Customer Reviews

Appointment in Samarra: A Novel

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The title comes from a tale attributed to Somerset Maugham (reprinted just in front of the first page of my edition). As story goes, the servant of a merchant in Baghdad sees Death in the marketplace, is sure she's coming for him, and asks permission to go hide from her in the town of Samarra. The merchant agrees, but then goes to the marketplace himself to have some words with Death about how she treated his servant. (I wish I had a boss like that!) Death denies having threatened the man, "I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."

From the very beginning, then, we know that the novel concerns someone with an inevitable appointment with Death which he/she cannot escape. Within a few pages, we even know who. Only the particulars remain - or so it would seem.

Julian English does make his appointment with Death, but the author deliberately destroys the impression of inevitability he spent most of the novel creating. Up to the very end, we believe that Julian's impulsive act of throwing a drink into the face of Harry Reilly, his most important creditor, sealed his fate. We, together with Julian, believe that his alienating Reilly leads inevitably to Julian's financial ruin, and, seeing no way out, Julian commits a series of ever more self-destructive acts culminating in his suicide.

And then we learn that Harry Reilly attached no significance to the thrown drink and that he liked Julian all along. Julian's death was not inevitable after all. Also, far from trying to flee his fate, Julian rushes headlong into it, leading one to conclude that Julian isn't the one with the appointment in Samarra after all.

At first that seems absurd - Julian is the central character of the novel, after all. But Julian isn't actually the center of the novel - the people of Gibbsville are. We learn all about the state of Gibbsville in 1930, meeting about fifty different characters from all walks of life - incredible in such a short (240 pages) novel. O'Hara's has no sympathy for the upper classes, and he depicts their society as decadent, corrupt and declining - people who try to pretend that nothing has happened despite the Crash of 1929 and the loss of the coal market, even as a new generation of entrepreneurs like Harry Reilly displaces them. They don't deserve the fine things they have, nor will they keep them much longer

O'Hara shows his real sympathies in the short segments about Luther L. Fleigler and his wife at the beginning and ending of the book. Luther works for Julian's Cadillac dealership, and just as his hard work contrasts with the sloth of the upper classes, so too his happy relationship with his wife contrasts starkly with Julian and Caroline's poisoned marriage. The future belongs to them.

Here is a story of social grace and disgrace in the tradition of Fitzgerald and Cheever. It takes place in a town called Gibbsville (actually O'Hara's hometown of Pottsville), located on the edge of the coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania, during the Christmas weekend of 1930.

Julian English, president of the local Cadillac dealership, and his wife Caroline are among the town's leading young socialites, with a large circle of influential and prosperous friends. During a fateful forty-eight hours over this festive weekend of excessive drinking, Julian makes three foolish mistakes which send him spiraling to his destruction. At a Christmas Eve party, he becomes irritated by the longwinded Harry Reilly and throws a drink in his face. The assembled throng is shocked; Reilly is not only one of the town's wealthiest citizens, but also happens to own Julian's dealership. The next night, at another party with his wife in attendance, Julian again causes a stir by making a move on the girlfriend of a local mobster. He makes his third mistake at lunch the next day when he gets into a fight with Caroline's cousin over the previous night's transgression. Combined with the stress of meeting his financial responsibilities at the dealership, he can feel the walls quickly closing in, and there is only one way out.

Julian is an overgrown frat boy. He has the best of everything in his life -- a beautiful wife, a good job, popularity, a good education -- but he is tragically compelled to do all the wrong things and burn his bridges, possibly due to an underlying sense of low self-esteem and shame. Reading this novel is like watching an impending car accident -- you can't resist observing the impact, even though you know it's going to be brutal.

Julian English is a synonym for self-destruct. Just as Scarlett O'Hara instantly brings to mind a well-defined personality, so does Julian. O'Hara (John, that is) is that good. His eye and ear for time and place are uncanny. I can see and hear the characters in their surroundings, like seeing a movie and reading a book at the same time.

"Appointment" is inevitable from the time Julian throws a drink in the face of the town's leading businessman. Its tone is elegiac as in a Greek tragedy. I always think of Caroline English as the Chorus. She sees the path Julian is on, but there is nothing she can do or say to change a step he takes. I don't think there is a word wasted in the entire novel.

O'Hara still has not been quite forgiven for being too successful in his own lifetime. His sin is that he is too readable, too good a storyteller and; therefore, his books sold like hotcakes. He had the temperament of a wounded grizzly bear which alienated almost every friend he had. I believe he will find his way back to his reader's affections; he writes too well to be ignored.

At the end of every year, Brian Lamb talks to three authors on a special Booknotes on C-SPAN. Last year one of the guests was Shelby Foote & he said that he was reading some great American authors who folks had sort of forgotten. One of them was John O'Hara. Now I've seen dozens of his books at book sales, so I knew two things: one, he sold a ton of books; two, folks aren't reading them anymore. So I picked up From the Terrace, Appointment in Samarra & a couple collections of the short stories & loved them all. It was very heartening to see that he made this list (Modern Library Top 100).

