What Are You Reading

[Harp]

View attachment 380867
Some Wore Bobby Sox: The Emergence of Teenage Girls' Culture 1920-1945 by Kelly Schrum published in 2004


"Teenage Girl Power" is nothing new according to author Kelly Schrum in Some Wore Bobby Sox as she avers it started in the 1920s with roots going back to the second half of the nineteenth century.

In the mid-to-late 1800s, industrialization led to urbanization which, combined with a general push from many in the public and government to keep children in school into their teen years, started the creation of a "teen" culture. Teens were now spending large amounts of time away from their parents and with other teens.

These inchoate trends gained momentum in the early years of the twentieth century, finally creating a true "teen culture" by the 1920s, three decades earlier than the 1950s when many often claim the teen-culture began.

Aiding and abetting this development was not only America's early-twentieth-century growing economic shift to mass-produced goods, but also its handmaiden national advertising. Everyone being able to buy the same things, hawked the same way, helped create a common culture across disparate parts of the country.

As author Schrum says, by the 1920s, "A teenage girl in a remote part of Northern California shared enough with a Jewish girl on Staten Island and a farm girl in Indiana to demonstrate a distinct teenage culture in the making." This culture itself was a self-reinforcing feedback loop as companies discovered teenage girls and girls discovered mass-marketed products, often showing up in stores with advertisements from teen-oriented magazines in hand.

Many companies were only too happy to expand this market with targeted products and ads. Schrum proffers, though, it was girls, more than boys, who were likely to succumb to peer pressure, thus creating a stronger and more-homogenized female teen culture. In those early years, "teenager" and "teen culture" (the terms themselves were still evolving) often were understood to refer to girls only.

Supporting her theory, Schrum notes some clothing manufacturers and stores created "teen" departments for teenage girls, but only rarely for boys. The same distinction can be seen in the periodical business, which put out several magazines targeting a girl-teen audience, but not a similar effort for teenage boys.

With, as noted, roots going back farther, but beginning to codify in the 1920s, hair styles, cosmetics, jewelry, clothes and personal hygiene products all became part of the teenage culture. Sometimes, the girls reached into the adult market for items and, sometimes, the manufacturers and marketers reached out to the girl-teen market for customers. By the 1940s, the teenage culture and market, while always evolving, was already well defined.

It was a bumpy road the whole way, with parents, educators, government officials, religious organizations and social commentators all weighing in and, often, arguing over each change: bobbed hair - horrors, lipstick - the decline of civilization and so on. But with or without support from the formal institutions, the girls, interacting amongst themselves at school and social events, aggressively pushed the boundaries out over time.

Music and movies were another "bonding" opportunity that helped create the teen culture, while telling companies there is a market in teen-girl products if they'll just look for it. With the coming of the phonograph - the Victrola - records were highly sought after and collected by teens. In the early 1940s, and years before Elvis, Frank Sinatra was a teen idol.

Going back to the silent era, movie stars were also teen idols. Perhaps not surprisingly, the teenagers looked up to and fantasized about the adult stars like Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, but not the popular teen stars like Judy Garland or Mickey Rooney. Those latter stars were more liked by either the younger kids or their parents, who were attracted to the wholesome messages in those stars' family friendly movies. Effectively and quite modern like, teenagers were too cool for the teenage movie stars.

Author Schrum brings many historical facts, references, illustrations and anecdotes to support her premise that girl teen culture began in the 1920s. The writing and approach in Some Wore Bobby Sox is a touch too academic-paper like for a mass-market cultural read, but if you can stay with it through its "dry" parts, it has some sparks here and there, while providing an enlightening look at the origins of girl-teen culture.


A hat tip to @LizzieMaine for this excellent Fedora Lounge recommendation.

I also read Schrum ditto Lizzie, and sated my innate curiosity as to the Boyz rather latent awakening to this
demographic national cultural female force. Excellent review.

 

[Fading Fast]

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens originally published in 1843


I first read A Christmas Carol many, many years ago and have seen so many movie versions of the story since, it's hard to read the book in a fresh way, but a few things jumped out at me in this go through.

