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John O'Hara (1905-1970) was an American writer born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. He is known for his short stories and best-selling novels, including Appointment in Samarra and Butterfield 8. He had an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue. O'Hara was a keen observer of social status and class differences, and wrote frequently about the socially ambitious.

Appointment in Samarra, published... More

John O'Hara (1905-1970) was an American writer born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. He is known for his short stories and best-selling novels, including Appointment in Samarra and Butterfield 8. He had an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue. O'Hara was a keen observer of social status and class differences, and wrote frequently about the socially ambitious.

Appointment in Samarra, published in 1934, was O'Hara's first novel. It concerns the self-destruction of Julian English, a member of the social elite of Gibbsville (O'Hara's fictionalized version of Pottsville, PA). A key motif in the novel is the role of destiny.

O'Hara took the title, 'Appointment in Samarra', from W. Somerset Maugham's play 'Sheppey'. Variations of this story have existed for over 1,000 years, including a 9th century Arab Sufi story, 'When Death Came to Baghdad,' and earlier as a Talmudic tale.

In his 1988 introduction, written for this facsimile edition, John Updike writes, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation, according to one of our few native sages, Thoreau. John O'Hara, as a doctor's son and as a newspaperman, and as a roisterer and the holder of many part-time jobs, saw exceptionally much of the seamy, disappointed side of American life, and part of his expertise was not to melodramatize it, or to forget that the human will sparkles in even the dingiest folds of the social fabric. Appointment in Samarra does not leave us with the tragic sense of a rigorous destruction that, say, Madame Bovary does. Julian keeps the dignity of doing it to himself. Caroline thinks, 'He was drunk, but he was Julian, drunk or not.' He goes out jokily, with a last clock-smashing gesture for 'the bastards,' and, like his creator, gave as good as he got."

In 1998, the Modern Library ranked 'Appointment in Samarra' twenty-second on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

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