Appointment In Samarra
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''Appointment in Samarra'', published in 1934, is the first novel by American writer
John O'Hara John Henry O'Hara (January 31, 1905 – April 11, 1970) was an American writer. He was one of America's most prolific writers of Short story, short stories, credited with helping to invent ''The New Yorker'' magazine short story style.John O'H ...
(1905–1970). It concerns the self-destruction of the fictional character Julian English, a wealthy car dealer who was once a member of the social elite of Gibbsville (O'Hara's fictionalized version of
Pottsville, Pennsylvania Pottsville is a city and the county seat of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 13,346 at the 2020 census, and is the principal city of the Pottsville, PA Micropolitan Statistical Area. The city lies along the wes ...
). The book created controversy due to O'Hara's inclusion of sexual content. In 1998, the
Modern Library The Modern Library is an American book publishing Imprint (trade name), imprint and formerly the parent company of Random House. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, Moder ...
ranked ''Appointment in Samarra'' 22nd on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.


Title

The title is a reference to
W. Somerset Maugham William Somerset Maugham ( ; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German un ...
's retelling of an ancient
Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...
n taleOne version is recorded in the ''Babylonian Talmud''
Sukkah 53a.5-6
(NB: The Talmud was compiled in the 5th century while Samarrah was founded in the 9th century; the Talmudic version of the story involves King Solomon sending two men to a place called Luz to avoid death.)
which appears as an epigraph for the novel:
There was a merchant in
Baghdad Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the A ...
who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was
Death Death is the end of life; the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. Death eventually and inevitably occurs in all organisms. The remains of a former organism normally begin to decompose sh ...
that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to
Samarra Samarra (, ') is a city in Iraq. It stands on the east bank of the Tigris in the Saladin Governorate, north of Baghdad. The modern city of Samarra was founded in 836 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mu'tasim as a new administrative capital and mi ...
and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
In his foreword to the 1952 reprint, O'Hara says that the working title for the novel was ''The Infernal Grove''. He got the idea for the title ''Appointment in Samarra'' when
Dorothy Parker Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet and writer of fiction, plays and screenplays based in New York; she was known for her caustic wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles. Parker ros ...
showed him the story in Maugham's play, ''Sheppey''. He says "Dorothy didn't like the title; ublisherAlfred Harcourt didn't like the title; his editors didn't like it; nobody liked it but me." O'Hara describes it as a reference to "the inevitability of Julian English's death".


Plot

The novel describes how, over the course of three days, Julian English destroys himself with a series of impulsive acts, culminating in suicide. O'Hara never gives any obvious cause or explanation for his behavior, which is apparently predestined by his character. Facts about Julian gradually emerge throughout the novel. He is about 30 years old. He is college educated, owns a well-established
Cadillac Cadillac Motor Car Division, or simply Cadillac (), is the luxury vehicle division (business), division of the American automobile manufacturer General Motors (GM). Its major markets are the United States, Canada and China; Cadillac models are ...
dealership, and within the Gibbsville community belongs to the prestigious "Lantenengo Street crowd". English is introduced seven pages into the novel, in the thoughts of the wife of one of his employees: "She wouldn't trade her life for Caroline English's, not if you paid her. She wondered if Julian and Caroline were having another one of their battle royales". Within the three days of the novel, Julian gets drunk several times. One long lyrical paragraph describes one of his
hangover A hangover is the experience of various unpleasant physiological and psychological effects usually following the consumption of alcohol (beverage), alcohol, such as wine, beer, and liquor. Hangovers can last for several hours or for more than ...
s. During the first of two suicidal reveries, we learn that his greatest fear is that he will eventually lose his wife to another man. Yet within three days, he sexually propositions two women, succeeding once, with an ease and confidence suggesting this is well-practiced behavior. On successive days, he commits three impulsive acts, which are serious enough to damage his reputation, his business, and his relationship with his wife. First, he throws a drink in the face of Harry Reilly, a man we learn later is an important investor in his business. The man is a sufficiently well-known Catholic that Julian knows word will spread among the Gibbsville Catholic community, many of whom are his customers. In a curious device, repeated for each of the incidents, the
omniscient narrator Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the ...
never actually shows us the details of the incident. He shows us Julian fantasizing in great detail about throwing the drink; but, we are told, "he knew he would not throw the drink" because he was in financial debt to Harry and because "people would say he was sore because Reilly ... was elaborately attentive to Caroline English". The narrator's vision shifts elsewhere, and several pages later we are surprised to hear a character report "Jeezozz H. Kee-rist! Julian English just threw a highball in Harry Reilly's face!" The second event occurs at a roadhouse, where Julian goes with his wife and some friends. Julian gets drunk and invites a provocatively clad woman to go out to his car with him. The woman is, in fact, a gangster's girlfriend, and one of the gangster's men is present, sent to watch her. Both Julian's wife and the gangster's aide see the couple leave. What actually happens in the car is left ambiguous, but that is unimportant, since all observers assume that sexual congress has ensued. There is not any assumption that violence will ensue. However, the gangster is a valued automobile customer who in the past has recommended Julian's dealership to his acquaintances. As Julian is driven home, pretending to be asleep, he "felt the tremendous excitement, the great thrilling lump in the chest and abdomen that comes before the administering of an unknown, well-deserved punishment. He knew he was in for it." Third, the next day, during lunch at the Lantenengo Club, Julian engages in a complicated brawl with a one-armed war veteran named Froggy Ogden, who is also Caroline's cousin. Julian thought of Froggy as an old friend, but Froggy acknowledges to Julian that he has always detested him and had not wanted his cousin Caroline to marry him. In the brawl, which Froggy has arguably started, Julian hits Froggy and at least one of a group of bystanders in the club. He experiences two suicidal daydreams that oddly contrast with each other. In the first of the two dreams, after Caroline's temporary departure, he places a gun in his mouth: He does not, however, commit suicide at that time. His second suicidal reverie is after a failed attempt to seduce a woman, the local society reporter. He believes that, as a result of his behavior and of the community's sympathy for Caroline, "no girl in Gibbsville—worth having—would risk the loss of reputation which would be her punishment for getting herself identified with him." He believes that even if he divorces Caroline, he is destined to spend the rest of his life hearing: After this and other indications that he had mis-gauged his social status, he commits suicide by
carbon monoxide poisoning Carbon monoxide poisoning typically occurs from breathing in carbon monoxide (CO) at excessive levels. Symptoms are often described as " flu-like" and commonly include headache, dizziness, weakness, vomiting, chest pain, and confusion. Large ...
, running his car in a closed garage.


