Present Books During Appointment in Samarra
| Original Title: | Appointment in Samarra |
| ISBN: | 0375719202 (ISBN13: 9780375719202) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Julian English, Froggy Ogden, Harry Reilly, Caroline English |
John O'Hara
Paperback | Pages: 251 pages Rating: 3.82 | 13633 Users | 769 Reviews
Commentary Conducive To Books Appointment in Samarra
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 utterly worldly terms, without Faulkner’s taste for mythic inference or the basso profundo of his prose. 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 wife who loves him. His decline and fall, over the course of just 72 hours around Christmas, is a matter of too much spending, too much liquor, and a couple of reckless gestures. That his calamity is petty and preventable only makes it more powerful. In Faulkner, the tragedies all seem to be taking place on Olympus, even when they’re happening among the low-lifes. In O’Hara, they could be happening to you.
Details Regarding Books Appointment in Samarra
| Title | : | Appointment in Samarra |
| Author | : | John O'Hara |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 251 pages |
| Published | : | July 8th 2003 by Vintage (first published January 28th 1934) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Classics. Novels. Literature |
Rating Regarding Books Appointment in Samarra
Ratings: 3.82 From 13633 Users | 769 ReviewsArticle Regarding Books Appointment in Samarra
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.Part of the challenge this summer is to read new-to-me authors. John O'Hara is definitely one I'll be reading more. I have complained to myself that starting a book is often slow, then I get accustomed to the author's style by about page 50 and it takes off. My mind needed no adjustment for O'Hara's writing style, and I was right in stride by page 2.Gibbsville is a place unfamiliar to me. I never moved in these high social circles and, frankly, am pretty much unaware of them now. My experience
Julian English has everything a man could want in 1934 America---affluent background, beautiful wife, lovely home, rich friends, successful business---and yet, somehow, almost inexplicably, comes to destroy everything he has in the short space of 72 hours. It's the American dream turned nightmare, and it's horrific to watch, even from the pages of a book. A life overturned---and why? And for what? It's not clear and no one---not his friends, not his wife, not his parents, not even Julian
A remarkably succinct novel about social standing, gender relations, economic disadvantage, sex and death.John O'Hara is often thought a middling writer, but for at least the 200-odd pages of this work he is an absolute master. Covering an astounding panorama of themes and insights into the bourgeoisie population of a small town at the beginning of the depression, his frankness on married life, resentment, criminality, and a dozen other topics that are alternately ignored or aggrandized by other
Ill start with two paragraphs that I think illustrate John OHaras powerful writing: It was a lively, jesting grief, sprightly and pricking and laughing, to make you shudder and shiver up to the point of giving way completely. Then it would become a long black tunnel; a tunnel you had to go through, had to go through, had to go through, had to go through, had to go through. No whistle. But had to go through, had to go through, had to go through. Whistle? Had to go through, had to go through, had
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
Told from a variety of viewpoints and through flashbacks, this often grim novel of manners centers on one Julian English, the owner of a Cadillac dealership, and his fall from societys good graces. After drunkenly flinging a drink in the face of Harry Reilly at a party, Julian is rather unsettled to find that this act has deeper consequences than he realized. Reilly is well-liked, free with his money, was once a suitor of Julians wife before she married him, and has lent Julian himself a large
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