Appointment in Samarra
About this book
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.
Reader Profile
3.8/5 · 16665 readers · 301 pages · ≈ 5 h 34 m · Challenging
How long does it take to read Appointment in Samarra?
About ≈ 5 h 34 m — 301 pages, assuming roughly 250 words per page at 225 words per minute.
How many pages is Appointment in Samarra?
301 pages in its most-read edition.
What genre is Appointment in Samarra?
It sits on the Fiction shelves.
Is Appointment in Samarra in the public domain?
No — it is still under copyright.
Where does Appointment in Samarra take place?
It is set in Pennsylvania.
Who wrote Appointment in Samarra?
John O'Hara (1905–1970).