Appointment in Samarra

Fitzgerald, Hemingway, C.S.Lewis, John Cheever. If any one of these authors was ever important to you, please pick up O'Hara. He's critical to understanding twentieth century American authors. At the very least, you can engage in the unending debate on whether he's worthy of joining this pantheon of writers. Worthy of an airport paperback rack? Smalltime trashy romance writer? Or do you think he paints a richly textured canvas of an America and its high society about to be turn the corner on the first half of the 20th century? An important Irish-Catholic writer? My tip: read this book. If nothing else you'll learn about bituminous and anthracitic coal, the United Mine Workers, how to mix a martini, (and throw one), why fraternities were ever important, and what a flivver was. It's certainly a period piece, and O'Hara does not hold back with the language of the jazz age...which may confuse modern readers (it was a gay party, his chains dropped a link, etc.) In fact, O'Hara was an early adopter of using slang and vernacular in writing the spoken word, and you can be the judge of whether or not he gets an Irish mobster's (or a "high hat's") tone correctly. He's really at his best with character development, because Julian English (our protaganist) is our bigoted confidante, our tiresome spouse, our wretched boss, our surly neighbor, our spoiled college-boy brat, our pretentious friend and our preening big man about town all in one. O'Hara waltzes us through Julian's demise and we root for him, for one more chance, all the way down.

?Appointment in Samarra? is a great novel. I was led to read it by an article in the Atlantic Monthly that lamented the pretentiousness of much of contemporary writing. Not only is the writing pretentious, but it doesn?t say anything intelligible. ?Appointment in Sammara?, by contrast, tells a story in a direct manner while still revealing to us hidden truths about the human spirit. It?s not giving anything away to say that the story concerns the self-destruction of one Julian English. Julian is suave, Protestant, lives in the finest neighborhood, and hangs out with the in crowd. But Julian makes the mistake of throwing his drink into the face of a powerful, nouveau riche Irish Catholic. Suddenly, Julian?s support structures don?t seem so firm. Julian?s descent is heart breaking because, although he is not an especially likeable person, John O?Hara still manages to make us care for him. O?Hara?s book was prophetic in that it portrays the end of WASP domination in America. The book takes place in 1930 and was published in 1934 ? just six years after the Catholic Al Smith was denied the presidency by a virulent anti-Catholic backlash led, in part, by the Klan. We're told that some of the locals in Pottsville are members of the the Klan. Twenty-six years later, in 1960, an Irish Catholic would be elected president. Appointment in Samarra is a must read for those who are serious about the American novel.

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 longerO'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.

O'Hara pierces the character of the Protestant elite, which in some ways set off a stampede in literature that continued to deconstruct WASP culture throughout 20th century literature. Set in a pseudonymous town resembling O'Hara's own Pottsville, Pennsylvania of the 1920's, this tale of an insecure WASP who precipitates his own demise by tossing a drink in the face of the town's most prominent and moneyed Catholic, builds to a feverish yet melancholy end. A book that influenced many great modern writers, it is a timeless story of class resentment and the downward spiral of a tortured soul in a comfortable existence.