Immediately following World War I, a Spartan, flag-waving
attitude prevailed in the United States. In this environment
Prohibition went into effect, and critics of the homeland
spoke only in whispers. And then in walked H.L. Mencken, who
put fire to all things sacred with his intellectual torch,
and by the mid-Twenties it was fashionable to show a cynical
disdain for everything American, from morals to food to music
to literature. But Mencken's rants began on an intellectual
level, and what really brought this all to the common man is
two books written in the early 1920's by Sinclair Lewis, MAIN
STREET and BABBITT. The novels satirized and laid bare the
hypocrisy of existing society. Fourteen years later, with
hindsight on the Roaring Twenties, O'Hara relit the torch
with APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA.
John O'Hara was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania in 1905, the
son of a successful Irish Catholic surgeon, and as he moved
into his teens, the town grew and prospered from the richest
coal fields in the world until it hit a peak population in
1920 of over 20,000. But this was not the prosperity of
paradise; he watched with youthful eyes the whirlwind terror
of World War I, and then after the war, in the hard-drinking
gangster days of the Twenties, labor unrest came home to the
coal mines in the bloodiest and most violent struggle in
American history.
But these powerful issues are not what concerned O'Hara in
his writing or his life. Perhaps aggravated by religious
discrimination in his hometown, O'Hara was obsessed with
social climbing throughout his life, effectively alienating
him from many of his fellow writers and almost all the
critics. He harangued his friends of higher social standing
to get him into their clubs, and when he remained blackballed
by the most exclusive club in town, he managed to get playing
cards with the club's insignia, which he flaunted when
playing bridge with guests. His failure to attend Yale
tortured him conspicuously, enough so that Hemingway
suggested that contributions be collected to "start a bloody
fund to send John O'Hara to Yale." As if things couldn't get
any worse, he compensated for his social insecurity by
developing an obnoxious and overinflated vanity. He very
vocally and often declared his availability for a Nobel prize
in literature. He requested an honorary degree from Yale,
which they happily refused.
APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA, written before he turned 30,
is listed by the Modern Library as one of the top novels of
the 20th century. TEN NORTH FREDERICK won a National Book
Award in 1956. By the time of his death in 1970, his work
included 19 novels and over 400 stories. His novels had sold
over 40 million copies, with five of them made into
movies.
John O'Hara's wife chose as his epitaph, "Better than anyone
else, he told the truth about his time. He was a
professional. He wrote honestly and well." No finer words
could be said about a writer. O'Hara had written them about
himself.
In APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA, O'Hara mixes booze and sex and the
maddening restraints of society into a deadly cocktail. The
beginning of the Great Depression finds Julian English in the
small Pennsylvania town of Gibbsville, financially and
socially secure with his Cadillac dealership, beautiful wife,
and rich friends. But in spite of all this, he is
compulsively driven by some unknown inner force to destroy
everything he has. Starting with a drink thrown in the face
of a richer and more powerful acquaintance, Julian sets out
on a path of willful self-destruction.
SPOILER FOLLOWS!
The theme of APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA is the crushing effect on
the human spirit of an unreasonably restrictive society, and
a condemnation of those who accept these restrictions without
question. Edmund Wilson complained with some validity that
O'Hara never probes beneath the surface, but he
misunderstands when he states, "...yet the emotions that
drive him to suicide are never really shown." This is simply
not true. Julian English does show emotions, a vague,
undirected anger and hostility, with a fog of confusion that
surrounds it. Although this is evidently not sufficient for
Wilson, it is exactly O'Hara's point that this is all Julian
English is capable of feeling, given his psychologically
crippled upbringing.
The scene that most powerfully portrays the iron grip this
cruel set of societal rules has on its people doesn't even
involve Julian. It's between Caroline and her mother, when
Caroline goes to her for advice concerning a break between
her and Julian. On the surface her mother appears a gentle
and smiling and concerned person, but as the dialogue between
them progresses, it becomes obvious that her real concern is
not her daughter's welfare, but merely maintaining a proper
appearance in the community. With nary a crack in her kindly
demeanor, Caroline's mother refuses to discuss anything in
her or Caroline's life that she deems inappropriate, and
refuses to see or accept anything that contradicts the way
she thinks things should be.
miker
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