Critical Overview
The book underwent several rapid printings, a testament to its popularity with the public. O’Hara had found his audience and would go on to publish books for nearly the next four decades. His peers, too, praised his freshman effort. Ernest Hemingway wrote of Appointment in Samarra: “If you want to read a book by a man who knows exactly what he is writing about and has written it marvelously well, read Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara.” Dorothy Parker, who was something of a mentor to O’Hara, pointed out that “Mr. O’Hara’s eyes and ears have been spared nothing, but he has kept in his heart a curious and bitter mercy.” Parker’s comments reflect the acclaim given to O’Hara’s descriptive flair and ear for dialogue that is especially sharp in his first novel.
Just as there were mixed reviews for Appointment in Samarra upon its release, contemporary times have not extinguished the ongoing debate over O’Hara’s merits. For example, when the Modern Library released its list of the top 100 best twentieth- century English-language novels in 1998, Appointment in Samarra was ranked at No. 22, a fact that caused much furor and opened the door for ridicule of the list as a whole by a number of contemporary critics.
Ten years prior to the issuance of the Modern Library list, John Updike looked at Appointment in Samarra in hindsight in an article in the May 2, 1988, issue of The New Republic entitled, “Reconsideration: Appointment in Samarra—O’Hara’s messy masterpiece.” Updike tells of his first experience with the book:
I first read Appointment as a teenager (because, I suppose, the scandal of it in Pottsville had stirred waves still felt in Reading [Pennsylvania], 40 miles away, 15 years later); this monstrous mad drink, and Julian’s sodden retreat to the interior of his Cadillac, seemed to me then overwhelmingly dreadful—a liquid vortex opening a hole in the workaday world about me. How surprisingly brief, on rereading, the sentences are! [Dorothy] Parker correctly spoke of the book’s ‘almost unbelievable pace.’
Despite the passage of more than fifty years (at the time of the article’s publication), Updike insists:
The ‘slight’ novel . . . has lasted. Though O’Hara wrote many more, and produced volumes of short stories as bulky as bulky novels, he never surpassed the artistic effect achieved by Appointment in Samarra. He belongs, with Hawthorne and Hemingway, to the distinguished company of American novelists whose first published novel is generally felt to be their best.
Several years later, Margo Jefferson, reviewing the re-release of Appointment in Samarra in 1995 in The New York Times Book Review, said of the novel (along with Butterfield 8) that they “deserve to be back in print: it’s amazing how much [O’Hara] got right.”
Finally, Benjamin and Christina Schwarz wrote in their article “John O’Hara’s Protectorate” in the March 2000 issue of The Atlantic Monthly:
Today’s reader can still appreciate the taut Appointment in Samarra . . . even if he or she is puzzled by the enormous significance O’Hara placed on the differences between drivers of the comparably priced Buick and Franklin.
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