Appointment in Samarra (27 page)

story takes about three days, beginning slightly after midnight of Christmas Eve and ending about the same time two days later (the clock in Julian s Cadillac reads 10:41 when he smashes it with the whiskey bottle as he waits for the carbon monoxide to kill him). Except in the flashbacks, and seldom then, we never leave the environs of Gibbsville; and the stories of the various social groups in the novel are carefully connected to make the single story of Gibbsville. All this neatness would be ineffective, of course, if O Hara had not made the people and events of his story vividly true, as he has. The climax of the novel occurs Christmas night at the Stage Coach Inn; the scene is a virtuoso performance. At one table sits Helene Holman, aching to make an evening of it and as a consequence snapping at Al Grecco, guarding her for Ed Charney, the good family man who must stay home for Christmas. Nearby are Irma and Lute Fliegler with a dozen of their friends; everyone is a little drunk; several of the wives are quarreling in precisely the way wives of their social class do quarrel, and the men are busy trying to keep the party gay. Drinks! shouted Lute Fliegler. ... Vic, what s the matter with you? Not drinking?

I m going easy, said Vic Smith. You better, too, Lute Fliegler, said Irma Fliegler. No worse than a bad cold, Vic, said Lute. What was that strange noise I heard? he held his ear in the direction of Irma. Onto this scene erupt a group of people from the country-club dance, not exactly slumming, but certainly not regular patrons of the Stage Coach. We have seen none of them since Julian English, suddenly realizing that Caroline was not going to go out to the car with him at intermission as she had promised to do, had decided to get very drunk. He now is, with the result among others that he is filled with self-pity and vengeful rage at Caroline. He first joins Lute and Frances Snyder, now alone at their table. In his earnest, drunken way, Julian has decided be wants someone to give him a Scotch. Do you think Dutch [Snyder] has any Scotch, Luther? No, he only has rye, Lute says. (Lute and Irma had even contemplated bringing homemade gin to the party, but compromised on rye in two pint bottles so that the guests, seeing only one pint to begin with, would not drink the Flieglers liquor.) What of it? says Julian. Is it any my business who has rye or who has Scotch? Well. I think I have to leave you now, my friends. & I see little old Al Grecco over there and I think if I play my cards right I could get a drink of Scotch out of him. I understand he knows a fellow that can get it for you.

He joins Al Grecco while Helene is singing a number, and is immediately deep in conversation with him about the Scotch. ... Whereas, on the other hand, au contraire, au contraire, Al, uh, you uh, uh, somebody gives you a drink and that s like love. Why, say, who is this? It is Helene, who has spent the evening resenting the guard set over her and is ready for trouble. Julian dances with her, and Carter Davis comes over from the country club s table to try to take him out of danger by telling him that Caroline wants him; but Julian, reminded by Carter s maneuver that Caroline would not go out with him at intermission, says firmly and bitterly, I happen to know she doesn t. He then asks Helene to go out to the car with him; when they get there, he passes out, but the damage has been done. Caroline has been publicly humiliated, Ed Charney has been publicly defied, and Julian s friends have been disgusted. These are the consequences of Julian s vengeance on Caroline, and perhaps in some unconscious way he sought them too. In any event, he can never resist the impulse to strike out when he imagines people do not love him as he wants them to; later on, he beats up Froggy Ogden, who lost an arm in the war, because Froggy says he has always disliked Julian. As they drove home from the Stage Coach, Julian felt the tremendous excitement, the great thrilling lump in the chest and abdomen that comes before the administering of an unknown, well-deserved punishment. This is perhaps as near as we come to a real motive for his suicide. That afternoon at the office he had tried sticking a revolver in his mouth; this rehearsal for a suicide made him breathless with excitement and he felt his eyes get the way they got when he was being thrilled, big but sharp.

But whatever we may feel about the deep motive and meaning of Julian s conduct at the Stage Coach his immediate motives are clear and precise there can be no question of the overwhelming reality of the scene as a whole, of the way every character in it speaks and acts. Here, in a single moment of dramatic crisis, all the major elements of the life of Gibbsville come together the gangster roadhouse element, the domestic middle-class element on a rare spree, the country-club set on a big party. Under the pressure of this crisis, each reveals its nature fully, and they all ring clear and true. This is the aspect of American life O Hara understands with all the intense interest of the outsider who at once scorns the insider and wants to become one. There is no other novel in American literature that is truer or more alive in these respects than is Appointment in Samarra. ARTHUR MIZENER Cornell University