–with a male peer, commercial illustrator Eddie Brunner.{{cite news | access-date = March 29, 2019 | work=The New Yorker | url = https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/he-told-the-truth-about-his-time | first = Lorin | last = Stein | title = He Told the Truth about his Time}}

BUtterfield 8 was one of four O'Hara novels included in a collection published by the Library of America in 2019.{{cite press release | access-date = March 29, 2019 | title = Forthcoming from Library of America: Spring 2019| website = Library of America | date= June 13, 2018 | url = https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1422-forthcoming-from-library-of-america-spring-2019}}{{cite news | work = Wall Street Journal | access-date = March 29, 2019 | title = 'John O'Hara: Four Novels of the 1930s' Review: Big Fish in Small Towns |date= January 3, 2019 | url = https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-ohara-four-novels-of-the-1930s-review-big-fish-in-small-towns-11546567502 |first= Jamie | last = James}}

{{Reflist}}

;Additional sources

• {{cite book | title = Critical Essays on John O'Hara| first = Philip B.|last= Eppard| publisher = G.K. Hall |date= 1994}}
• {{cite book| title = The Art of Burning Bridges: A Life of John O'Hara | url = https://archive.org/details/artofburningbrid00wolf | url-access = registration | first = Geoffrey | last = Wolff | date=2003 | publisher = Knopf}}

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Category:1935 American novels

Category:Novels by John O'Hara

Category:Novels about suicide

Category:American novels adapted into films

Category:Novels set in New York City

Category:Roman à clef novels