Synopses & Reviews
The writer whom Fran Lebowitz compared to the author of The Great Gatsby, calling him the real F. Scott Fitzgerald,” makes his Penguin Classics debut with this beautiful deluxe edition of his best-loved book.
One of the great novels of small-town American life, Appointment in Samarra is John OHaras crowning achievement. In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.
Brimming with wealth and privilege, jealousy and infidelity, OHaras iconic first novel is an unflinching look at the dark side of the American dreamand a lasting testament to the keen social intelligence if a major American writer.
For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Review
“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.” —
Ernest Hemingway “Appointment in Samarra lives frighteningly in the mind.” —John Updike
Review
“With a dazzling new cover and smart new introduction, one of my favorite novels,
Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara, is reborn. . . . This novel about class, drinking and sex is fun—and incredibly smart.” —
Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune
“[A] gorgeous new edition . . . Appointment in Samarra still astonishes and amazes; and [OHaras] style and themes—a bridge, if you will, between F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Updike—remain painfully and beautifully relevant today.” —Huffington Post
“Suspenseful, character-driven—it deserves to be read more.” —Joshua Ferris, Details
“Transfixing . . . A Jazz Age novel set amidst the early throes of the Depression . . . A striking antidote to contemporary novels like Nathanael Wests Miss Lonelyhearts and Erskine Caldwells Tobacco Road, which remain startling for their implacably cynical view of humanity. OHara offers a more nuanced, and more subversive view of the national mood at the cusp of the Depression.” —Nathaniel Rich, The Daily Beast
“Nobody whos read it ever forgets Appointment in Samarra.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“An attractive new edition of Samarra, with deckled edges and a jazzy cover.” —The Philadelphia Review of Books
“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.” —Ernest Hemingway
“Appointment in Samarra lives frighteningly in the mind.” —John Updike
“It is alive with compelling characters and OHaras dead-on dialogue and sharp observations.” —Chicago Tribunes Printers Row
“[OHara] was as acute a social observer as Fitzgerald, as spare a stylist as Hemingway, and in his creation of Gibbsville, in western Pennsylvania, he invented a kind of small-bore variation on Faulkners Yoknapatawpha County.” —Los Angeles Times
“An author I love is John OHara. . . . I think hes been forgotten by time, but for dialogue lovers, hes a goldmine of inspiration.” —Douglas Coupland, Shelf Awareness
“OHara was one of Moms favorite authors. . . . ‘So I finally read Appointment in Samarra, I told her. ‘I'd always thought that book had something to do with Iraq. . . . ‘It does apply to Iraq, even if thats not at all what its about. Its a book about setting things in motion and then being too proud and stubborn to apologize and to change course. ” —from The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe
Review
“If ever an author was ripe for a critical rebranding, its John OHara. . . . And
Ten North Frederick in particular seems deserving of a fresh readership. . . . In the wake of the 2008 crash and the social volatility it engendered . . . the great American fairytale of class mobility is poised to become, once again, the next frontier in American literature. In that respect, as in many others, John OHara, whose work and whose persona could not appear more old-fashioned on their surfaces, turns out to have been miles ahead of us.” —
Jonathan Dee, from the Introduction
“I have several friends who have been urging me to read John OHara for years. . . . This is the first John OHara novel I have read, and I cant wait to read more. . . . Ten North Frederick is, without a doubt, a brilliant book. . . . You cant put it down. . . . As I write this, I have just finished reading all 77 of the National Book Award fiction winners. Now Im going to read more John OHara.” —Harold Augenbraum, executive director of the National Book Foundation
“OHara remains one of Americas greatest social novelists of the twentieth century . . . He captured one of the most far-reaching social transformations in American history. . . . To read [his Pennsylvania] novels is to enter an entire world. They work on the reader with an unspectacular but cumulative power.” —The Atlantic
“[OHara] was as acute a social observer as Fitzgerald, as spare a stylist as Hemingway, and in his creation of Gibbsville, in western Pennsylvania, he invented a kind of small-bore variation on Faulkners Yoknapatawpha County.” —Los Angeles Times
“Politics, sex and social intercourse—the finest, most discerning and compassionate novel he has written—one of the most distinguished works of modern fiction.” —The New York Post
“An author I love is John OHara. . . . I think hes been forgotten by time, but for dialogue lovers, hes a goldmine of inspiration.” —Douglas Coupland, Shelf Awareness
“OHara occupies a unique position in our contemporary literature. . . . He is the only American writer to whom America presents itself as a social scene in the way it once presented itself to Henry James, or France to Proust.” —Lionel Trilling, The New York Times
Synopsis
Chosen by Delia Ephron for the WSJ Book Club The writer whom Fran Lebowitz called "the real F. Scott Fitzgerald" makes his Penguin Classics debut with this beautiful deluxe edition of his best-loved book.
One of the great novels of small-town American life, Appointment in Samarra is John O'Hara's crowning achievement. In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.
Brimming with wealth and privilege, jealousy and infidelity, O'Hara's iconic first novel is an unflinching look at the dark side of the American dream--and a lasting testament to the keen social intelligence if a major American writer.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Synopsis
The National Book Awardwinning novel by the writer whom Fran Lebowitz called the real F. Scott Fitzgerald” Joe Chapin led a storybook life. A successful small-town lawyer with a beautiful wife, two over-achieving children, and aspirations to be president, he seemed to have it all. But as his daughter looks back on his life, a different man emerges: one in conflict with his ambitious and shrewish wife, terrified that the misdeeds of his children will dash his political dreams, and in love with a model half his age. With black wit and penetrating insight, Ten North Frederick stands with Richard Yates Revolutionary Road, Evan S. Connells Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge, the stories of John Cheever, and Mad Men as a brilliant portrait of the personal and political hypocrisy of mid-century America.
About the Author
John OHara (19051970) was among the most prominent American writers of the twentieth century. Championed by Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Dorothy Parker, he wrote fourteen novels, including
BUtterfield 8, which was made into a film starring Elizabeth Taylor, and had more stories published in the
New Yorker than anyone in the history of the magazine.
Charles McGrath is the former editor of
The New York Times Book Review and former deputy editor of
The New Yorker. He is currently a writer at large for
The New York Times.