appointment in samarra: a call for sotted suggestions · May 19, 04:41 PM by j.
In the novel I’m currently writing, Tree Listener (see some shameless self-promotion here), the protagonist is a 39-year-old recovering alcoholic named Wayne who’s white-knuckling his way through sobriety. (He also has a gift for tree listening, but that’s beside the point here.) Anyway, a very good friend and fellow fiction writer (shout out to you, PC) recently read the first 60 or so pages, and he had some qualms about the form-meets-content nature of the alcoholism aspect, namely that it wasn’t jiving. I couldn’t agree more. Hence, after about a week of freaking out, a new and improved draft is underway, largely due to what I’ve begun reading: books where at least one of the characters is a stumbling drunk, albeit wet or dry.
And so what better place to begin than with Appointment in Samarra, John O’Hara’s debut novel from 1934. His protagonist is Julian English, a silver spoonfed 30-year-old who brings the term self-destruction to a whole new level. With the help of alcohol – Scotch mostly, with the occasional rye and ginger ale thrown in when the Scotch is gone – English manages to essentially ruin his life in the short span of three days. While you might not be surprised to learn that this book is a bit of a tragic read, the story itself is told with an unmistakable energy and, believe it or not, beauty. I mean, good God, O’Hara can even make a hangover sound lovely: “It is a pretty good hangover when you look at yourself in the mirror and can see nothing above the bridge of your nose. You do not see your eyes, nor the condition of your hair. You see your beard, almost hair by hair; and the hair on your chest and the bones that stick up at the base of your neck. You see your pajamas and the lines in your neck, and the stuff on your lower lip that looks as though it might be blood but never is. You first brush your teeth, which is an improvement but leaves something to be desired. Then you try Lavoris and then an Eno’s. By the time you get out of the bathroom you are ready for another cigarette and in urgent need of coffee or a drink, and you wish to God you could afford to have a valet tie your shoes. You have a hard time getting your feet into your trousers, but you finally make it, having taken just any pair of trousers, the first your hands touched in the closet. But you consider a long, long time before selecting a tie. You stare at the ties; stare and stare at them, and you look down at your thighs to see what color suit you are going to be wearing. Dark gray. Practically any tie will go with a dark gray suit.”
See what I mean? A poetic hangover if I ever read one.
My students know that one of the things I love most is restraint. “Resist the urge,” I tell them, probably more often than they’d like. And that’s perhaps what I most respect from O’Hara here. He never says that English is an alcoholic; he doesn’t have to. And yes, it’s because he shows us, but not in the way that you might think. Let me explain. Over the course of the novel’s three days, there are three major events that spur English deeper and deeper into the shame and destruction that ultimately undoes him. Interestingly enough, however, O’Hara doesn’t directly show us the first two – he instead leans on imagination, the power of suggestion, and the reliable rumor mill of a small town; the third is a fight that happens fast and messy. O’Hara skips these pivotal acts in favor of focusing on English’s more subtle actions, details that reveal his true character and state of mind – English hiding out all night in a locker room with a bottle of scotch under the false pretense of waiting for a priest, English slurring drunkenly while hitting on the girlfriend of a mob boss, English with that pretty good hangover previously mentioned. Ultimately, English only cares about two things: what others think of him, and drinking, and through O’Hara’s unadorned yet energetic prose, he does a profound job of showing how each of these priorities is a direct result of the other.
The penultimate chapter demonstrates this clearly. When things finally go black for English, it is because of the painful words of others that play back incessantly in his head: “Wish Julian English would act his age. He’s always cutting in. His own crowd won’t have him…No thanks, Julian, I’d rather walk…Julian, I wish you wouldn’t call me so much. My father gets furious…Listen, you leave my sister alone.” And what follows seems inevitable: “He had a drink. He had another and he got up and took off his coat and vest and tie. He had another and he brought the Scotch over and stood the bottle on the floor, and he got out his favorite records…He drank while walking and this demonstrated the inadequacy of the glass. He had a smart idea. He took the flowers out of a vase and poured the water out, and made himself the biggest highball he ever had seen. It did not last very long…He spun a spoon around, and when it stopped he would play the record to which it pointed. He played only three records in this way, because he was pounding his feet, keeping time, and he broke one of his most favorite…He wanted to cry but he could not. He wanted to pick up the pieces. He reached over to pick them up, and lost his balance and sat down on another record, crushing it unmusically…He used the vase for resting-drinking, and the glass for moving-drinking. That way he did not disturb the main drink while moving around, and could fill the glass while getting up and sitting down…He found he had two cigarettes burning, one in the ash tray on the floor, and the other getting stuck in the varnish on the edge of the phonograph. He half planned a lie to explain how the burn got there and then, for the first time, he knew it would not make any difference.”
Wayne, my own protagonist, might be sober (though just barely), and clearly English is not, but both men are on a downward spiral that lasts just a handful of days, and in the end, the only man each has to blame is himself. Drinking is an addiction, a sickness, yes, but usually it blooms from something deep and painful and true. And blooms strikes me as just the right word here, because it’s true there’s nothing lovely about addiction, but surely it can be considered a kind of rebirth if one is able to overcome it.
And so I ask you, dear readers: what are your favorite books about drinking and/or sobering up? I’m open to anything and everything. On deck, I’ve got Fitzgerald ( Tender is the Night ), Burroughs ( Dry ), and London ( John Barleycorn ), plus I’m doing some of my own research, i.e. drinking a glass of Chinon as we speak. I mean, I’ve got to do something to lift my spirits considering all the tragic literature that awaits. So, suggestions?
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