John O'Hara and the Nobel Prize

I remember reading and liking O'Hara, but I forget the exact books.

O'Hara was and is one of those authors I love reading. Discovered him on a bookshelf in my grandmother's apartment when in my teens and still keep a few of his books on my shelves.

As far as the whys, who really knows? The prize committee sometimes has made choices that seem to make no sense to anyone and the same could he said for those authors who've been overlooked.

They only pick one each year. It's not like the rock and roll hall of fame.

The master list of past winners.

How many of these authors have you sampled?

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/

Just scrolled through. I've read / sampled 38 or 39 of the Laureates ' works.

My favourite goes back to the 1928 Laureate, Sigrid Undset, with Toni Morrison a very close second for me.

There were several years with no award and a couple of years where there were 2 awards.


(I don't think I'd ever heard of any of the winners from before 1920)

I have not read so many of them. I quit school turning sixteen and followed my own nose in reading. Sound and the Fury I had a copy but never completely read it. I did read four other Faulkner books, though, so I don't feel deprived.

I recently bought a used copy of "The O'Hara Concern" by Mattheu J. Bruccoli, on Amazon. This book, like so many other books today, is a library discard, having originated from California State College, Sonoma Library.
This book, even has a little card in it's front , inner cover, showing some of the dates the book was checked out.

In some ways, it's nice to remember the "old" days before the computer, when people checked out library books, and library cards and library books were each rewarded with a little stamp.

Just took a look and I have seven of O´Hara´s books. I enjoyed them very much, but it is years since I read them. Should maybe reread them.
I have read the majority of the Nobel Prize winners. Many of them belong to the classics one had to read in school, others any the slightest educated person would have read.
And of course as a Swede we followed the discussions we great interest.
There has been a few one simply could not understand why they got the prize.

As I recall,several of his novels were made into movies, that were very popular.

I've read several of the authors listed and a few of their noted works which got them to prize status, going back to Henryk Sienkiewicz (1905 winner) who gave us Quo Vadis (although I believe my copy may have been translated since I never learned Polish).

Then there was Kipling (1907)
Knut Pedersen Hamsun (1920), and I read his Growth of the Soil (also translated as I don't know Norwegian).
...and so on down the line.