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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I never really got into this book completely. Normally, I'm interested in books about the "smart set" that take place in the 1930's, but for some reason this book was just a bit too depressing for me. I may have missed something, but I'm not sure what led Julian on his path of self-destruction, so I was left wondering. O'Hara is praised for using real dialog in his novels, but did people really talk like that in the 1930's? Maybe so, but I'm not convinced. I'll take an F. Scott Fitzgerald or Hemingway novel over this one.
This is a book I was assigned in college and then promptly failed to read-- honestly, this happened less often than you'd think, but this was one of those that slipped through the cracks, so until I started reading this two weeks ago, I really did think Julian English had lunch plans in the Middle East! I think I must've got it crossed, somehow, with Under the Volcano? It's hard to say.
At any rate, I read Butterfield 8 earlier this year and was totally blown away, so when I saw a chance to get this book, I snapped it up and was excited to read it. To me, at least, it's not as good a book as Butterfield-- it feels more like an authorially driven book, from the opening epigraph which pretty much gives it away to the end, and English didn't grab me as a character the way the woman at the center of the other book did; I felt like English was primarily meant to be a stand-in for some people that O'Hara knew and wanted to talk about, and that he failed to come to life as a real character instead of an exemplar or stand-in.
Which is not to say there aren't incredibly lovely things here-- there are these inserts, usually in the form of the long flashbacks that are supposed to explain that characters and the setting that I think are masterful-- interesting, insightful, and sharp, they remind me in places of similar moves in Winesburg, OH, though here I think they are a little less inflected with colloquialisms, to good or bad effect. But it's bracing, in some ways, to see a writer who really did make an effort to understand the world his characters spring from-- it feels like an artistic strategy that is so far away from the non-intrusive style of most "realist" writers today that you kind of want to applaud when you see it. I don't know-- I wanted to applaud, but it's just as likely if I had read this book when it was assigned and I was 19, these sections would've made me want to throw the book across the room and holler, in the words of my dad, "like fun it is!"
At any rate, I'm not that reader anymore, and really enjoyed a lot of this, but I felt, like I sometimes do, that the character and story at the center of it wasn't up to the level of the best stuff here.
At any rate, I read Butterfield 8 earlier this year and was totally blown away, so when I saw a chance to get this book, I snapped it up and was excited to read it. To me, at least, it's not as good a book as Butterfield-- it feels more like an authorially driven book, from the opening epigraph which pretty much gives it away to the end, and English didn't grab me as a character the way the woman at the center of the other book did; I felt like English was primarily meant to be a stand-in for some people that O'Hara knew and wanted to talk about, and that he failed to come to life as a real character instead of an exemplar or stand-in.
Which is not to say there aren't incredibly lovely things here-- there are these inserts, usually in the form of the long flashbacks that are supposed to explain that characters and the setting that I think are masterful-- interesting, insightful, and sharp, they remind me in places of similar moves in Winesburg, OH, though here I think they are a little less inflected with colloquialisms, to good or bad effect. But it's bracing, in some ways, to see a writer who really did make an effort to understand the world his characters spring from-- it feels like an artistic strategy that is so far away from the non-intrusive style of most "realist" writers today that you kind of want to applaud when you see it. I don't know-- I wanted to applaud, but it's just as likely if I had read this book when it was assigned and I was 19, these sections would've made me want to throw the book across the room and holler, in the words of my dad, "like fun it is!"
At any rate, I'm not that reader anymore, and really enjoyed a lot of this, but I felt, like I sometimes do, that the character and story at the center of it wasn't up to the level of the best stuff here.
Interesting. Not a perennial masterpiece, I think, but very interesting. For its often lauded (or condemned) frank treatment of sexuality -- at the intermediate stage between uptight Victorian reticence and post 60s lyrical Updikean abandonment. For other period detai. But mainly, for me, for its dialogue.
Too many characters are sometimes introduced in a rush, and there's rather a lot of statistical/historical accuracy about the small town life it describes. But it never gets out of hand, and what especially struck me: a tremendous amount of astonishingly credible, lively, very natural sounding dialogue. You walk around in the same world you know from the 30s and 40s films, and you recognize some of the same vernacular expressions. But it's without all the stiltedness and the tommygun rapidness of the hardboiled flicks, it sounds terribly real and relaxed. Sometimes meandering and seemingly irrelevant, but never quite that. The dialogue really was one of the highlights of this novel for me. No obvious oneliners or other witticisms, but it makes the talk all the more real.
To me it was worth reading it for that dialogue alone. It was more interesting than the main narrative of Julian English' decline (which seems a bit pointless, unnecessary). Maybe you could say that what the novel lacks in urgency, it makes up for in naturalist and period piece detail.
Too many characters are sometimes introduced in a rush, and there's rather a lot of statistical/historical accuracy about the small town life it describes. But it never gets out of hand, and what especially struck me: a tremendous amount of astonishingly credible, lively, very natural sounding dialogue. You walk around in the same world you know from the 30s and 40s films, and you recognize some of the same vernacular expressions. But it's without all the stiltedness and the tommygun rapidness of the hardboiled flicks, it sounds terribly real and relaxed. Sometimes meandering and seemingly irrelevant, but never quite that. The dialogue really was one of the highlights of this novel for me. No obvious oneliners or other witticisms, but it makes the talk all the more real.
