The epigraph of O'Hara's novel is a portentous Arabic fable about a man's inability to escape his appointment with death. So, expectedly, as the reader follows Julian English over the course of 3 alcohol-infused days, there's a tangible sense of doom. Despite his outward success and facade of respectability (a lovely home, comfortable job, society friends, devoted and beautiful wife), Julian English is dissatisfied and his dissatisfaction manifests in destruction.
While the novel was modern in its time, I enjoyed journeying back to the atmosphere of the 30s with its Prohibition, mobsters, wartime tension, and sexual restraint (what seems like kabuki theater in O'Hara's novel was considered hugely vulgar when published). Many things have changed in 90+ years, but an American culture emphasizing materialism has certainly not. Julian's downward spiral is in many ways an embittered takedown of this, and perhaps his fate might reflect a society that prioritizes the wrong things.
The epigraph of O'Hara's novel is a portentous Arabic fable about a man's inability to escape his appointment with death. So, expectedly, as the reader follows Julian English over the course of 3 alcohol-infused days, there's a tangible sense of doom. Despite his outward success and facade of respectability (a lovely home, comfortable job, society friends, devoted and beautiful wife), Julian English is dissatisfied and his dissatisfaction manifests in destruction.
While the novel was modern in its time, I enjoyed journeying back to the atmosphere of the 30s with its Prohibition, mobsters, wartime tension, and sexual restraint (what seems like kabuki theater in O'Hara's novel was considered hugely vulgar when published). Many things have changed in 90+ years, but an American culture emphasizing materialism has certainly not. Julian's downward spiral is in many ways an embittered takedown of this, and perhaps his fate might reflect a society that prioritizes the wrong things.
The epigraph of O'Hara's novel is a portentous Arabic fable about a man's inability to escape his appointment with death. So, expectedly, as the reader follows Julian English over the course of 3 alcohol-infused days, there's a tangible sense of doom. Despite his outward success and facade of respectability (a lovely home, comfortable job, society friends, devoted and beautiful wife), Julian English is dissatisfied and his dissatisfaction manifests in destruction.
While the novel was modern in its time, I enjoyed journeying back to the atmosphere of the 30s with its Prohibition, mobsters, wartime tension, and sexual restraint (what seems like kabuki theater in O'Hara's novel was considered hugely vulgar when published). Many things have changed in 90+ years, but an American culture emphasizing materialism has certainly not. Julian's downward spiral is in many ways an embittered takedown of this, and perhaps his fate might reflect a society that prioritizes the wrong things.
The epigraph of O'Hara's novel is a portentous Arabic fable about a man's inability to escape his appointment with death. So, expectedly, as the reader follows Julian English over the course of 3 alcohol-infused days, there's a tangible sense of doom. Despite his outward success and facade of respectability (a lovely home, comfortable job, society friends, devoted and beautiful wife), Julian English is dissatisfied and his dissatisfaction manifests in destruction.
While the novel was modern in its time, I enjoyed journeying back to the atmosphere of the 30s with its Prohibition, mobsters, wartime tension, and sexual restraint (what seems like kabuki theater in O'Hara's novel was considered hugely vulgar when published). Many things have changed in 90+ years, but an American culture emphasizing materialism has certainly not. Julian's downward spiral is in many ways an embittered takedown of this, and perhaps his fate might reflect a society that prioritizes the wrong things.
The epigraph of O'Hara's novel is a portentous Arabic fable about a man's inability to escape his appointment with death. So, expectedly, as the reader follows Julian English over the course of 3 alcohol-infused days, there's a tangible sense of doom. Despite his outward success and facade of respectability (a lovely home, comfortable job, society friends, devoted and beautiful wife), Julian English is dissatisfied and his dissatisfaction manifests in destruction.
While the novel was modern in its time, I enjoyed journeying back to the atmosphere of the 30s with its Prohibition, mobsters, wartime tension, and sexual restraint (what seems like kabuki theater in O'Hara's novel was considered hugely vulgar when published). Many things have changed in 90+ years, but an American culture emphasizing materialism has certainly not. Julian's downward spiral is in many ways an embittered takedown of this, and perhaps his fate might reflect a society that prioritizes the wrong things.
