Appointment in Samarra: A Novel | John O'Hara | Make an appointment to read "Appointment in...

Appointment in Samarra: A Novel | John O'Hara | O'hara's Knockout Punch

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	Appointment in Samarra: A Novel John O'Hara Vintage, 2003 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 57 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A twentieth-century classic, Appointment in Samarra is the first and most widely read book by the writer Fran Leibowitz called ?the real F. Scott Fitzgerald.?

In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville social circuit is electrified with parties and dances, where the music plays late into the night and the liquor flows freely. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English?the envy of friends and strangers alike. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction. Appointment in Samarra brilliantly captures the personal politics and easy bitterness of small-town life. It is John O?Hara?s crowning achievement, and a lasting testament to the keen social intelligence of a major American novelist.

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Make an appointment to read "Appointment in Samarra" - A true American Classic!

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." Thoreau

Truly one of my favorite 20th century American classics, I haven't been able to get this one out of my mind since finishing it two weeks ago. The above referenced quote by the great Thoreau pretty much sums up the whole book in one sentence. The plight of the novel's main protagonist - Julian English - is in many ways symbolic of the quandaries that most of the kings and queen's of the American scene find themselves ensnared in when they blindly sell their souls at a discount.

The story of Julian English is definitely not a singular one. He is a young man who seemingly has it all - a sexy, submissive Stepford spouse, a relatively successful business, the perfect home in the perfect neighborhood, good looks and charm, etc... He and his wife Caroline are adored by the town's elite almost as much as they are discreetly envied. However, what happens to a man when he finally wakes up one day only to learn that his life is one great big lie? What happens to that well-respected-man-about-town when he decides to finally stop playing the game?

O'Hara takes a Norman Rockwell painting and absolutely obliterates it. His main protagonist's world, like many people who seem to be blessed with it all, is in all actuality a very fragile, insipid one. Julian is an American man whose tank finally runs out of gas. And this time, no amount of booze, sex and money is sufficient enough to keep the engine running.

This 1934 classic is one hec of a read. Although it's a tragic tale, O'Hara's prose is loaded with wit, symbolism, and some very realistic dialogue throughout, making the story a relatively easy one to absorb, while never treading into any preachy or syrupy waters. This is a realistic, sober short story brilliantly told by an author who as Ernest Hemingway (you can definitely see Papa Ernie's influence throughout) once wrote "If you want to read a book by a man who knows exactly what he is writing about and has written it marvelously well, read "Appointment in Samarra" by John O'Hara." And I definitely will second that notion!

Enjoy!

P.S. Don't miss out on the great introduction by John Updike as well!

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O'hara's Knockout Punch

Talk about a hard hitting classic that lives up to its
reputation. O'hara's APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA is a slow
descent to and in hell for its protagonist, Julian English.
English's plunge is triggered by his realization that 1930
was not a year to be in heavy debt. But, the power of the
novel is seen in just how shallow and surface English and
his peers lives are. What they valued and the friendships
they kept were just empty in the boom days of the late 20s
as in the first year of the Depression. First-rate
to the end. Very powerful.

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1st Novel in a long time if evah

I don't recall the last time or if I've ever read a novel before, At the Age of 32, I saw my spiraling life in the characterization of Julian.But the culture in the 30s. OMG I always thought of it to be so uptight and conservative. One thing is how the Jewish people were infered in this book, as a culture we have come a long way, I don't know where we've gone, but we've gone a long way. Another was the attitudes instilled with marriage... it seemed a sort of stick by your man, if he's a cheating sonofabitch there could be worse, so stick it out... The next was the stag line, so they go to a dance, and there is a line of men, married/single that wait for a girl to dance or to cut in on someone. Nowadays in my imagination if you going to a dance or a club with a woman, that is the woman your with the whole night. Oh my has birth control changed the way families are peiced together. I tend to see why in many cases they slept in a separate bed most nights. We have a freedom that is off the hook in comparison. Maybe I missed the point, but three simple days Oh yeah, I could be 'there' in three days.

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Appointment in Samarra

This book is John O'Hara's critically-acclaimed novel about a young businessman's self-destruction. Set in a small town in Pennsylvania in 1930 during the Prohibition Era, the book covers 48 hours in the life of Julian English, an influential and attractive Cadillac dealer. From Christmas Eve through December 26th, Julian English and his wife, Caroline, go from one party to another. Julian drinks far too much at each social engagement, and his behavior goes from bad to worse.

The narrative is straightforward, starting off with a single impulsive drunken act which sets in motion a train of events culminating in the protagonist's ruin. O'Hara was a journalist before he tried his hand at fiction. O'Hara said that he was trying to accurately record an era in his novels. Indeed, his writing style in Appointment in Samarra is very nearly expository. However, the book is filled with subtleties. If one reads carefully, there are hints that English's downward spiral started years earlier. There are also implications that the destructive forces in English's life are manifold - that drunkenness is just the end stage. In one very brief passage, the book's traditional third person narration abruptly switches to the stream-of-consciousness of the protagonist's wife, which was a highpoint in the book for me. For a few pages, the reader is inside the head of the much-wronged and much-loved wife.

O'Hara is a master at character development - even the minor characters in this book are surprisingly complex and nuanced. O'Hara focuses intermittently on three very minor characters, serving both to counterpoint English's behavior and to give the barest hint of what is really going on with English. The book also has the best epigram I've seen in awhile. The epigram is Somerset Maugham's retelling of a middle eastern folktale about a man who has a chance encounter with Death in the marketplace. Death makes a threatening gesture at the man, who immediately asks his employer to loan him a horse so he can ride to Samarra in an effort to avoid Death. The employer later sees Death and asks why she threatened his servant. Death answers, "Oh, that wasn't a threat. That was just my surprise at seeing your servant still here. You see, I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."

The downside of this book is that the dialogue is dated. O'Hara used expressions that were current in 1930. For today's readers, the dialogue may seem almost caricatured. Similarly, O'Hara used a few racially-derogatory and ethnically-derogatory adjectives which will certainly offend the majority of today's readers. The dated and politically incorrect language earn this otherwise five-star book a four-star rating.

If you enjoy this book, I recommend the similarly-themed (but more intellectually-challenging) Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry.

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