Appointment in Samarra

[Quetzal]

From my local newspaper, the Honolulu Advertiser

[The Blue Flower]

1. chilling short story

I think about it everytime I hear Samarra mentioned on the news. Ominous.

[KlatooBNikto]

3. The best story John O'Hara ever wrote. Short, concise and builds to

its devastating climax.

[PSU84]

4. It's a novel,

not a short story. Available in hardcover from Modern Library. Named one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.

[KlatooBNikto]

5. I called it a short story because John O'Hara's novels are usually very

lengthy and Appointment in Samarra was a departure from his usual lengthy works.Regardles of what we may call it, it remains one the great classics of our literature.

[PSU84]

2. Appointment in Samarra

Points of No Return
The Bush administration’s decisions in the Middle East are as irreversible as they are disastrous. But being president means never having to say you’re sorry.

By Christopher Dickey, Newsweek online exclusive April 28, 2004

Ever since it became clear toward the end of 2001 that the Bush administration was headed for war with Iraq, I’ve been thinking about John O’Hara’s classic 1934 novel “Appointment in Samarra.” Although the title refers to a town north of Baghdad,* the story is actually about a Cadillac dealer in Pennsylvania. After a few too many drinks one Christmas eve, he makes a fatally stupid gesture, and nothing he can do afterward will retrieve the moment or stop the tragic series of events it sets in motion.

*The O’Hara novel took its title from a story about fate re-told by W. Somerset Maugham in the voice of Death:

“There was a merchant in Bagdad 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 marketplace 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 marketplace 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 Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

John O'Hara born Pottsville, PA 1905, died Princeton, NJ 1970.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4854960/

[starroute]

6. Originally a ninth century Sufi teaching story

According to a Terry Pratchett annotations site:

"Over the centuries, countless versions and re-tellings of this story have appeared in books, plays and poems in all languages and cultures. One of my correspondents was so intrigued by the tale that with the help of alt.fan.pratchett he set out to find the original, or at least the earliest known version. After much research, he now believes this to be When Death Came to Baghdad, an old ninth century Middle Eastern Sufi teaching story, told by Fudail ibn Ayad in his Hikayat-i-Naqshia ('Tales formed according to a design')."

http://www.ie.lspace.org/books/apf/the-colour-of-magic.html