Already a frequent contributor of well-crafted stories to The New Yorker when he turned to the larger canvas of the novel, John O'Hara wrote with unusual acuity about the power of status and class in American life. His reputation as a novelist rests largely on four extraordinary books published from 1934 to 1940. These early novels, like those of his contemporaries Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, dramatize the longings and dashed hopes of a generation seduced and betrayed by the glittering temptations of the modern age.