22. John O'Hara, APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA

"Till the day you die I hope you never, never know what it feels like to have someone cut you open all the way down the front of you and let the freezing blast of air inside."

Thomas Hobbes once wrote that mankind life in the state of nature tends to be "nasty, brutish and short." John O'Hara would definitely agree with this description. This book was short (my Penguin Classics edition, the same one I could have hit a squirrel with, had HUGE text) and had its share of nastiness and brutishness -- a book it clearly influenced, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, looks optimistic by comparison -- but satisfying.

One night, Julian English, an upper-middle-class used-car dealer, married, no kids, gets drunk and throws a drink in someone's face at the country club. In the claustrophobic Pennsylvania town where he lives, doing this ruins his life; although he seems surprised at every turn at the consequences, we're not. Anyone's face would have been bad enough, but his target, Harry Reilly, is quite well-liked in town, a self-made man as opposed to Julian's inherited wealth; he's also part of the town's vocal Catholic minority, and the allegations by other people in town of prejudice seem to be... not completely unfounded. (We later find out there's another really good reason he shouldn't have thrown a drink at him.)

I thought this book was incredibly well-constructed; there wasn't a lot of action in terms of people going off and doing things, but the shifts in perspective between Julian, his wife Caroline and Al Grecco, a local mob operative, kept up the pace. Historically speaking, it's also a useful reminder that the Great Depression, during which this book is set, didn't affect the entire country equally -- extremely obvious point I know, but it bears repeating. The Englishes' hometown of Gibbsville is more affected by Prohibition, which (unsurprisingly, given how much Julian drinks) plays a crucial role in the story. And, as in REVOLUTIONARY ROAD and "Mad Men," there's the shadow of a war -- in this case, World War I -- and the issue of Julian's non-service is thrown at him in a way that makes you suspect it is always brought up when someone really wants to wound him, like Philip Carey's foot.

At the same time, I had trouble getting a handle on Julian. His unreliability is established so early on that what he said didn't seem to matter -- when it wasn't "I love scotch. Scotch, scotchy scotch" -- but the rumors about his behavior that he is forced to confront after the incident suggest no one around him is particularly inclined to tell the truth, either. I felt closest to deciphering who he was in a flashback about him running away at fourteen, and via Caroline, who describes him as "turning on the charm like the water in the tub."

No one in Julian and Caroline's circle owns a farm any more; their idea of nature is sneaking out onto the golf course at the country club with their lovers. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA could be taken as a negative to Thornton Wilder's "Our Town": if we leave farming entirely, our sons will become alcoholics and our daughters will be promiscuous. That's way more simplistic than O'Hara is setting out to be -- the chapter on a young Caroline falling in love and trying to decipher the related social mores is one of the best and subtlest in the novel -- but Julian and Caroline are no George and Emily, which root cause is explored in the book. But when I looked it up, I found out "Our Town" was actually written after APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA was published, which makes it look either reassuring or more blindly nostalgic. I love "Our Town," but it made me question that fondness, not that I minded. In fact, I definitely want to check out some of O'Hara's other work.

LN VS. ML: 51 read, 49 unread.

Next up: I've started #49 WOMEN IN LOVE on Dailylit already; otherwise, either #50 Henry Miller's TROPIC OF CANCER (despite strong warnings against it) or #92 William Kennedy's IRONWEED.