The art of burning bridges

"An enigma of twentieth-century literature - a writer accorded great importance in his time, if less than in his own mind - is here explored by one of our most versatile men of letters, a novelist and biographer ideally suited to the strange case of John O'Hara. What Geoffrey Wolff reveals is not only the hugely complicated man in full but also his rightful place in our contemporary attention - a portrait of the artist that illuminates both the process of fiction and an era still vivid in our cultural history."--Jacket.