A twentieth-century classic, Appointment in Samarra is the first and most widely read book by the writer Fran Leibowitz called “...
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Oct 13, 2010
Jake
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On the back of this novel, Hemingway offered the following blurb: "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." Unfortunately, the subject John O'Hara knows so much about, and about which he does occasionally pen very beautiful pages, is the social life of the country club set in a little backwater city in central Pennsylvania. The novel takes place in 1930, but apart from a few passi
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Apr 24, 2007
Rolls
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This is on The Modern Libraries Top 100 Novels? I can see no reason why. It's a good book - but top 100? Come on! This should be like # 552 on a list of the 1000 best novels.
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Sep 22, 2011
Patrick
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I have heard a lot of good things about John O’Hara’s first and most popular novel, Appointment in Samarra. So I finally decided to read it. It was quite a revelation-a Fitzgerald-esque depiction of the 30s jazz age lifestyle complete with snappy dialogue, big parties, heavy drinking and other sorts of dissipation. There are bootleggers and gangster among the upwardly mobile who see this way of life as an entitlement. It is essentially the chronicle of a marriage in decline between the self-dest
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Jul 22, 2011
Patty
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John O'Hara is an author that I have never read. At least, none of his novels. I remember regularly reshelving his fiction when I was a page in the late 60's, but I wasn't the slightest bit interested in what he had to say.
A volume of three of his novels crossed my path, so I decided it would accompany me to the beach. This is the first in the volume. I am both intrigued and baffled.
The storyline was quite interesting. The setting - early part of the Depression in midd More...
A volume of three of his novels crossed my path, so I decided it would accompany me to the beach. This is the first in the volume. I am both intrigued and baffled.
The storyline was quite interesting. The setting - early part of the Depression in midd More...
Jun 21, 2011
David
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O'Hara's distinctive literary voice is both unique and disarming. For the first hundred pages I was unsure that O'Hara was even a competent writer, nevermind author of one of the century's great novels. His narrative technique and dialogue both are steeped in the jargon of his heyday, Prohibition Era, small town America. But O'Hara deals with big themes and the idiom of his day becomes secondary. He seems to want to take on big questions: why is the moth so driven to the flame? Why do we so will
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May 30, 2011
Matt
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This is a book I was assigned in college and then promptly failed to read-- honestly, this happened less often than you'd think, but this was one of those that slipped through the cracks, so until I started reading this two weeks ago, I really did think Julian English had lunch plans in the Middle East! I think I must've got it crossed, somehow, with Under the Volcano? It's hard to say.
At any rate, I read Butterfield 8 earlier this year and was totally blown away, so when I saw a chanc More...
At any rate, I read Butterfield 8 earlier this year and was totally blown away, so when I saw a chanc More...
Jan 14, 2011
Jim
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From my blog: http://www.jamesrament.com/book-review...
Appointment in Samarra – by John O’Hara, 1934
It’s been perhaps 40 years since I’ve even thought about John O’Hara’s books let alone read him. I had never read this one, but in an act of pure spontaneity, I picked up a ratty old copy at the city library while browsing through the stacks. Oh, what joys we can find purely by accident!
This one apparently became an instant best seller in 1934 but not necessarily a cr More...
Appointment in Samarra – by John O’Hara, 1934
It’s been perhaps 40 years since I’ve even thought about John O’Hara’s books let alone read him. I had never read this one, but in an act of pure spontaneity, I picked up a ratty old copy at the city library while browsing through the stacks. Oh, what joys we can find purely by accident!
This one apparently became an instant best seller in 1934 but not necessarily a cr More...
