From the Terrace

From the Terrace by John O'Hara, 897 pages

Born to an alcoholic mother and a father who had spent all his love on a son who died too young, Raymond Alfred Eaton grew up in a cold home with a cold future - one day he would inherit the family steel mill and live out his days as the biggest fish in the small pond of Port Johnson, Pennsylvania.  The larger world beckoned, however, and after a spell at Princeton he chose instead to seek his fortune on Wall Street and to serve his country in Washington, DC.  Along the way he struggles to maintain his integrity and reputation in the boardroom, the war room, and the bedroom.  His failure is an American tragedy.

John O'Hara, once considered to be a major American writer - even a potential Nobel Prize winner - is mostly forgotten today.  A mere two years after its publication, From the Terrace was made into a "major motion picture" starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, but it is no better remembered than the novel.  If this is unjust, it is hardly surprising, as From the Terrace is today as redolent of its own moment in time as its descriptions of life in the first half of the twentieth century are reflective of those eras, particularly its prurient obsession with sex.  On the other hand, it is a remarkably complex page-turner.