Speakeasy Era

BUTTERFIELD 8--John O'Hara--Harcourt, Brace ($2.50).

The generation that stumbled into a slightly intoxicated maturity in the early 1920's found in F. Scott Fitzgerald a spokesman who dramatized their emotional problems, made articulate their aspirations, and told some excellent stories while doing so. Last week the publication of John O'Hara's second novel made him the strongest candidate among U. S. novelists for the part that Fitzgerald has vacated by growing out of the ranks of the young. A more impressive and ambitious volume than Appointment in Samarra, his first novel, Butter field 8 suggests that John O'Hara is well on his way to becoming the voice of the hangover generation that awakened in the grey dawn of 1930. Writing principally of speakeasy, country-club, fairly well-to-do crowds similar to those Fitzgerald wrote about, he presents them as much less tender, much more bitter, much more worried about money, casually frank in their acceptance of the more brutal realities of sexual experiences. And their stories he finds, almost without exception, grim.

In the years between 1927 and 1930, "when the world saw some pretty heavy drinking," Gloria Wandrous became one of the world's heaviest drinkers, inhabiting the tough and fancy speakeasies of Manhattan, where she awed bartenders by the amount she drank. Despairing, weary, intuitive, this 22-year-old girl went on sprees when she "drank rye and water all day long. When she remembered that she had not eaten for 24 hours she would go to a place where the eggs were to be trusted, order a raw egg, break it in an Old Fashioned cocktail tumbler, shoot Angostura bitters into it, and gulp the result." Because she was lovely, and because she had a tormented understanding of the troubles of others, Gloria could live that life without losing an appealing quality that won people to her. The secret of her sins and her despair lay hidden in experiences in her childhood and girlhood, when men old enough to be her father had corrupted her.

The stable relationship in Gloria's life was her friendship with Eddie Brunner. The relationship that finally destroyed her was her love for Weston Liggett, who met her in a speakeasy, became involved with her after Gloria had stolen his wife's mink coat. Eddie was tall, searching, goodhearted, a Stanford graduate who had become well-known as an illustrator in college, then starved in New York. Gloria turned to him when she was in trouble, which was most of the time, lied to him about her dissipations, confided in him, but Eddie, unlike a great many others, had never been her lover. To Weston Liggett. branch manager of a tool manufacturing company, father of two daughters and husband of an unloved Boston girl. Gloria was one of a succession of casual and some-times painful affairs. Increasingly attracted to her. he never understood her, was shocked at her theft. When (hey quarreled about it in a speakeasy Weston got into a fight, was badly beaten up, stumbled home to disgrace his wife. Arrangements were under way for a divorce when he hunted for Gloria, found her at last on a dingy Boston boat, in time to quarrel with her again and witness the accident that ended her intense life. Then he sneaked away to avoid scandal.

The theme that saves Butterfidd 8 from being a squalid tale is the healthy, unfulfilled companionship of Gloria and Eddie, paralleling the turbulent, often miserable story of Gloria and the older man. Plain hostility to the older generation is apparent in John O'Hara's portraits of men over 40, since he paints them as depraved, smug, or made cowardly by the fear of publicity, writes unconvincingly of Gloria's family life. Gloria and Eddie, rattling off interrupted reminiscences of childhood, wisecracking and communicating in scrambled, mocking cliches, understand one an-other so completely that, John O'Hara insinuates, only Eddie might have saved her. And this Eddie could not do. The high point of Butterfidd 8 is their tragic, humiliating, unsuccessful attempt to give their companionship an emotional substance, when Gloria realizes that she loves him. It is typical of John O'Hara's humor, as well as a sign of his understanding of his people, that in the depths of his pity and distress Eddie can only murmur nonsensically, "The melancholy Dane has come, the saddest of the year."

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