While the Victorians were no strangers to Christmas ghost stories, they all but invented the genre, A Christmas Carol must have seemed incredibly fresh and daring when it came out.

You can't swing a dead cat and not hit a ghost in A Christmas Carol. And these are not amorphous apparitions skulking around in the background; no, these are confident ghosts with purpose.

Be it Scrooge's former partner, Marley, from the counting house, sentenced to an afterlife in purgatory dragging the chains of his greed around for eternity or the well-fed ghost of Christmas present, they are all clearly formed spirits delivering a Christian message to Scrooge, and all of us, in a four-team ghost relay race.

After the ghost of Marley comes to show Scrooge what life will be like for him if he doesn't mend his ways, the ghost of Christmas past arrives to remind Scrooge of his earlier life when Scrooge had youthful hopes, aspirations, kindness and joy still in his heart.

Next up is the aforementioned ghost of Christmas present whose purpose is to show Scrooge both the misery and joy around him that he ignores in his insular mental and physical world of obsessively counting money and economizing on everything to no logical end.

Finally, we get the ghost of Christmas yet to come, who shows Scrooge how his own death will be a bleak and lonely one met with only derision and indifference as he made no real friends and had pushed all his family away.

After the ghosts, it's the big transformation scene where Scrooge, with the bejesus now scared out of him, becomes generous of heart and pocketbook as he pledges to "keep Christmas" all year round. His infectious joy is the emotional, spiritual and Christian payoff Dickens has been building to from page one.

A Christmas Carol is wonderful. It's also propaganda whose characters are cartoons rather than flesh and blood humans. Yet exaggeration has its place in making points as Dickens did to great effect in his classic tale of greed and charity.

The other thing that struck me on this read is how incredibly faithful to the book many of the movie versions - especially, two of the classic earlier ones (from 1938 and 1951) - have been.

A Christmas Carol has also been riffed on countless times (check out 1961's Cash on Demand for a wonderfully understated British take, comments on the movie here: #27268), but as a compliment to the strength of Dickens' story, many movie makers scrupulously adhere to the plot, descriptions and dialogue in the book.

With "original source material" from Charles Dickens, why wouldn't a smart director just take what's there and put it on screen? It's the same reason reading it today is still rewarding. Despite having saturated our culture and being almost two-hundred-years old, A Christmas Carol is still a relatable, relevant, fun and fast Christmas-time read.

 

[Harp]

Sim or Scott as Scrooge....

 

[Fading Fast]

Sim or Scott as Scrooge....

Both good, but it's Sim for me. I also really like Reginald Owen in the '38 version.

 

[Fading Fast]

Miracle on 34th Street by Valentine Davies originally published in 1947


I found this book by way of its famous movie, which apparently, according to the author in the book's forward, is also how the story made it to a book. Author Davies explains that he first wrote the story for Hollywood; a story adapted by the movie's screenwriter and director, George Seaton. Only after its success, did Davis then write a novel version of his Christmas-time tale.

With that birthing, it's no surprise the book hews closely to the movie, but there are still some enhanced scenes and nuanced differences that, along with all its core Christmas charm, make it a fun holiday read.

The book also showcases the humor better than the movie as there are a surprising number of funny lines that almost get lost in the on-screen flow. Conversely, Edmund Gwenn's iconic portrayal of Santa in the movie creates a more empathetic and enjoyable Santa than the, still, very good one in the book.

The basic story, as noted, is the same. An old man who looks and talks like Kris Kringle, which he claims is his real name, becomes Macy's Christmas store Santa, bringing a spirit of holiday charity, camaraderie, good will and faith that's often lost amidst the season's relentless commercialization.

He even begins to win over one of the store's managers, a pragmatic single mom raising her daughter to think "rationally" and not believe in silliness like Christmas. This view is rebuked by her handsome, single, lawyer neighbor who has been unsuccessfully trying to woo her.

When the store's jealous, petty and narrow-minded therapist gets Kris committed to a mental hospital, a very public trial is held to determine if Kris is crazy. All the good-hearted people want Kris judged sane. Even the trial judge, owing to his upcoming election, is trying to find a way to rule accordingly. Only the store's therapist, the State's attorney general and few mean-spirited people are hoping otherwise.

