Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
I just read F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Other Side of Paradise, set in nearly the same time period and I have to say that I much prefer O'Hara's writing style. Fitzgerald's novel featured Amory Blaine whining and drinking his way through college and briefly after, meeting unsatisfactory girls. I never felt a kinship with the character. While I didn't especially like Julian and Caroline English in Appointment in Samarra, I quite enjoyed O'Hara's characterization of all the people in the town of Gibbsville and how they interacted with the Englishes. I was especially intrigued by the epigraph in the beginning about the servant who ran away from Baghdad to Samarra thinking he was avoiding death, while Death had been surprised to see him in Baghdad when he had an appointment with him in Samarra. Julian English's story is much like the servant's: everything he does still leads to his predestined conclusion.
I didn't really like, "Appointment In Samarra" very much, sad to tell. I just didn't care about any of the characters, a group of people who hailed from a small town in Pennsylvania called Gibbsville. In Gibbsville the objective was to be the center of a thriving social scene, such that everyone knows that you’ve got wealth, beauty and class. I guess John O’Hara was parodying real life shallow people from a town he himself grew up in—so this is a tale that recounts people who might well have existed in one form or another. It’s kind of a shame to know that people like these Gibbsville twits really may have been alive and thriving in the 1930s (the time this book is set in) because I object to them in every possible way.
For example, I don’t like anti-Semitics. I don’t like people who are racist, and I don’t like people who discriminate against others based on religion either. Unfortunately, much of Gibbsville appears to be a raging bunch of bigots. It’s hard for me to like bigots.
Other things I didn’t like about the characters in this book included the materialism, the social climbing, the pretentiousness. . . Shoot, man, the people in “Appointment In Samarra” drove drunk and wore coats made out of raccoon fur, what more needs to be said? These people where fundamentally unlikable—which is why I didn’t care when the main character spiraled out of control and took a dump, or however you’d describe what happened to the guy. He was just a jerk, and so was everyone else who he knew in that book.
I did think O’hara wrote the book with a nice style though. I enjoyed the fast pace in which the book traveled through the telling of the adventures of a bunch of jerks.
I would put this book on a “to read list” just to have read it. However, I don’t think I’d ever add this book onto a “to re-read list” because what would be the point?
For example, I don’t like anti-Semitics. I don’t like people who are racist, and I don’t like people who discriminate against others based on religion either. Unfortunately, much of Gibbsville appears to be a raging bunch of bigots. It’s hard for me to like bigots.
Other things I didn’t like about the characters in this book included the materialism, the social climbing, the pretentiousness. . . Shoot, man, the people in “Appointment In Samarra” drove drunk and wore coats made out of raccoon fur, what more needs to be said? These people where fundamentally unlikable—which is why I didn’t care when the main character spiraled out of control and took a dump, or however you’d describe what happened to the guy. He was just a jerk, and so was everyone else who he knew in that book.
I did think O’hara wrote the book with a nice style though. I enjoyed the fast pace in which the book traveled through the telling of the adventures of a bunch of jerks.
I would put this book on a “to read list” just to have read it. However, I don’t think I’d ever add this book onto a “to re-read list” because what would be the point?
I read Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara for book club, but I also had it on my to-read list because of The End of Your Life Book Club. It's the story of Julian English over the course of three days in Gibbsville, PA. I really enjoyed O'Hara's writing style, but quite honestly, I didn't care for the characters that much and I didn't have a lot of sympathy for Julian when he made one stupid choice after another. I did however appreciate the look into the lifestyle of the people in the book and the way connections help and hurt us. An interesting story, and well told, just not my favorite.
dark
medium-paced
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
funny
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
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 like in the 1930's but many so-called canon Great Books depict the same types of people, occupations and distresses.
The Wasp set of values in vogue in the past, under which the characters in the book must live, 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 living and be respected. He is a car dealer who sells cars from a lot.
Cars are mobile and take you places but everyone in town is in lockdown following scripts of behavior no one dares go rogue from. Julian is a name that echoes Thomas Hardy's Julian who is a character attempting to break the bonds of class holding him down into a preset box of social rules of English society in an earlier century. Cars, a symbol of freedom and escape, is obviously the author's vivid choice of irony for his Julian and this symbol of getting away is literally in English's face every day sitting in his car lot.
He loves his wife but he hates his life. Without the life they have in Gibbsville he loses the wife, economic security, and social position. English's father is the town's doctor who cures everyone's sickness and he wanted Julian to become a doctor. Julian does not want or cannot, more accurately, be that guy. His tragedy is wanting to fit in and be "normal" but being unable because of something inside his mind struggling against Gibbsville. He is no rebel but unfortunately some unconscious part wants desperately to get away.
By the end of the novel Julian has without consciously meaning to begun burning bridges to the life he believes he wants in Gibbsville. Despite his own values and hard work he is unable to force that unconscious part to submit. The tragedy moves to an end to which an unexamined life can lead.
The book is somewhat autobiographical except unlike the author's protagonist John O'Hara very much examines the workings of the human heart. At this book's center is the war between what we want and who we are.
The Wasp set of values in vogue in the past, under which the characters in the book must live, 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 living and be respected. He is a car dealer who sells cars from a lot.
Cars are mobile and take you places but everyone in town is in lockdown following scripts of behavior no one dares go rogue from. Julian is a name that echoes Thomas Hardy's Julian who is a character attempting to break the bonds of class holding him down into a preset box of social rules of English society in an earlier century. Cars, a symbol of freedom and escape, is obviously the author's vivid choice of irony for his Julian and this symbol of getting away is literally in English's face every day sitting in his car lot.
He loves his wife but he hates his life. Without the life they have in Gibbsville he loses the wife, economic security, and social position. English's father is the town's doctor who cures everyone's sickness and he wanted Julian to become a doctor. Julian does not want or cannot, more accurately, be that guy. His tragedy is wanting to fit in and be "normal" but being unable because of something inside his mind struggling against Gibbsville. He is no rebel but unfortunately some unconscious part wants desperately to get away.
By the end of the novel Julian has without consciously meaning to begun burning bridges to the life he believes he wants in Gibbsville. Despite his own values and hard work he is unable to force that unconscious part to submit. The tragedy moves to an end to which an unexamined life can lead.
The book is somewhat autobiographical except unlike the author's protagonist John O'Hara very much examines the workings of the human heart. At this book's center is the war between what we want and who we are.
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The commonly used metaphor of insects stuck on a pin applies to what O'Hara does with the "hangover generation" citizens of Gibbsville, PA. If you like your approach to the noveaux riches and the noveaux plus riches who sneer at them to be zoological, as I do, you will enjoy this.
Like the Kerouac of "Big Sur", the characters here are trying to be drunk and fun like their literary predecessors, the Gatsbys et al, of less than a decade prior, but succeed in only being drunk, sad, and destructive (which is, of course, what Kerouac, Gatsby, and the Fitzgeralds really always were).
There are few characters to like here, save poor Caroline English, but the book is fascinating and surprising.
Like the Kerouac of "Big Sur", the characters here are trying to be drunk and fun like their literary predecessors, the Gatsbys et al, of less than a decade prior, but succeed in only being drunk, sad, and destructive (which is, of course, what Kerouac, Gatsby, and the Fitzgeralds really always were).
There are few characters to like here, save poor Caroline English, but the book is fascinating and surprising.
At first it was a little hard to keep track of the characters, but eventually made sense. Overall it was a decent book, risqué for its time.