Down the Road from Gibbsville
A Family Party. By John O'Hara. (Cresset Press, 8s. 6d.)
THIS novelette is in the form of an address delivered by a small-town bigwig at a dinner given in honour of a prominent local physician. We hear how Doc Sam Merritt saved many a life on the night of the Short Mountain train-wreck, how he became a doctor, how he used to go out shooting, how he collected a lot of money towards the build- ing of a hospital right here in Lyons (Penn.) and took it like the man he was when the hospital had to be at Johnsville (Penn.) instead, how his wife went round the bend—a rather deft manoeuvre, I should say, on the part of one married to some- body as relentlessly large hearted and self-sacrific- ing and community-serving as Doc Sam Merritt. Short as it is in book form, the speech would have lasted a good hour, plus time for the speaker to indulge in solo fits of laughter, panoramic glances round the room and elaborately pantomimed water-sipping : he is clearly that sort of speaker.
hope we are to imagine the waiters as having left full bottles of brandy and liqueurs on the tables.
In an earlier piece of Mr. O'Hara's, The Farmers Hotel, there were disquieting traces of sentimental optimism, of an all-good-pals-and- jolly-good-company view of human nature. This view has spread all over A Family Party. Every- body is a good chap, mostly in a bluff no-nonsense way—the chap responsible for getting the hos- pital project shifted to Johnsville isn't a good chap, but he only comes in to show what an extra good chap Sam Merritt is—and of course every local character is a hell of a character. It is hard t(, believe that the author of this stuff is also the author of Appointment in Samarra (whose
hero, Julian English, would have poured a glass of beer over dear old Doc Merritt every time he saw him) and Butterfield 8, those marvellous portrayals of fear, spite, lust and greed. Only thirty-five miles, we learn from A Family Party, separate Lyons from Gibbsville, where Julian English did his stuff; an easy run, and downhill
Previous page
