122. Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara

Appointment in Samarra (1934) is John O’Hara’s first novel and one of the great texts of Depression-era America. It concerns the life and self-destructive career of Julian English, a preppy socialite who finally (spoiler here) commits suicide. But the title is rather odd. There is nothing in the book about Samarra, nor anything else Middle-Eastern (Samarra of course is in modern-day Iraq).

The title came about during a meeting with Dorothy Parker. O’Hara confessed he couldn’t think of a good title for his novel, and Parker mentioned a play called Sheppey, by Somerset Maugham. In the play there is a reference to an Arabian tale in which a Baghdad servant tries to elude Death by fleeing to Samarra, only to find that Death has already planned an ‘appointment’ with him there. The inevitability of death, therefore, is the reference. O’Hara reportedly said, on reading the play: ‘There’s my title.’ Parker replied, ‘Oh, I don’t think so, Mr O’Hara.’ But he ignored her, and later wrote: ‘Dorothy didn’t like the title, Alfred Harcourt [his publisher] didn’t like the title, his editors didn’t like it, nobody liked it but me. But I bullied it through.’

Consulted:
Bruccoli, Matthew Joseph: John O'Hara: A Documentary Volume‎ (2006)