Oct 04, 2010
Goodreads; 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 p
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Dec 19, 2009
Chad
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It is surprisingly enjoyable to read a novel about places you have been (Reading, Harrisburg, Allentown, Philadelphia), events you have attended (the annual Lehigh-Lafayette football game), and in general the culture in which you have lived. Appointment in Samarra is a bit like The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter in that the characters and relationships matter much more than the plot, even though three major events within 48 hours propel the book. If this were solely a book about Julian’s self destruct
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Jun 09, 2009
Jon
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How one act of indulgence/wish fulfillment demonstrates the tenuousness of some peoples' lives. Julian Engish, a man who has a few problems, but is generally successful (especially considering the economic times in which he lived!) gives in to a suppressed desire, acting on it, and it leads him down an increasingly tormented path. He may not be a sympathetic character, but he is, at times, understandable and also by a certain stage pathetic enough to feel sorry for. We've all done something w
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Oct 21, 2011
Evan
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Feb 23, 2008
Margit
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Appointment in Samarra is an American Classic by John O'Hara. He describes the life of a young man in small town America before the Depression who has it all. When he makes a big mistake on Christmas his downward spiral is aided by people and events and shows that it is rather difficult to evade one's fate. This is also implied by the Arabian parable in the beginning of the book.
The book is very well written and , although it is depressing, I enjoyed it very much.
The book is very well written and , although it is depressing, I enjoyed it very much.
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Apr 02, 2010
Mark
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The year is 1930 and the characters are the high society of a Pennsylvania coal-mining town (a different kind of coal than what they get out of Pittsburgh, as everyone takes pain to note). Even as the Great Depression has hit, these are the well-to-do who've still got their servants, still got their expensive country club dinners and dances, and so on and so forth. It's a predictably cliquish atmosphere, petty and peevish, where grudges come and go, people pretend to like one another, news sprea
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Nov 08, 2010
Linda
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"He was drunk, but he was Julian, drunk or not, and that was more than anyone else was. That was what everyone else was not. He was like someone who had died in the war, some young officer in an overseas cap and a Sam Browne belt and one of those tunics that button up to the neck but you can't see the buttons, and an aviator's wings on the breast where the pocket ought to be, and polished high lace boots with a little mud on the soles, and a cigarette in one hand and his arm around an Ameri
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Apr 05, 2011
Brian
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Apparently John O'Hara knew of what he wrote. Julian English's life spirals out of control in the 48 hours after a impetuous act of drunken disdain at the Christmas party at a small town country club in Pennsylvania. This is a superbly drawn character study. English is selfish, egotistical, drunk, childish and manipulative; but O'Hara makes us care deeply about him and his fate.
The novel blends high comedy in its depiction of the social world of small-town Gibbsville with an almost suf More...
The novel blends high comedy in its depiction of the social world of small-town Gibbsville with an almost suf More...
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Nov 22, 2010
Veronica
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While enjoying Appointment in Samarra, I had the feeling I was watching a movie on TCM. The descriptives gave it the 30′s feel and the lingo made it easy to picture the characters carrying on. And what a multitude of characters are found!
Julian English is the main character who manages to alienate his wife, friends, co-workers, investors and more in self-destructive behavior that has only one outcome, as implied by the title.
Published in 1934, the novel is set in the fiction More...
Julian English is the main character who manages to alienate his wife, friends, co-workers, investors and more in self-destructive behavior that has only one outcome, as implied by the title.
Published in 1934, the novel is set in the fiction More...
Jul 17, 2011
Sharyl
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"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 th
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Apr 12, 2010
Matt
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O'Hara's timeless novel begins with W Somerset Maugham forboding epigraph Death Speaks.
Death speaks:
There was a merchant in Baghdad 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 market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I wi More...
Death speaks:
There was a merchant in Baghdad 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 market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I wi More...
