“Appointment in Samarra”

The road was his. He wanted to drive on the left side and zigzag like an army transport and idle along at four miles an hour. But one time when he thought the road was his he had done all these things, finally to be arrested for drunken driving by a highway patrolman who had been following him all the while. “You’d think you owned the road,” the patrolman had said; and Julian could not answer that was exactly what he had been thinking.

Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara is said to be one of the best English language novels of the 20th century. Published in 1934, the novel takes place in Gibbsville, Pennsylvania in 1930. It’s Christmas Eve and anyone who is someone in Gibbsville is at the Lantenengo Country Club drinking, dancing, and having a good time. 30-year old Julian English, President of the local Cadillac dealership is there with his wife of four years, Caroline English. Friends since childhood, Mr. and Mrs. Julian M English are a part of the high standing younger set in town who believe the  world is theirs for the asking.

Gibbsville is a small mining town with a firm social caste system in place in 1930. There are the rich who made their money in coal and there are the doctors, lawyers, and bankers who live on Lantenengo Street – a street that guaranteed social acceptance unless  the occupants were “Jews or Negroes.”  The Catholics tend to stick together but socially they mix with other Christians at the Lantenengo Country Club – a club where membership is garnered through social contacts with like-minded persons.

There is also the working class – men who work in the mines or the service industries – and the men running their own games who have little use for those of the social hierarchy. Yes, life was insulated in Gibbsville where it is said “there is no life in the winter outside of rooms. Not in Gibbsville, which was a pretty small room itself.”

The story centers around the destructive life of Julian English who drinks too much. A troubled man, English soothes himself with whiskey and plenty of it which drives him to do things he wouldn’t otherwise do. At the country club on Christmas Eve, Julian throws a drink in the face of Harry Reilly, a self-made wealthy man who marches to the mantra of  “you can take the boy out of the patch, but you can’t take the patch out of the boy.”  From there, Julian’s life spins out of control as he vacillates between remorse, trying to make amends, and anesthesizing himself with more whiskey until the finale ending which will leave the reader wanting more.

…the trouble with making yourself feel better by thinking of bad things that other people have done is that you are the only one who is rounding up the stray bad things. No one but yourself bothers to make a collection of disasters. For the time being you are the hero or the villain of the thing that is uppermost in the minds of your friends and acquaintances.

Appointment in Samarra is more than a story about a drunk though. It’s a story about society and the social rules that dominate people’s lives and its a story about fate and destiny. Sometimes no matter how hard people try to change course or alter the inevitable, they just can’t help themselves.