(Spoiler alert, if you somehow don't know this story) The judge requires the defense to produce some sort of imprimatur stating that Kris is really Santa, which seems to doom Kris. But in a wonderful moment, Kris' attorney - the store manager's single neighbor - has the Post Office deliver mailbag upon mailbag of letters addressed to Santa to Kris Kringle at the courthouse. This is an official-enough recognition for the judge to rule that Kris is, in fact, Santa.

All rejoice; Kris is happy and the "pragmatic" store manager and her daughter become true believers in Christmas. Completing the joy, the store manager and the lawyer get engaged and buy the dream house the store manager's daughter had asked Kris to get her for Christmas.

Miracle on 34th Street is full of charm and whimsy, but has enough humor and adult perspective to make it a fun read for kids of any age. It's a nice compliment to one of the all-time-classic Christmas movies.

 

[Harp]

Prowlin n' gonna pounce. Absolutely adore this but never read the book. Did catch the remake
on the fly and recall the manager's pursuer propose and get shot down. Flaming put down. Without mercy.
Upon impact, explosion, no survivors. Man her lawyer suitor got his head handed him and his ass raked
over the first three articles in the Constitution. And the liberals had to spin a happy ending...now I think
the legalities could have been settled in court like an adversarial possession file over a vacation Wisconsin
A frame and still retain some semblance of reality betwixt man and woman methinks.

 

[Harp]

A Fitzfan, Budd Schulberg's semi-auto spiel The Disenchanted has long been bucket listed.
Hardly simple enigma, more celebrity wolfhound, Scott remains hidden, a fallen angel with hellish demons
drowned in Scotch and plagued by memories. Schulberg captures contemporary 1930s Hollywood
and its studio life fenced with exclamation marks. A classic snapshot.

 

[AmateisGal]

Finally found a good novel to read! It's The Words I Never Wrote by Jane Thynne, set in 1930s Germany and France.

Also reading the Pulitzer Prize winning The American People in the Great Depression by David M. Kennedy.

 

[Fading Fast]

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan published 2021


Bill Furlong is a just-getting-by coal merchant in a small, struggling town in Ireland in 1985. He, his wife and five daughters, all good mass-attending Catholics, have a modest home, enough to eat and enough money to send the girls to the town's one decent school, St Margaret's. But with no margin of safety and the town and economy hurting, it could all disappear in a flash.

Bill is (using a term from the time) a ba***rd child of a servant girl, but fortunately, the girl's employer was a kind widow who let his mother raise him in her house, even providing some extra comforts and opportunities for Bill. Adult Bill realizes that most employers would have let his mother go, which would have meant him probably having been sent to an institution to be raised.

Bill's wife, Eileen, is a hard-working housewife whose non-stop efforts and relentless thrift keeps the family budget balanced despite their modest income and the demands of raising five girls. She's a kind but no-nonsense mother and wife who believes you have to take care of your family first.

On one of Bill's regular deliveries of coal to the local convent, he discovers a scared and cold child who was, apparently, locked in the coal bin overnight. The young girl begs him to take her away, help her find her baby or drop her off at the river so she can drown herself. Bill, stunned and confused, turns the child over to the nuns.

Troubled by the event, on Bill's next delivery to the convent, he checks the bin only to find a different child in there. The Mother Superior, with a chilling professional smoothness, takes the child from Bill and presents a picture of a caring institution. She even invites Bill in for tea. Bill is polite but asks enough questions to put the Mother on her guard. Bill has seen through the facade, but what can he do?

The convent, we learn, only by hint as the town is scared to face the reality, is one of the notorious Magdalen "laundries." These Catholic institutions took in young, single mothers and sold their babies to wealthy families looking to adopt. They, also, kept the young, and usually disowned by their families, mothers themselves in abusive servitude.

As Christmas approaches, Bill's family focuses on decorating the tree, buying a few modest gifts, making cake for the holiday and attending Christmas Mass, but Bill is troubled by what he's discovered about the convent.

