John O’hara’s 1934 debut novel was written in the style of the American expatriate writers living in Paris during the 1920s, but it didn’t inspire me to crave anymore of his novels. Okay, I know he later wrote best sellers, Pal Joey and BUtterfield 8, which became popular movies, but I don’t have a warm and fuzzy fondness for this novel. I guess I’m still a descriptive writer fan and the only one left at that time was F. Scott Fitzgerald. O’Hara’s novel had the Ernest Hemmingway style of long narrative paragraphs sans any wasted descriptions. It’s a style that is somewhat carried on till this day, although slightly modified with a sprinkling of descriptive writing. It’s a ho-hum tale drawing together a Gibbsville (fictional town) Pennsylvania Cadillac dealer and his wife, a Cadillac salesman and his wife, a local wiseguy along with his entourage consisting of his girlfriend and his lackey. Sound exciting? All the action takes place during three days of the Christmas holiday mostly at the Gibbsville Country Club, a local restaurant/hotel or in the bedrooms. This is coal country excitement at its best. I did enjoy reminiscing the highball. When I was a youngster in the 1950s, I remember my dad serving highballs to guest during the Christmas holidays. At that time it was whiskey and ginger ale. Since then there are many variations of the highball. Anyway, can you build a story around throwing a drink in somebody’s face? Well, this novel kinda does.
On page one, “Our story opens in the mind of Luther L. (L for Leroy) Fliegler, who is lying in his bed, not thinking of anything, but just aware of sounds, conscious of his own breathing, and sensitive to his own heartbeats. Lying beside him is his wife, lying on her right side and enjoying her sleep.” Can the novel open with a sex scene between a Cadillac salesman and his wife? Yes indeed! “...and then turned and put his hands around his wife’s waist and caressed the little rubber tire of flesh across her diaphragm. She began to stir and then she opened her eyes and said, My God, Lute, what are you doing?” “Merry Christmas,” he said. And that’s the last the reader hears from the Flieglers for awhile because the scene switches to his boss and his wife at the Lantenengo Country Club. Luther says that he will not join the club till he can afford it. Meanwhile his boss, Julian English, and his wife, Caroline, are at the Lantenengo Country Club’s Christmas party. As usual, Julian is soused. How can that be...isn’t it Prohibition? Yes, but the coal town has a wiseguy, Ed Charney, who is supplying the club and the Stagecoach restaurant with all the booze they need. Ed owns the Stagecoach and has his bimbo girlfriend, Helene, singing at the hotel’s cocktail lounge. At the Lantenengo Country club, the drunken Julian visualizes throwing a drink into the face of the richest man in town, Harry Reilly, as Harry holds court telling one of his jokes.
The character Julian English appeared strange to me because he seemed to have his life made, yet he kept putting himself in difficult situations for no apparent reason. Okay, he probably was an alcoholic, but had a very desirable wife, a country club membership, and owned a Cadillac dealership. His strange behavior is never revealed in this novel. Why did Julian fantasize throwing a drink into the face of Harry Reilly? “The liquid, Julian reflected, would trickle down inside the waistcoat and down, down into Reilly’s trousers, so that even if the ice did not hurt his eye, the spots on his fly would be so embarrassing he would leave. And there was one thing Reilly could not stand; he could not stand being embarrassed." The narrator of the novel never describes the actual incident, but the reader learns of the deed by heresay. “The band was playing Something To Remember You By. The stag line was scattered over the floor by the time the band was working on the second chorus of the tune, and when Johnny Dibble suddenly appeared, breathless”..."Jeez, he said. Jeezozz H. Kee-rist. You hear about what just happened?” “No. No,” they said. “You didn’t? About Julian English?” “No. No. What was it?” “Julian English. He just threw a highball in Harry Reilly’s face. Jeest!” Okay, that part was pretty funny. All of this happened in the first fifteen pages. This was the start of Julian English’s downfall.
I know John O’Hara went on to become a great American writer...I just wasn’t partial to this novel. Did I hate It? Absolutely not! Sometimes it’s the luck of the draw. You want to read a novel from a classic writer and you just pick the wrong one. The one you would not like. Anyway, I will continue my quest to read all the so-called great authors. I give this novel an “okay” rating.
RATING: 3 out of 5 stars
Comment: I think that it’s interesting that John O’Hara got the idea for the title of his novel from W. Somerset Maugham’s retelling of an old Mesopotamian tale. The British writer known for his 1934 novel, Of Human Bondage, was supposedly the highest paid author during the 1930s. His retelling appears as an epigraph in John O’Hara’s novel.
DEATH SPEAKS:
There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the market-place and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
Was that precious, or what? I love literature!
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