Analysis

O'Hara biographer Frank MacShane writes "The excessiveness of Julian's suicide is what makes ''Appointment in Samarra'' so much a part of its time. Julian doesn't belong to
Fitzgerald's FitzGerald's was Tasmania's largest chain of department stores. The chain was rebranded and relaunched as Harris Scarfe in 1995, and the renamed stores continue to trade today. History FitzGerald's was founded in March 1886, when George Park ...
Jazz Age The Jazz Age was a period from 1920 to the early 1930s in which jazz music and dance styles gained worldwide popularity. The Jazz Age's cultural repercussions were primarily felt in the United States, the birthplace of jazz. Originating in New O ...
; he is ten years younger and belongs to what came to be called the hangover generation, the young people who grew up accustomed to the good life without having to earn it. This is the generation that had so little to defend itself with when the depression came in 1929."


Frank treatment of sexuality

O'Hara's books tended to push the limits of what was considered tolerable in a mainstream novel. His second, ''
BUtterfield 8 ''BUtterfield 8'' is a 1960 American drama film directed by Daniel Mann, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey. Taylor won her first Academy Award for her performance in a leading role. The film was based on a 1935 novel of the same ...
'', was notorious and was banned from importation into Australia until 1963. But ''Appointment In Samarra'' was controversial too. Biographer
Geoffrey Wolff Geoffrey Wolff (born 1937) is an American novelist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer. Among his honors and recognition are the Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1994) and fellowships of the National Endowment f ...
quotes a '' Saturday Review'' article by
Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
professor
Henry Seidel Canby Henry Seidel Canby (September 6, 1878 – April 5, 1961) was a critic, editor, and Yale University professor. A scion of a Quaker family that arrived in Wilmington, Delaware, around 1740 and grew to regional prominence through milling and bu ...
, entitled "Mr. O'Hara and the Vulgar School", and also cites
Sinclair Lewis Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature, 1930, he became the first author from the United States (and the first from the America ...
's denunciation of the book's sensuality as "nothing but infantilism – the erotic visions of a hobbledehoy behind the barn." Most of O'Hara's descriptions of sexuality are indirect: "There was the time Elinor Holloway ... shinnied half way up the flagpole while five young gentlemen, standing at the foot of the pole, verified the suspicion that Elinor, who had not always lived in Gibbsville, was not naturally, or at least not entirely, a blonde." However, passages like the following were quite unusual for the time:


Awards

In 2011, the book was placed on ''Time'' magazine's list of top 100 novels written in English since 1923.


References

{{Authority control 1934 American novels Novels by John O'Hara Samarra Novels about suicide Novels set in Pennsylvania 1934 debut novels