Revealing the power of the convent, even Bill's seemingly innocuous encounter with the Mother Superior has made it to the town's rumor mill where a well-intentioned shop owner warns Bill not to cross the convent for the good of Bill's family.

On Christmas Eve, Bill is struggling to balance the true meaning of his faith, his family's fragile security, his wife's and the town's urging to "mind his own business," how an act of kindness allowed him to have a good upbringing and how possibly "doing something" for the girl at the convent could bring his family's world crashing down.

(Spoiler alert) Late on Christmas Eve, Bill goes to the convent and takes the girl away. As the book closes, he is walking her into his home knowing he and his family might pay a great price for this act of Christian kindness.

In Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan has penned a short, poignant tale contrasting the warped and evil Christianity inside the Magdalen laundries with how that same Christianity prompted a man to risk his and his entire family's security to save the life of one young girl. It's not a traditional one, but there's a powerful Christmas message in Keegan's story.

 

[Harp]

^I've heard of this apostasy and followed review with a quickly thrown net.
Absolutely disgusting. Criminal charges should have been leveled, excommunication.
Seems several documentaries and films resulted. May check out.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Hustler by Walter Tevis first published in 1959


"To play pool you had to want to win and to want this without excuses and without self-deception. Only then did you have a right to love the game itself. And this reached down further. It seemed to Eddie now, sitting in Bert's car, his body sore and his mind tremendously aware that the need to win was everywhere in life, in every act, in every conversation, in every encounter between people. And the idea had become for him a kind of touchstone - or a key to the meaning of experience in the world." - From The Hustler by Walter Tevis

"Life's a gamble" - Muhammad Ali


Almost every decision in life, whether one chooses to acknowledge it or not, is a gamble. Even the "safest" ones are a gamble. Going to college is a gamble that the cost of tuition, loss of income and the knowledge gained will reward you with higher pay and/or a more-fulfilling life.

Start a business and you'll learn about the gamble of capitalism. Join a union and you forgo certain freedoms in your career for the "safety" of the union contract, but you're gambling the union won't fail and/or its contract won't be abrogated (both have happened many times). Marriage, kids, smoking, drugs, spending-versus-savings, what you eat, where you live and most every other decision are all gambles.

In The Hustler, this reality is forced on pool hustler Eddie Felson. Unable to hide in the fictions most people tell themselves, he lives by gambling on his own skills in the very shady world of "professional" pool where failure is clear when you lose the game and the bet. But Eddie still tries very hard to lie to himself.

After we see Eddie and his manager hustle some money in a pool hall on their way to Chicago, Eddie gets into the game of his career against the de facto reigning pool champion Minnesota Fats.

Eddie takes a huge lead in this forty-hour marathon match, fueled by cigarettes and alcohol. But then Eddie cracks in some way. His game slips, but his ego or something won't let him stop playing, so he ends up losing, not only what he had won initially, but his entire bankroll.

The next morning, shattered and unable to face the reality of what he did, Eddie takes his few possessions, leaves his manager for good and heads over to the bus station to stash all his worldly possessions in a locker. There he picks up a sad, lonely, slightly crippled (using the term of that time), slightly pretty, more-than-slightly alcoholic young woman, Sarah. He immediately moves into her apartment.

There's one more step down in Eddie's professional fall. Playing in a run-down pool hall, his anger and ego have him aggressively beat a man he hustled into a game. The strategy in hustling is, initially, to play just mediocre enough to get someone to want to play for money against you and, then, you play just good enough to win, but not to show how truly talented you are as, if you did, your opponent would know he'd been hustled.

Stupidly allowing himself to be exposed as a hustler, the friends of the man he beat break Eddie's thumbs leaving him, for the time being, without a way to make a living and wondering if he'll ever regain the skill that makes him special. Now Eddie has hit rock bottom - mentally and physically. But still, Eddie either doesn't or can't see why he lost to Minnesota Fats, so he continues to make excuses to himself.

