E. L. Doctorow reads John O'Hara's short story "Graven Image" and discusses O'Hara with The New Yorker's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman.
This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from the New Yorker magazine.
I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker.
Every month we ask a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.
Today we'll hear a John O'Hara story from 1943 called Graven Image.
You keep track of things like that?
Certainly, said the under secretary.
I know every goddamn club in this country.
I had ample time to study them all.
Then you recall objectively from the outside.
Graven image was selected by El Dorado Doctorow, whose most recent book of fiction is the March.
It's a novel about Sherman's march through the south during the Civil War.
Doctorow has been publishing short stories in the New Yorker since 1997.
Edgar John O'Hara was very successful in his day, but he hasn't really become a household name like his contemporaries Fitzgerald, Hemingway or Faulkner.
Why do you think he's somewhat fallen out of the fact?
Sure, he had an interesting career.
He was well known as a short story writer and then drifted into writing of very popular, best selling novels.
I'm not sure they were his best work.
He seemed to shine in the short story form, the novella form.
It's always hard to tell why someone who apparently deserves rewards doesn't get them.
There was a gap of about eleven years from 1949 to 1960, when he didn't publish any stories in the magazine, although he published large numbers before and after.