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    Appointment in Samarra
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    Appointment in Samarra
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    Appointment in Samarra
    Audiobook6 hours

    Appointment in Samarra

    Written by John O'Hara

    Narrated by Christian Camargo

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    One of the great novels of small-town American life, Appointment in Samarra is John O'Hara's crowning achievement. In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.

    Brimming with wealth and privilege, jealousy and infidelity, O'Hara's iconic first novel is an unflinching look at the dark side of the American dream-and a lasting testament to the keen social intelligence if a major American writer.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateNov 19, 2013
    ISBN9780698147966
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Appointment in Samarra

    4/5

    326 ratings20 reviews

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    • 1/5
      Boring. Nothing happens. Like pulling teeth! I couldn't wait for the end. I kept thinking it would get better but then never did! My favorite short story was the title. Total disappointment in Samara!
      He is not a bad writer. It's just a terrible book!!!!
    • 3/5
      Definitely did not use a ghost writer, unlike some other presidents.
    • 4/5
      Even though it falls short of its potential to be a great novel (a hybrid of The Great Gatsby and The Stranger), it's still worth reading.

      Gatsby's generation came back from a war looking for a ship that had already sailed; this generation was the partying on that ship and failed to understand their good fortune.
    • 4/5
      As you read you uncover the peculiarities of the protagonist - not in the usual manner, but through other character's thoughts of him. The action is only over three days during which Julian commits impulsive acts that ruin his reputation with everyone important in his life. The manner of the writing redeems this book. It is a novel novel.
    • 5/5
      Spend a while with the declining upper class of a small American city at the end of the Jazz Age! Keep company with Julian English, boy lush and adulterous charmer, as he careens his was to self destruction! Pity his clever and loving wife, worry about that quiet mobster in the corner, and sympathize with his coworker, who sees the business going down the drain. Doesn't sound like an attractive project, but this is a compelling and ultimately heart-breaking book, which you knew it was going to be all along. What's striking is how real and how contemporary the characters seem, despite their 1920's language and attitudes. The writing is brilliant, clear as glass to let the story and the characters take over. And the plot is brilliant too, full of twists and turns and blind alleys, but still driving inexorably to that fatal appointment. This is a compelling read, and an underestimated American classic.
    • 5/5
      Contains one of my all time favorite moments in fiction, the scene early on in which Julian English throws a cocktail into the face of another partygoer at the country club and thus begins his self-destruction.

      You know, I hadn't thought til this very moment just how much the film American Beauty owes to this O'Hara masterpiece. Both chronicle men who, for reasons even they cannot truly fathom, find themselves embarked on a path leading to their own destruction.

      For some reason, I've also never forgotten the name of the street he lives on: Lantenengo Street.

