Books: Scheherazade's Thousandth

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Story & Sex. It is not hard to see why these novels were underrated. They were bestsellers, full of story and sex and the unfolding of generations; it was assumed that they must be ladies' fiction. Their author dealt with surfaces, with qualities of speech, cuts of coat, school and club allegiances. He refused to psychologize. The easy conclusion was that his work must be shallow. The fact that some of it was shallow eased critical consciences; O'Hara could be passed off as a hack with a good ear and an electric typewriter.

But what O'Hara is trying is not easy but enormously difficult. It is to define a society by a skilled charting of its surfaces. But such surfaces, stretched across the vast unsupported span of a novel, run the risk of a complete collapse. O'Hara's successes outnumber and outweigh his collapses. His pugnacious preface, the reader hopes, may be read as a pledge that he will continue to take his high risks.