Appointment in Samarra

A sort of inverted The Scarlet Letter peopled by dreary snobs, John O'Hara's Appointment in Samarra is a decent – though limited – idea let down by the author's indulgence and ennui; a long-winded joke that I was tired of long before the punchline.

Set in Christmas 1930 amongst the well-to-do WASPs of a Pennsylvania milieu, O'Hara's novel begins with an epigraph quoting W. Somerset Maugham's 'Appointment in Samarra' fable, about a man who flees to the town of Samarra after seeing the Grim Reaper in a Baghdad marketplace. When questioned on this, the Grim Reaper expresses bemusement, because he had not expected to see him in Baghdad: they had an appointment in Samarra. O'Hara's novel is pretty much a mechanism reiterating this tale, show more but whereas Maugham told it succinctly and evocatively in a single paragraph, O'Hara drags it out to novel length and to lesser effect.

In O'Hara's version, a slight, vain, upper-class wet named Julian English has a moment of pique at a dinner party, and throws his drink in the face of one of his peers, Harry Reilly. Julian then suffers the banal fallout of this act – amounting to some mild and ineffectual disapproval from his social circle – but, tying himself in knots over this nonsense and fearing retaliation from the well-connected Harry, Julian begins a downward spiral. Fulfilling the twist of the 'Appointment in Samarra' fable, there's a rewarding moment of bathos at the end as it turns out a bemused Harry has not been plotting any revenge at all, and still thinks relatively highly of Julian – on the rare occasions he thinks of him at all.

It's a cute idea, but O'Hara is painfully serious about the whole thing. If you read a biography of the author, he comes across as an inveterate and insufferable snob, and this also comes across in Appointment in Samarra. The depiction of Julian's social scene – with the town of Gibbsville being a fictional carbon-copy of the town O'Hara himself was raised in – would only really be tolerable if there was an element of satire to it, whether black or comic, but there is none. Instead, there is an indulgent morass of WASP frippery, some inconsequential writerly tangents that any merciful editor would have excised, and scarce few characters who transcend the cardboard cutouts O'Hara has designated for them. The book is quite well-written but the indulgence spoils it, and the ending is anti-climactic. Appointment in Samarra might be respectable enough, but it is disappointing and doesn't reward the amount of effort one must put into it. A largely shallow tale about some shallow people. show less

Julian English seems to have everything: a gorgeous (and smart) wife, a good job, wealth and glamour. But his actions at a party one night cause his near-perfect life to begin unraveling, and readers soon see that his reality is quite far from perfect.

O'Hara was a contemporary of and often compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and truthfully I was often comparing this story in my head with The Great Gatsby. Oddly enough, I may even have liked it better. Maybe because their glitzy country club life was a little more small-town than New York, maybe because I felt like the characters had foibles that I could forgive a little more than Gatsby's. Certainly no one is on a pedestal in this story, which is introduced by the short story "Appointment show more in Samarra" by W. Somerset Maugham and addresses the inevitability of fate. Though the essential action takes place over three days of Christmas 1930, many times we get a glimpse of past events in several characters' lives, helping us see how everything came together in just this way. I didn't always like what happened but couldn't imagine things ending up any other way, and that's about the highest compliment I can give a writer. show less

Most people will be familiar with the parable that the title alludes to, in which a man, encountering death in a Baghdad bazaar, immediately flees to the distant city of Samarra in hopes of eluding his fate ... only to find death waiting for him there, explaining: "I, too, was surprised to encounter you at the market, as our appointment was always in Samarra." The idea being that there's no escaping fate once it has you in its sites.

This is certainly the plight of Julian English, the protagonist of this tale of upper middle class WASPS in 1930s Gibbsville, Illinois. Julian's the owner of a prosperous Cadillac dealership, husband to a wife who genuinely loves him (in her whiny 1930s way), with a social life that revolves around the local show more country club and its WASPy members. But in the course of an eventful two days, fate relentlessly hunts our golden boy down, the result of a combination of misbehaviour, mischance, misapprehension, and not an insignificant measure of hubristic overreach, as Julian (along with many other characters in this novel) consistently reaches for more than he needs or wants.

O'Hara's claim to fame is that he was, at one time, the most prolific contributor of tales to the New Yorker magazine, and boy does this read like something Woody Allen would pen. It's well written and crafted, but the incessant whininess of the characters can get a little fatiguing. With the exception of a subplot involving a low-level hood named Al Grecco, everyone here is dealing with WASP-y first-world problems: attending the "right" college, driving the "right" car, marrying the "right" spouse, living in the "right" neighborhood, attending the "right" social events and parties, drinking, gossiping, and judging each other relentlessly. The crimes that destroy Julius aren't crimes in the legal sense, but crimes against the norms of his class: throwing a drink into the face of a social peer, drinking too much, humiliating his wife.