      If you haven't read Appointment in Samarra, stop what you're doing right now and pick up a copy.
    • 5/5
      My First O'Hara -- More to come
    • 4/5
      I saw a recommendation for this book. I think it compares favorably to the Great Gatsby and other F. Scott Fitzgerald books. It is interesting how just one drunken incident leads to Julian's downfall. It seems like such a long time ago when men filled out women's dance cards at social events. I thought O'Hara presented the woman's point of view perhaps better than Fitzgerald ever did.
    • 4/5
      This is a fairly depressing tale of the dissolute upper middle class in the United States in the late 1920s. Alcoholism, social hypocrisy, and dishonesty seem to be the predominant traits of the country club set of characters. Not a pretty picture! Well written, but depressing.
    • 4/5
      Julian English seems to have everything: a gorgeous (and smart) wife, a good job, wealth and glamour. But his actions at a party one night cause his near-perfect life to begin unraveling, and readers soon see that his reality is quite far from perfect.O'Hara was a contemporary of and often compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and truthfully I was often comparing this story in my head with The Great Gatsby. Oddly enough, I may even have liked it better. Maybe because their glitzy country club life was a little more small-town than New York, maybe because I felt like the characters had foibles that I could forgive a little more than Gatsby's. Certainly no one is on a pedestal in this story, which is introduced by the short story "Appointment in Samarra" by W. Somerset Maugham and addresses the inevitability of fate. Though the essential action takes place over three days of Christmas 1930, many times we get a glimpse of past events in several characters' lives, helping us see how everything came together in just this way. I didn't always like what happened but couldn't imagine things ending up any other way, and that's about the highest compliment I can give a writer.
    • 5/5
      I have read so much about O'Hara being an author who was once wildly popular, but who is no longer considered in the same breath as his contemporaries, and seen this novel in particular mentioned so many times, that I had to read it!I wasn't disappointed. At times, O'Hara's prose is simply dazzling as he describes an incident or a character's thoughts or the social life of Gibbsville (an alias for O'Hara's hometown of Pottsville, Pennsylvania). The story itself shifts back and forth between a number of characters, but its primary focus is on the self-destructive Julian English, who sets the novel's events in motion by throwing a drink in the face of an acquaintance whom he inwardly detests. But the pleasure in this novel isn't ultimately in how this event plays itself out, which is a bit contrived, but rather in the keen insights O'Hara provides into the lives of his characters. The parts of the novel that flashback to flesh out characters' earlier lives are especially compelling. I would gladly dive into more of O'Hara's work to get to know people this well. Their small foibles, how they deal with everyday life, how they face their troubles, O'Hara portrays it all, and does a memorable job. John Updike's introduction in my edition is quite good--but wait until after you have finished the book to read it.
    • 2/5
      Meh... hardly 'the real F. Scott Fitzgerald.' This book has its moments, but it never really came together for me. The whole organized crime middle class ennui equation doesn't work out. Judy's going to murder me for saying these things, but whatever; she slams the books I like too.
    • 4/5
      There's no doubt the book has its strengths, the most prominent of which is its poetry. Imagine taking The Great Gatsby, Under the Volcano, and Bonfire of the Vanities (only one of which O'Hara could possibly have read) throwing them in a blender, and then asking Dorothy Parker to parse the result to a good jazz beat--the kind you could dance to. That's Appointment in Samarra. And that's a kind of miracle. Whether you want to be present for that miracle depends on how much you can appreciate the sound of tap heels on the way to the gallows.
    • 4/5
      "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 this time, which happens to be Christmas and the two days afterwards.At the end of the story, I did not feel that any of his problems had to be the end of the world--given that he straighten up and fly straight--but Julian English is a depressed person and obviously a self-destructive one who has suicidal thoughts three times in this story before acting on it. And one part of his life that was probably irreparably damaged was his marriage; Caroline was dreadfully unhappy, and I got the feeling that she was finished with him.I will interject my perception that the three days, three acts, and three suicidal thoughts in this story do seem to constitute a trinity theme, which may be a stylistic echo of Julian's discomfort with the Catholic community, of which Harry Reilly is member.O'Hara prefaces his story with W. Sommerset Maugham's Death Speaks to very good effect. The reader knows that Julian English is fated to die and will not escape that fate. As Julian's father, Dr. William English, pronounces his son dead, he thinks of his own father. Julian's grandfather had also lead a destructive life that ended by his own hand, and so Dr. English is resigned to the belief that the suicide gene had jumped a generation, that this was Julian's time to die.Meanwhile, other people react with surprise. Harry Reilly is astonished, and acknowledges that he knew Julian liked him. "He wouldn't borrow a nickel from me if he didn't like me." And later, "...I wonder what in God's name would make him do a thing like that?" Of course, we know that Reilly was plenty angry with English about the drink, which gave him a black eye, but this is an example of how some of Julian English's perceptions are wildly exaggerated. Tragically, it is this drunken insult to Reilly that sets him in downward motion, because he truly believes that Reilly is going to get back at him in some way that will ruin his livelihood. Julian's wife Caroline is shocked, traumatized, and aggrieved. This is not the ending she foresaw, but I got the feeling that she would eventually pick up the pieces and go on. It is impossible to escape the thought that, in the long run, Julian's suicide might have made her life easier."Appointmentin Samarra" is also a window into the historically fascinating time of prohibition, including the prejudices and social mores of that time, and is also of special interest to those familiar with the Lehigh Valley, in Pennsylvania. John O'Hara wrote his novel in an appealing third person narrative style with dialogue that seems very natural. But then, O'Hara knew the time and place very well, having been born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania in 1905.This was a good read.
