John O'Hara (1) (1905–1970)

My goal was to read an older book alternating with a hot, new title. This served well as I had never read O'Hara which would now be considered historical fiction, it takes place in the Thirties, Forties, Fifties in Pennsylvania. The story also tied in with the movie we watched last night, The Swimmer, from the John Cheever tale about a man whose exalted social position collapses with the loss of his job. [b:Sermons and soda water|50613537|Sermons and soda water|John O'Hara|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1579591273l/50613537._SX50_.jpg|75611823] follows the lives of Ivy Leaguers from a small town, Gibbsville, who fall on hard times in their financial and marital fortunes. O'Hara uses lots of dialogue introduce his characters. Class and status are important yet the key couple, Bobbie and Pete, disregard it: Bobbie has an affair with the bootlegger and frequents the Dan Patch Tavern while Pete works at the aluminum plant and sleeps with a typist. Flagons of drink are consumed, in fact, the bootlegger accuses Bobbie of being a lush ending their tryst. People get sore, not angry; bawl not cry; get the bounce instead of being fired or laid off. A slice of Americana, well written by an significant author whom my mom forbid teenage me to read ([b:Ten North Frederick|796907|Ten North Frederick|John O'Hara|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440620321l/796907._SY75_.jpg|1092644][b:BUtterfield 8|49715|BUtterfield 8|John O'Hara|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320445243l/49715._SY75_.jpg|1768442][b:Appointment in Samarra/Butterfield 8/Hope of Heaven|4589146|Appointment in Samarra/Butterfield 8/Hope of Heaven|John O'Hara|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1314241794l/4589146._SX50_.jpg|4638581] all classics.… (altro)

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 alluding 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 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.… (altro)

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, 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.… (altro)