Almost 100yrs later, some aspects of this tale - the country club dances & raccoon coats, the male-centric marriages, the insane drinking - may feel like a time capsule. Alas, however, the central themes of this tale - social gamesmanship and snobbery, hypocrisy, hubris & self-emoliation - are timeless. show less

Once things start unraveling for Julian English, the tragic hero of this small-town hero-to-zero tale, they do so exponentially. The pacing here is terrific — somehow English's decline spins out of control against the oh-so-static backdrop of the well-to-do set he's a part of. So there's a frantic kind of parallax going on as the more things change for Julian, the more they stay the same for everyone else. This is an essential entry in the canon of self-destruction imo, because of course there's no real reason why it has to happen — like the scariest downward-spirals, it just has to be that way.

Also a very interesting book for the way it portrays its characters' sex-lives. It's realistic and mature, even by today's standards I think.

If Ernest Hemingway had written The Great Gatsby, it might have come out something like this. It's brilliantly done, but I didn't like it, if you know what I mean. The characters are virtually soul-less, but some of them almost grasp what's missing in their lives. For the most part, they haven't a clue what to do about it, other than to keep throwing parties and observing the strict social rules that structure their WASP existence. These are not the filthy rich of the Hamptons, but the middle class well-off's of small town America. Full of ironies and very well-executed scenes --I've never read a better portrayal of a man slipping into inebriated blabbering anywhere. I give it a solid 3 1/2 stars, and recommend wider readership for John show more O'Hara. show less

A deeply pessimistic look at the idiocy and falsehood of American life when there was a glossy finish on the outside to hide faults, flaws, kinks, and desires. At times Julian English reminded me a little bit of J.P. Donleavy's Ginger Man, but without as much wittism or humor or nuance. Perhaps my issue is that all the characters save Julian and Caroline are simple mechanisms. The moments of self-awareness are there for the lead characters and there is some level of insight into the need to create a identity that we can not only present to the world, but also to ourselves in a coherent way. It's a sad point. While likely very true today, I imagine it was even more glaring in O'Hara's day. All told, this novel should probably be show more considered a minor classic of American Lit. particularly for that era. show less

"Appointment in Samarra", by John O'Hara, is the telling of how Julian English's life spirals out of his control in three days. On the first day, he throws a drink in the face of Harry Reilly, a man to whom he owes money. On the second day, he is openly unfaithful to his wife Caroline with the mistress of a gangster who has been good for English's Cadillac business. And finally, on the third, he gets into a very bad altercation at an eating club. He is drunk almost constantly during this time, which happens to be Christmas and the two days afterwards.

At the end of the story, I did not feel that any of his problems had to be the end of the world--given that he straighten up and fly straight--but Julian English is a depressed person and show more obviously a self-destructive one who has suicidal thoughts three times in this story before acting on it. And one part of his life that was probably irreparably damaged was his marriage; Caroline was dreadfully unhappy, and I got the feeling that she was finished with him.

I will interject my perception that the three days, three acts, and three suicidal thoughts in this story do seem to constitute a trinity theme, which may be a stylistic echo of Julian's discomfort with the Catholic community, of which Harry Reilly is member.

O'Hara prefaces his story with W. Sommerset Maugham's Death Speaks to very good effect. The reader knows that Julian English is fated to die and will not escape that fate. As Julian's father, Dr. William English, pronounces his son dead, he thinks of his own father. Julian's grandfather had also lead a destructive life that ended by his own hand, and so Dr. English is resigned to the belief that the suicide gene had jumped a generation, that this was Julian's time to die.

Meanwhile, other people react with surprise. Harry Reilly is astonished, and acknowledges that he knew Julian liked him. "He wouldn't borrow a nickel from me if he didn't like me." And later, "...I wonder what in God's name would make him do a thing like that?" Of course, we know that Reilly was plenty angry with English about the drink, which gave him a black eye, but this is an example of how some of Julian English's perceptions are wildly exaggerated. Tragically, it is this drunken insult to Reilly that sets him in downward motion, because he truly believes that Reilly is going to get back at him in some way that will ruin his livelihood. Julian's wife Caroline is shocked, traumatized, and aggrieved. This is not the ending she foresaw, but I got the feeling that she would eventually pick up the pieces and go on. It is impossible to escape the thought that, in the long run, Julian's suicide might have made her life easier.

"Appointmentin Samarra" is also a window into the historically fascinating time of prohibition, including the prejudices and social mores of that time, and is also of special interest to those familiar with the Lehigh Valley, in Pennsylvania. John O'Hara wrote his novel in an appealing third person narrative style with dialogue that seems very natural. But then, O'Hara knew the time and place very well, having been born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania in 1905.

This was a good read. show less