    • 3/5
      this book reminds me of the novels of that period, Scott Fitzgerald mixed with Dos Passos or Steinbeck or somebody. The story tells of tthree days in Gibbsville, Pa.,after Julian English throws a drink in his creditor's face. The next day is Christmas. While trying unsuccessfully to undo the effects of the drink-throwing, he pulls another blunder by going to his car with a gangster's mistress. His wife has a real round with him. At noon the day after Christmas he gets in a fight and that night, after trying to seduce a newspaper girl, he kills himself. The story is etched out with reportorial incisiveness and unrestrained sensuality, without a hint of moral compunction. O, one does sympathize with Julian but only becasue the book is designed to have you do so. Rationally, one doesn't care because he brings it all on himself by doing things--even when not drunk--that I can't condones as sensible. The frankness in O'Hara in regard to sexuality is a little greater than in others, I think, though it is awhile since I readthe others--Dos Passo, et al.--so I am not sure. But O'Hara's world is an utterly dull one, as bad as Sinclair Lewis's world of Babbittry
    • 4/5
      If Ernest Hemingway had written The Great Gatsby, it might have come out something like this. It's brilliantly done, but I didn't like it, if you know what I mean. The characters are virtually soul-less, but some of them almost grasp what's missing in their lives. For the most part, they haven't a clue what to do about it, other than to keep throwing parties and observing the strict social rules that structure their WASP existence. These are not the filthy rich of the Hamptons, but the middle class well-off's of small town America. Full of ironies and very well-executed scenes --I've never read a better portrayal of a man slipping into inebriated blabbering anywhere. I give it a solid 3 1/2 stars, and recommend wider readership for John O'Hara.
    • 4/5
      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 wife who loves him. This short novel outlines his decline and fall, over the course of just 72 hours around Christmas, showing him in the throes of too much spending, too much liquor compounded by a couple of reckless gestures. The calamity is all the more powerful due to its extreme petty and preventable nature. In Faulkner the tragedies all seem to be comparable to Greek tragedy, even when they're happening among the lowlifes. In O'Hara's novels the commoners get there come-uppance and it is as if they could be you. His prose is very readable and I found this and other of his novels (Ten North Frederick, Butterfield Eight and From the Terrace) hard to put down.
    • 5/5
      My husband read this book a while ago and kept telling me I should read it. It takes place in the area of Pennsylvania we grew up in, although the town featured in the book is fictitious. He found it fascinating but I didn’t think I would like it so I put it off. I felt I needed to be in the mood for it.The story takes place over a three day period in a town called Gibbsville, PA. It’s December 1930 and the holiday party season is in full gear. There are parties, celebrations, dances, late nights, and lots of liquor. Julian and Caroline English are among the social elite of Gibbsville, the envy of many in town. At a party one night, Julian, after a lot of alcohol, throws a drink in the face of Harry Reilly and slowly begins his decent toward self-destruction.This book is all about small town life --- the bitter feelings that emerge among family and friends and the small town politics that make the world go around. O’Hara used Pottsville, PA as the base for the fictional Gibbsville. I grew up about an hour north of Pottsville so I’m very familiar with small town Pennsylvania life. For O’Hara, nothing is sacred. He lambastes everyone and everything in the book. You can see just how much he really hated living in this place --- the politics, the people, and the class distinctions. Everything in this book is negative and full of vitriol which makes it a hard, and sometimes unpleasant, book to read. It’s a treatise on society and the time period. The wastefulness of the lifestyles of these well-to-do people, the sad lives they lead, the wanton spending of money on parties. Julian English himself is a Cadillac salesman. Could he have given him a more despised job? O’Hara doesn’t want you to like anyone here and goes out of his way to make that happen. You might start to feel sorry for some of the characters and then he switches gears and has you eavesdropping on their lives through the neighbors who are talking badly about them and what they’re really like behind closed doors.I wasn’t sure how to feel about this book. Yes, it’s a great read. It’s caustic, there are small town politics, there are interesting characters, but none of it is likable. He eviscerates everyone and everything for what I imagine would be an attempt at making himself feel better, and slightly superior, to the people he’s writing about. Some of it felt childish to me and I had to remind myself to take a step back. While I might no longer live in that area, I still take offense when people degrade it and that was beginning to happen to me with this book. Once I took myself out of it, I found it an easier read.This book, which takes place over the course of three days and ends in a tragedy, feels like a lifetime. It was hard to read, at least for me, but well worth it.
    • 4/5