To me it was worth reading it for that dialogue alone. It was more interesting than the main narrative of Julian English' decline (which seems a bit pointless, unnecessary). Maybe you could say that what the novel lacks in urgency, it makes up for in naturalist and period piece detail.
While Jay Gatsby was throwing lavish parties and mooning over Daisy Buchanan out in West Egg, middle-class Julian English slowly unravels amongst the country club set in suburban Gibbsville, PA. Julian has all the advantages in life, yet seethes with amorphous resentments and self-doubts. O'Hara starts out with a light touch and ambles his way to the dark and inevitable (and telegraphed by the epigraph that gives the novel is title) end. Preceding Mad Men by a good 70 years, O'Hara deftly throws light on the dark underbelly of the American Dream.
I read someplace that fans of F. Scott Fitzgerald should read this novel, which O'Hara titled after the short-short story. I cannot get a link to work but you can google Appointment in Samarra and Maugham. One of the blurbs described this book as "The real Great Gatsby," and I can see the parallels.
It is Christmas 1930 and the Great Depression is kicking into high gear. Julian English throws a drink into the face of another man at his club, and the fallout from this faux pas reveals the cracks in English's marriage and his perilous perch at the top of Gibbsville's social order.
The story is depressing, but O'Hara's ability to build characters through tiny incidents makes this novel a worthwhile read. While the sexual references in the book are tame by 21st century standards, they were somewhat revolutionary in the 1930s.
Recommended if you like a good character study and can handle some unpleasant references to Jews and Catholics.
It is Christmas 1930 and the Great Depression is kicking into high gear. Julian English throws a drink into the face of another man at his club, and the fallout from this faux pas reveals the cracks in English's marriage and his perilous perch at the top of Gibbsville's social order.
The story is depressing, but O'Hara's ability to build characters through tiny incidents makes this novel a worthwhile read. While the sexual references in the book are tame by 21st century standards, they were somewhat revolutionary in the 1930s.
Recommended if you like a good character study and can handle some unpleasant references to Jews and Catholics.
I took a little hiatus from the list after finishing Henry Miller in order to give Ann some time to catch up. She has way more obligations than I do, which means she has way less time to read. But now that she is long done with I, Claudius and well into Tropic of Cancer, we can safely proceed.
It was so lovely to return to "normal" fiction. Graves's novel was more or a historical recounting (however well written), and Miller was experimental and self-cousciously weak narratively. With O'Hara, we have something more classical, with a protagonist; a problem; a beginning, middle, and end. Oh, sweet joy!
This was the first novel since Light in August to have characters and characterizations that I could really sink my teeth into. The plot here is driven by the characters. And while most of the characters are interesting and well-developed, Julian English is of course the centerpiece of our view of Gibbsville. There is a lot not to like about Julian. He has racist impulses, he cheats on his wife, and he turns to alcohol an awful lot. But O'Hara does an impressive job of making Julian very sympathetic and understandable. The things he does, he does for a reason. And his negative actions and thoughts are balanced by his self-criticisms (or is that self-loathing?) and his knowledge that he has to face up to things. I found the scene in which he returns to Caroline after trying to reconcile with Reilly the first time very touching. He takes those steps slowly and heavily to let her know what happened. He does not mislead her for sex. Similarly, after he has his fight at the club and is driving out of town, he comes to his senses and realizes that he cannot run away, that he must return and meet with Lute. He is funny and endearing even as we watch him make mistake after mistake. O'Hara lets our feelings for Julian be an entire experience, where we can sit outside and critique Julian but at the same time nod with each decision, understanding why. When he climbs into the running car to end his life, we see how trapped he is (or at least how trapped he feels) and can't condemn even if we don't condone.
O'Hara's attempt to treat Caroline the same was is impressive, even as it comes up short. I got the feeling that the heart of Caroline had many chambers that O'Hara couldn't access. He knew of the complexities; he knew of the disappointments; he knew that hidden desires existed; But I think that in the end he didn't know the specifics or how they played out. His one train-of-thought passage from inside Caroline's mind, something he does with no other character, not even Julian, shows that he was going to extreme lengths to get in there. In fact, I was so happy to see an author have such lively and human female characters. Caroline, Irma, Frances, Libby, Alice -- they all exhibit the same racist, defensive, combative, and carnal traits that the men of the novel do.
The racism in the novel seems to be something other than gratuitous. The novel is filled with groups with strict borders. There is the Lantenengo Street people and the regular Joes. The Catholics and the Protestants. The club members and the guests and those entirely excluded. The Jews. The Poles. The Irish. The younger kids and the young adults. All those boundaries crossed and mingled at points, but they could harden in a heartbeat and create social pressures and problems. It is all these hardening borders that isolate Julian at the end of the novel. He sees himself ruined with Reilly, cut off by the Catholics, despised by the Irish, Pollocks, and veterans, too old for the young girls, denied by the women of his age, hated by people he thought were friends but who would side with Caroline and/or Reilly, and he has an enemy in Ed Charney as far as he knows. The small town politics leave nowhere for him to go. The novel feels observational in this respect. O'Hara is clearly critical, but he does not prescribe some solution or provide any exit. When the dust settles on Julian's suicide, life will continue in Gibbsville, and everyone else will suffer from the same structure. People will put two and two together and get five, as Reilly's sister points out. In this novel and in the minds of hungry observers, two plus two always equals five.