His comeback is also both physical - retraining his hands to play - and mental - he has to learn, emotionally and strategically, how to play the game against the best. Enter Burt, a card shark and manager of pool players who offers his services to Eddie (for a huge cut).

It's from taciturn, gnomic and shady Burt that Eddie begins to understand that he lost to Minnesota Fats because of what Burt calls "character." In the world of professional gambling, character, for Burt and, eventually, Eddie is all about winning.

You have to want to win - and fight the urge to make excuses for your losing - so badly that it becomes the only thing you know. Deep in a game, when you are mentally and physically exhausted, you push all that pain away because you want to win. At the highest level of play, where everyone has incredible physical skills, it is character - the desire to win - that makes a champion.

With this new understanding of the game, (spoiler alert) Eddie challenges Minnesota Fats once more. This time, at that crucial moment in the match, when losing is mentally and physically easier - all you have to do is make some excuse to yourself - Eddie pulls it all together and wins.

But this is no happy redemption story wrapped around a comeback sports story. What does a "win at everything" philosophy do to someone? Eddie realizes or convinces himself that Sarah, whom he loves, is "a loser," so he breaks up with her. Sarah, who had polio as a kid and was left with a limp, is struggling as a writer and needs love and kindness, but to this new Eddie, she's not "a winner," so he leaves her. He doesn't want her stink of loser to rub off on him.

All absolutist philosophies have costs and flaws. A philosophy for winning at all costs at pool, brought into your personal life, leaves no room for love and kindness. Maybe Eddie needs an absolutist view to be the best pool player - he can't turn his singular focus on in the pool hall and off in his personal life - but it will make for a sad existence.

Burt, an odd foil to Eddie, is also singularly and successfully focused on winning at cards and pool, but he, somehow, is able to turn it off with his wife and two kids - some can and some can't. Muhammad Ali was right; life is a gamble; how you handle it - with a singular focus on winning or with balance - determines the type of life you'll have.

The Hustler packs a lot of street-level philosophy into a tight, short novel that brings the seediness, yet intensity and competition, of professional pool in the 1950s to life. From the chalk dust in the facial crevices of the players to the sounds the balls make smacking off each other, author Walter Tevis drops you right in the middle of the pool hall. It's a tough world that, in The Hustler, Tevis turns into a microcosm of life itself.


N.B. #1 The outstanding movie, The Hustler (comments here: #29458) departs from the book in several key ways, which maybe, was necessary for the dramatic demands of telling a story on film, but of the two, the novel rings truer and more consistent to its own story.

N.B #2 It was after reading The Hustler, I discovered that author Walter Tevis also wrote The Queen's Gambit, which was only recently turned into an outstanding TV mini-series.

 

[Harp]

Caught The Hustler; inside of all places, senior theology class taught by a portly
Christian Brothers of Ireland whom often showed films to prove demonstrable temporal
application of abstract theological concepts. Since I love movies this was absolutely fine
with me but reading the above review I wish the book had been assigned instead.

I have read The Queen's Gambit and Tevis scratched out a paycheck, penning a passable
novel which in the hands of a truly inspired soul could have been crafted much better.
He recalls Richard Jessup's The Cincinnati Kid, catchy title but really more bark than bite
with not much meat on the bone. A studio script doctor surgically adapted Kid for the
screen and the resultant product was damned good. Haven't seen Gambit so that's that.

Tevis probably knew more billiards than chess and applied himself more to the actual
writing of The Hustler, delving deeply and thoughtfully through his characters in manner
seemingly forgotten with The Queen's Gambit.

 

[clementishutin]

Reading the lord of the rings again.

 

[Tiki Tom]

“Cruise of the Lanikai” by Kemp Tolley. In December 1941, in the Philippines, Tolley was awarded command of his first vessel: a 76 foot two masted schooner named Lanikai. His mission would have been to cruise southeast Asian waters and report back on Japanese presence in various locations. However that mission never materialized because the Japanese attacked the Philippines just as he was taking command. Instead, he made a run for it, navigating 4,000 miles through enemy infested waters to escape to Australia, with many adventures along the way. Unfortunately, the author spends the first 115 pages analyzing why the Philippines were lost. Also, the writing style is a little laborious. I’m just now getting to the part where the schooner makes a dash for it, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to stick with it to the end. Pity. The tale had the potential to be a good WWII South Seas yarn.