      There are writers who are more, less, and equally as famous as their works. Truman Capote, long before and long after IN COLD BLOOD, his chief claim to literary and public acclaim, was known even to de facto illiterates as that funny little man with the even funnier voice; later on, the talk show circuit only confirmed what had long been the popular consensus: more celebrity than author. Way at the other end of the spectrum was B. Traven, an author so reclusive he could have doubled for a mob snitch in witness protection (when John Houston negotiated with Traven's supposed assistant for the rights to TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE, the conviction remained thereafter that it had been Traven in disguise with whom he had actually dealt). Squarely in the middle of our writer versus writing popularity poll, however, sits John O'Hara. A bestselling author, darling of the New Yorker, source for huge cinematic adaptations starring the likes of Paul Newman and Gary Cooper--few, on the basis of works alone, could, in his time, admit to an ignorance of John O'Hara, the writer. Of equal note, however, was John O'Hara the man, an individual capable of such self-promotion you'd think he saw himself as another B. Traven--except, in O'Hara's case, annonymous against his will. Without shame, he bargained for honory doctorates and whored after Nobel committees--most often voiding his precarious candidacy to the very degree he seconded his own nomination. Nor did one need to be a psychiatrist to diagnose the source of his painfully obvious inferiority complex; that source rang out loudly and clearly in all of his whining and all of his work: in the contest for class distinction that was still the soccer match of his time, fate, that nearsighted referee, had arbitrarily killed his chance to join the precious elite, removed from his grasp the coveted Cup with a single questionable call: his father, a successful M.D., had, for our purposes, kept his appointment in Samarra. Struck down with his father's demise "forever"--in the petrified "forever" where the damaged psyche "forever" licks the same wound--was money for Yale and any life more glamorous than his next step down: grungy cup reporter for a minor Pennsylvania paper. The fact that he would attain riches and fame unequalled by any writer of his generation mattered little to either O'Hara the writer or O'Hara the man: O'Hara the writer continued to the end of his days his brutal prosecution of the class system that had thrust him out in the cold--O'Hara the man, at the very bosom of the privileges he sought, continued his tirade against the elite that had denied him suck at an obscure juncture in his early twenties. Oddly enough, the cry-baby out of control in the man was kept in check on the page: his literary dissection of his enemy, the social elite and the system that had put them there, though brutal, remained reasoned and real throughout his life. While his standing in American letters is perhaps the most precarious of any author of the last century, APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA, considered his best work, has shown up on that century's best one hundred novels lists more than once, and his output has garnered the praise of no less a craftsman than John Updike.APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA is prefaced by a parable of early origin and featured in a play by W. Somerset Maugham--it is from this fragment that the novel derives its title. Briefly, the parable concerns the inescapability of one's fate in the person of death, the appointment in Samarra for which we are all destined. From this foreshadowing, we sense already what the novel has in store for its protagonist, Julian English, upper class owner of a dealership dealing in that emblem of upperclasses everywhere, the Cadillac. What marks the difference between the openning parable and the novel's substance is, of course, the wounded psyche of John O'Hara. In the Samarra parable, fate, in the form of death, is a blind factor X--the author makes no attempt to define the inevitable beyond assuring us of its inevitability. But, fate, as we have seen, has an entirely different meaning for the author of the book. There was nothing unknown about the fate that gelded O'Hara's psyche, that forever injured his self-esteem; the glancing blow he received was not from death--it was from the monied class to which sudden poverty had forever denied him membership. Death in the parable is the instrument of fate; death in the novel is a suicide, by personal choice, and is only fate's result. In the novel, it is class that is fate's weapon, and social downfall--rather than death--that is what is inevitable (at least in the minds of those who, like Julian--and, ironically, O'Hara--are class-obsessed). APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA is nothing so much as Julian's drunken stagger through the punishing gauntlet of a society defending the taboos he has broken. Throw a drink in the face of a glad-handing associate who's a well-liked Catholic, but don't expect the Catholic community to continue its patronage of your WASP dealership. Physically fight a crippled relation of your wife before onlookers at your country club, but don't expect your membership to be renewed. Publically make a play for a bootlegger's floozy, in front of your wife, no less, but don't expect the missus in your bed the next morning (if the bootlegger doesn't get to you first). Like one drunken step follows another until all footing is lost, Julian's missteps stagger from reality and into his imagination, and it is there, through exaggeration of his defeat rather than its realization, he comes to Samarra by his own hand. As in O'Hara's own mind, so important is Julian's social status to his well-being, that even imagining his dethronement is fuel enough for suicide. In what is the novel's greatest flaw, a clumsy epilogue follows Julian's death in which major and minor characters reflect on his passing. It is revealed that it was only imagination that drove him to suicide afterall, for all those he wronged were prepared to give him a pass. If only O'Hara himself were that prescient about his own class obsession. Well, he might have been a less tiresome person to be around, but would he have left us such a clear and unsentimental dissection of the society in which he lived?
    • 4/5
      A very well and delicately written book that I liked very much toward the beginning but which ended up boring me a little toward the end. Still, rather nice.