This post is now officially too long, so I'll merely add a few concluding thoughts and questions. The title and opening narrative suggest and interesting interplay between fate and the decisions we make. Julian's death is determined long before it occurs, and all his decisions, no matter what he intends, lead him straight and inevitably to that point. Or is there more to it than that?
Julian's nickname is Ju. Is this related to the racism of the novel, in which Ju is a homonym for Jew?
Why begin and end with Lute and Irma? How do they set up the world of the novel and the values and concerns at issue? Is it important that this novel happens in the first year after the stock market crash of 1929? Why do we spend so much time with Al Grecco when he plays such a small part in the novel and absolutely no part in the conclusion?
Cue the crickets.
It was so lovely to return to "normal" fiction. Graves's novel was more or a historical recounting (however well written), and Miller was experimental and self-cousciously weak narratively. With O'Hara, we have something more classical, with a protagonist; a problem; a beginning, middle, and end. Oh, sweet joy!
This was the first novel since Light in August to have characters and characterizations that I could really sink my teeth into. The plot here is driven by the characters. And while most of the characters are interesting and well-developed, Julian English is of course the centerpiece of our view of Gibbsville. There is a lot not to like about Julian. He has racist impulses, he cheats on his wife, and he turns to alcohol an awful lot. But O'Hara does an impressive job of making Julian very sympathetic and understandable. The things he does, he does for a reason. And his negative actions and thoughts are balanced by his self-criticisms (or is that self-loathing?) and his knowledge that he has to face up to things. I found the scene in which he returns to Caroline after trying to reconcile with Reilly the first time very touching. He takes those steps slowly and heavily to let her know what happened. He does not mislead her for sex. Similarly, after he has his fight at the club and is driving out of town, he comes to his senses and realizes that he cannot run away, that he must return and meet with Lute. He is funny and endearing even as we watch him make mistake after mistake. O'Hara lets our feelings for Julian be an entire experience, where we can sit outside and critique Julian but at the same time nod with each decision, understanding why. When he climbs into the running car to end his life, we see how trapped he is (or at least how trapped he feels) and can't condemn even if we don't condone.
O'Hara's attempt to treat Caroline the same was is impressive, even as it comes up short. I got the feeling that the heart of Caroline had many chambers that O'Hara couldn't access. He knew of the complexities; he knew of the disappointments; he knew that hidden desires existed; But I think that in the end he didn't know the specifics or how they played out. His one train-of-thought passage from inside Caroline's mind, something he does with no other character, not even Julian, shows that he was going to extreme lengths to get in there. In fact, I was so happy to see an author have such lively and human female characters. Caroline, Irma, Frances, Libby, Alice -- they all exhibit the same racist, defensive, combative, and carnal traits that the men of the novel do.
The racism in the novel seems to be something other than gratuitous. The novel is filled with groups with strict borders. There is the Lantenengo Street people and the regular Joes. The Catholics and the Protestants. The club members and the guests and those entirely excluded. The Jews. The Poles. The Irish. The younger kids and the young adults. All those boundaries crossed and mingled at points, but they could harden in a heartbeat and create social pressures and problems. It is all these hardening borders that isolate Julian at the end of the novel. He sees himself ruined with Reilly, cut off by the Catholics, despised by the Irish, Pollocks, and veterans, too old for the young girls, denied by the women of his age, hated by people he thought were friends but who would side with Caroline and/or Reilly, and he has an enemy in Ed Charney as far as he knows. The small town politics leave nowhere for him to go. The novel feels observational in this respect. O'Hara is clearly critical, but he does not prescribe some solution or provide any exit. When the dust settles on Julian's suicide, life will continue in Gibbsville, and everyone else will suffer from the same structure. People will put two and two together and get five, as Reilly's sister points out. In this novel and in the minds of hungry observers, two plus two always equals five.
This post is now officially too long, so I'll merely add a few concluding thoughts and questions. The title and opening narrative suggest and interesting interplay between fate and the decisions we make. Julian's death is determined long before it occurs, and all his decisions, no matter what he intends, lead him straight and inevitably to that point. Or is there more to it than that?
Julian's nickname is Ju. Is this related to the racism of the novel, in which Ju is a homonym for Jew?
Why begin and end with Lute and Irma? How do they set up the world of the novel and the values and concerns at issue? Is it important that this novel happens in the first year after the stock market crash of 1929? Why do we spend so much time with Al Grecco when he plays such a small part in the novel and absolutely no part in the conclusion?
Cue the crickets.
If you like Hemingway and Fitgerald, this is another expat drunk who can write like the wind...
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes