''BUtterfield 8'' (1935) is a realist novel by

John O'Hara John Henry O'Hara (January 31, 1905 – April 11, 1970) was one of America's most prolific writers of short stories, credited with helping to invent ''The New Yorker'' magazine short story style.John O'Hara: Stories, Charles McGrath, ed., The L ...

. It is a

roman à clef ''Roman à clef'' (, anglicised as ), French for ''novel with a key'', is a novel about real-life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship ...

loosely based upon the life of socialite and flapper

Starr Faithfull Starr may refer to: People and fictional characters * Starr (surname), a list of people and fictional characters * Starr (given name), a list of people and fictional characters Places United States * Starr, Ohio, an unincorporated commu ...

, whose unsolved death in 1931 became a tabloid sensation. Reviews were mixed but the novel was a best-seller. It was adapted for a 1960 movie of the same name, starring

Elizabeth Taylor Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. ...

and

Laurence Harvey Laurence Harvey (born Zvi Mosheh Skikne; 1 October 192825 November 1973) was a Lithuanian-born British actor and film director. He was born to Lithuanian Jewish parents and emigrated to South Africa at an early age, before later settling in th ...

. A paperback edition published at the same time sold more than one million copies. In 2019 it was one of four John O'Hara novels published in a collection by the

Library of America The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published over 300 volumes by authors rangi ...

Plot summary

The novel explores the life of Gloria Wandrous, a young woman having an affair with Weston Liggett, an older, married businessman. Set in New York circa 1931, it fills in her family background and sexual history, and it locates her within a circle of friends, their relationships, and economic struggles, providing a closely observed tour of "the sordid and sensational lives of people on the fringe of café society and the underworld". The minor character of Jimmy Malloy, a junior newspaper reporter, serves as O'Hara’s alter ego; he has the style of a

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

graduate but not the means. The title of the novel derives from the pattern of

telephone exchange names A telephone exchange name or central office name was a distinguishing and memorable name assigned to a central office. It identified the switching system to which a telephone was connected, and facilitated the connection of telephone calls betwee ...

in the United States and Canada. Until the early 1970s, telephone exchanges were indicated by two letters and commonly referred to by names instead of by numbers, with the BU represented on the telephone dial as "28," followed by four digits. In December 1930 an additional digit was appended to the exchange name. BUtterfield was an exchange that provided service to Manhattan's well-to-do

Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the wes ...

, and BUtterfield 8 was still new when the novel was published.

Reception

Clifton Fadiman Clifton Paul "Kip" Fadiman (May 15, 1904 – June 20, 1999) was an American intellectual, author, editor, radio and television personality. He began his work with the radio, and switched to television later in his career. Background Born in Bro ...

's review in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' was titled "Disappointment in O'Hara", and

Heywood Broun Heywood Campbell Broun Jr. (; December 7, 1888 – December 18, 1939) was an American journalist. He worked as a sportswriter, newspaper columnist, and editor in New York City. He founded the American Newspaper Guild, later known as The Newspaper ...

said O'Hara's characters all spoke with the same voice.

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...

supplied the publisher with a blurb: "John O'Hara writes better all the time." The ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' said it provided "the ultra-ultra in fictional depiction of the willful degradation of sex".

Adaptations

The novel was adapted for a film of the same name that was released in 1960. It starred

, who won the

Academy Award for Best Actress The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role in a film released that year. ...

for her portrayal of Gloria Wandrous. O'Hara did not participate in writing the adaptation, and publicity for the film did not mention his name. With the release of the movie, more than 1 million paperback copies of the novel were sold. In a review of the movie, the ''

Harvard Crimson The Harvard Crimson are the intercollegiate athletic teams of Harvard College. The school's teams compete in NCAA Division I. As of 2013, there were 42 Division I intercollegiate varsity sports teams for women and men at Harvard, more than at ...

'' described ''BUtterfield 8'' "one of O'Hara's few good novels" and "one of the truly great chronicles of the 1930s". In 1960, at the time of the movie and paperback edition, O'Hara described his ambition in writing this novel: "I was determined to make plain what I had seen." He claimed to have suppressed the more shocking details of the story and enjoyed that it was nevertheless "a shocker to the literary cocktail party set". He wrote: O'Hara donated the typescript of the novel to Yale, and complained when an article in the ''Yale Alumni Magazine'' about the school’s holdings in American literature omitted mention of him.

Later reviews

When

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

republished the novel in 1995,

Margo Jefferson Margo Lillian Jefferson (born October 17, 1947) is an American writer and academic. Biography Jefferson received her B.A. from Brandeis University, where she graduated ''cum laude'', and her M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of J ...

criticized its prose but wrote that O'Hara was

"full of passion and honest spleen, driven to show why we live and act the way we do. And how he understands class structure, American-style! The comedy of it and the meanness, the social climbing and the downward plunges, the tricky business of balancing your ethnic debits against your physical or financial assets."

In 2013, writing in ''

'',

Lorin Stein Lorin Hollister Stein (born April 22, 1973) is an American critic, editor, and translator. He was the editor in chief of ''The Paris Review''Dave Itzkoff (March 5, 2010)"Paris Review Names New Editor" ArtsBeat, ''The New York Times''. but resign ...

called ''BUtterfield 8'' "one of the great novels of New York in the Depression". He noted that the novel remains fresh in presenting a wide range of sexual behaviors from the point of view of a woman and also allowing her an intense friendship–love on his part–with a male peer, commercial illustrator Eddie Brunner.

Legacy and honors

''BUtterfield 8'' was one of four O'Hara novels included in a collection published by the

in 2019.

References

;Additional sources * * 1935 American novels Novels by John O'Hara Fiction about suicide American novels adapted into films Novels set in New York City Roman à clef novels {{1930s-novel-stub