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Feb 15, 2011
Michael
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A very pleasant book to read, but a disappointment on its own terms. If you like the more famous writers of O'Hara's ilk-- Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, Nathanael West, Cheever--and who doesn't, you'll appreciate this additional voice and its particular strengths. O'Hara was great with party scenes. The plot just doesn't work as well as it should. The set-up is promising. In a moment of drunken boredom, a man transgresses the bounds of small-town social decorum, and he will lose everything beca
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Apr 04, 2011
Michael
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O'Hara is neglected today -- maybe he was so ferociously accurate about his own time that he wrote himself out of the public mind. Who wants to keep getting their fingers burned, picking up each new book? Besides, as he aged, he got cranky and "prolix," as someone once put it, probably Updike. Appointment in Samarra is a tiny bit childish at the very beginning, when it feels like high school; but very soon the characters march righteously off the page and into your mundane, what'sfo
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Jan 23, 2011
April the Cheshire Meow
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The stifling atmosphere of small town life is so vividly displayed here that alone made the book difficult for me. I'm not old enough to know what middle class mores were in fact in the 1930's but many so called Great Books depict the same types of people, occupations and distresses. The Wasp set of values in vogue then struck me as the American version of Victorian values in the earlier era. Julian English's name is a clue to the origin of the social set of rules he is forced to live to earn a
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Aug 17, 2011
Vicki
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Appointment in Samarra vividly traces Julian English's calamitous and seemingly inexplicable path of destruction in 72 hours during the Christmas holidays of 1930. In his early thirties and from an affluent family, college educated, manager of a thriving Cadillac dealership in small town Pennsylvania, married to an attractive and admired woman - there would seem to be nothing significant to explain English's reckless behaviour and decisions that precipitiously eradicate his professional, persona
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Jan 14, 2010
Tim
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It's really good so far. I got it for Christmas. I guess it's noteworthy for being dirty and also for having lots of brand names mentioned in it, which was uncommon at the time. Like, instead of saying car he'd say Cadillac. I can really see O'Hara's influence on Updike. Some scenes are reminiscint of scenes in Rabbit Run. I have learned this: don't go throwing drinks in people's faces. It'll fuck everything up.
I finished it last night. I loved it. It read really quickly, Mr. O More...
I finished it last night. I loved it. It read really quickly, Mr. O More...
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Feb 04, 2012
Patti
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Oct 20, 2010
LynnB
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Appointment in Samarra is about the short life of a wealthy young man, Julian English, in small town America. He makes a big social blunder within his social set during the Christmas holidays and his downward spiral is helped along by people he knows and local events. Much of the book is told through the lives of the other characters and at the beginning I had a hard time determining who the central character was going to be. I think I mostly enjoyed the short retelling of a fable by W. Somerse
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Jun 01, 2011
Nick
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So happy, as a Schuylkill County boy, to read an acclaimed novel from one of the County's few literary stars. There are many great things to say about this book that have already been said, so I will keep this short. Mr O'Hara wrote a drunk like few others could. I haven't read a great number of books, yet, but of those that I've read, none have captured the speech of a drunk so precisely as O'Hara. The story also holds a little tragedy, but nothing too surprising. That is to say, everythin
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Aug 27, 2011
Bryan
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A book I knew nothing about, from 1934, made for a quick read this weekend, and a damn good one at that. Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara is exactly my type of book; focusing on realistic, interesting characters. As I inch closer to the halfway mark of this list, I'm finally starting to realize what type of books I enjoy reading.
Set in the fictional Pennsylvania town of Gibbsville, Appointment in Samarra follows the self-destruction of one Julian English, over three days at Ch More...
Set in the fictional Pennsylvania town of Gibbsville, Appointment in Samarra follows the self-destruction of one Julian English, over three days at Ch More...
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Nov 12, 2010
Núria
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“Cita en Samarra” es la primera novela de John O’Hara, autor de la misma generación que Ernest Hemingway y Francis Scout Fitzgerald, escritores que también se encuentran entre los fans declarados de esta obra que fue escrita en menos de cuatro meses. “Cita en Samarra” se ambienta en un pequeño pueblo de Pensilvania durante las Navidades de 1930 y narra el proceso de autodestrucción al cual se deja arrastrar Julian English, un hombre de treinta años perteneciente a la alta sociedad local y que en
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Apr 30, 2011
James
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O'Hara did for fictional Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, what Faulkner did for Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi: surveyed its social life and drew its psychic outlines. But he did it in a realistic and worldly fashion, without Faulkner's taste for mythic inference or the poetry of his prose. I can sometimes see signs of O'Hara in the novels of Updike or Roth.
Julian English is a man who squanders what fate gave him. He lives on the right side of the tracks, with a country club membership and a More...
Julian English is a man who squanders what fate gave him. He lives on the right side of the tracks, with a country club membership and a More...
Dec 21, 2008
matt
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pretty darn good minor classic about fitzgerald's famous "lost generation"...I really enjoyed this when I read it a million years ago. I just completely plugged into it and read it till the early hours of the morning. Great platter of minor characters and a well-paced plot leading inevitably to the satiric denouement where the flapping and philosophizing ends in tragedy because the participants lack the necessary self-reflection to understand how existentially unmoored they are in th
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