Appointment tells the story of Julian English, a WASP nervously perched atop the social heap in Gibbsville, PA. At a Christmas party in 1930, he throws a drink in the face of the town's leading Catholic businessman and thus begins his downward spiral.

O'Hara etches very sharp portraits of characters from the varying strata of society & presents a vivid tale of an America & it's establishment shaken by the oncoming Depression and the rise of new Ethnic groups.

GRADE: A

O'Hara's distinctive literary voice is both unique and disarming. For the first hundred pages I was unsure that O'Hara was even a competent writer, nevermind author of one of the century's great novels. His narrative technique and dialogue both are steeped in the jargon of his heyday, Prohibition Era, small town America. But O'Hara deals with big themes and the idiom of his day becomes secondary. He seems to want to take on big questions: why is the month so driven to the flame? Why do we so willingly capitulate to baser instincts? Why can't we be satisfied, even happy with what we have? Why are we so often driven for more? More of what? At what price? Why are human beings insatiable? Julian English is an affluent man in his early thirties with a going business, a beautiful wife, Caroline, and social status in Gibbsville, a small town north and west of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. His alcoholic habits drive him to dismantle every important social relationship in his life until he becomes essentially a social misfit, incapable of decent behavior among his family, friends, peers and colleagues. He seems determined to keep an appointment with death and has a death wish entombed in his heart. O'Hara's brief experimental flights with stream of consciousness propel us into the inner depths of his characters where we can feel their agony. His treatment of big themes with such a natural voice sets O'Hara apart. Be sure to experience this one of a kind American literary voice.

"Esquire Magazine" founder Arnold Gingrich said that the only reason Hemingway praised this is because it is such a copy-cat of Hemingway's style, calling "Samarra" weak. O'Hara famously called Hemingway the greatest writer since Shakespeare. But O'Hara once said he never read Tolstoy. How can you call a writer the greatest since Shakespeare when you've never read Tolstoy? O'Hara mainly read Fitzgerald and Hemingway over and over, and I think his work suffers for his not have read more broadly. "Appointment in Samara" is very good at contrasting status--something O'Hara was obsessed with--in an American town. But I find O'Hara's dialogue--that he gets so much praise for--dated. Whereas Hemingway's dialogue in "The Sun Also Rises"--written BEFORE "Samarra"--does not look dated at all now. O'Hara famously wrote his fiction quickly. It has that feel to it in spots. In the 90's there was an attempt at an O'Hara revival. Well, that revival fell flat. I can see why it did fall flat. He wasn't that terrific a writer. But, this book is pretty good. (I don't understand the last passage of this book, that conversation. Who are those people talking, and what's the point of it?)

Right from the start, I could tell that this would be an enjoyable and insightful book. Written in a down to earth style, the reader is given an intimate view of the main charaters Caroline and Julian English and are allowed into their WASPish country club molded mindset. The charater sketches are well done, and the reader gets to feel that he is thouroughly familiar with each of the main characters. A little short considering the amount of time spent on sketching separate bibliographies, but generally well done

Appointment in Samarra is one of the most brilliant and underated novels in American Lit. This book is Heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time. O'Haras later work is spotty but this novel belongs with the classics of the era. I could not put it down and I kept thinking of Gatsby as I read this book. O'Haras short stories in his prime also bear an eerie kinship to Fitzgerald but without the idealized romantic voice.

This is the story of two big fish in a tiny pond. The big fish are Julian English and his wife Caroline, leaders of the country-club set in Prohibition-era Gibbsville, Pennsylvania. Julian is a Cadillac dealer, making Appointment an odd prefiguration of Updike's Rabbit series. O'Hara shocks his 1934 readership with his frank treatment of sex. A modern reader is more likely to be impressed by how little has changed in relations among couples, in adults searching for meaning in their lives, and in the suffocating smallness of small towns.

I was not disappointed with this novel, but I do not think it belongs on the best novels of the century list. While much of this book is excellent, its flaws are jarringly obvious. There are plot holes galore, characters who inexplicably appear and then are never heard from again, and so much detail that it just boggles the mind. I suspect that when O'Hara sat down to write this book, he just started typing whatever came to his mind, and without consideration for structure, grammar, or punctuation. After he was finished, he sent it off to his publisher and no one, including O'Hara, knew how to edit it. I've read several of his short stories and they suffered from these same flaws. He is, however, a matchless winner when it comes to writing dialogue; all of his characters are distinctly real in the way they talk. Alas, sometimes, I wonder what ever happened to John O'Hara; he was one of the literary lights of the first half of this century, but he is largely forgotten today.