 

[Harp]

The late historian Gordon Prange author of At Dawn We Slept believed Tolley a suicide skipper,
Lanikai and crew expendable by order of FDR. Or at least such hypothesis recognized.

But cruel are the times when we are traitors
And do not know ourselves; when we hold rumor
From what we fear, yet know not what we fear,
But float upon a wild and violent sea.

Macbeth IV; ii

 

[Tiki Tom]

Perhaps I was a little premature. Now that they are finally under sail, it has gotten much better (just skip the first 115 pages or so). Some of the depictions of life in that part of the world, during the last gasps of the premodern age, are very evocative. And you can picture the water rushing past the lee rail with every stitch of canvas up. Fishing lines out. Unknown aircraft buzzing them. Unknown warships on the horizon. Is that village friend or foe? Reefs, malaria, and fresh water always a concern. I also appreciate that the author is speaking with a 1940s voice and worldview.

 

[Harp]

Mark R Levin, American Marxism

A studious work focused upon prevailing philosophical views within American society.
At root cause for much animus concurrent thereof is a lack of appreciation for constitutional
rights and concomitant responsibility implicit with democracy.

 

[Harp]

The 2022 Pegasus runs at Gulfstream Park later this month, added card underneath, and the
main event purse is listed at 3M; howsoever, recent track tragedies according to backstretch mill
grist has a certain lady CEO holding the reins for cruelling ordering all mounts rode unmercifully,
and when tragedy struck, the track itself was blamed. A trainer was banned for drug abuse for
good measure as well, but all collective cover public relations gloss. The Saudis rescinded open
invite Pegasus trifecta, owners pulled their prime from the race entirely, and the richest purse
worldwide cut down $16,000,000. A mere shadow of its former self, Pegasus still qualifies as a
winning ticket but with the Saudi Cup running in February the spotlight is shared now.

Time to read and catch upward this game I love.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Mr. Hobb's Vacation, Edward Streeter, pub. 1954. A Christmas gift from my Missus. Very similar in style and tone to Merry Christmas, Mr. Baxter. To a degree, the two "Mr."'s could be interchangeable. Personally, I came away with a bad taste in my mouth after reading of the stress and strain and unhappiness permeating the Hobb's family vacation on an east coast vacation island. Plus, the language here was a bit rougher than 1956's MCMB, and grandchildren, in both books, are not enjoyable.
NB: I have not seen the movie based upon the book.

 

[Fading Fast]

Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara published in 1930


Appointment in Samarra is the story of a man born on third base who spends three days running toward home, the wrong way.

Set in the small fictional town of Gainesville Pennsylvania in 1930, Julian English is a successful thirty-year-old businessman with a beautiful and smart wife. They are the unofficial leaders of the "young set" of the "Lantenengo Street crowd."

Born to a socially prominent family, Julian's father, with ancestors dating back to the American Revolution, is the respected doctor English, chief of staff of the Gainesville Hospital and member or head of every "proper" club, organization and charity in town.

Julian had every advantage from the beginning, yet had, perhaps, a rebellious streak or, more likely, just an obstinacy resulting in childhood scrapes with the law. It's less that Julian has some philosophical opposition to his father's life and world, than that he's simply angry or ungrateful by nature.

Fictional Gainesville is author O'Hara look at small-town America at the start of the Depression. In that world, the Irish, Italians and Jews have made great progress in business and the professions, but are still often kept at arm's length or further from the "proper" social clubs, organizations, neighborhoods (like Lantenengo Street) and cliques (like Julian's).

Since the old-line Protestant leaders need these groups' business and, sometimes, capital, you can feel the walls coming down, but of course, not to everyone's liking. At a Christmas party at the club, Julian's anger toward Harry Reilly, a successful Irish businessman who has been "pushing" into the "old" clubs and organizations, bubbles over prompting him to throw a drink in Reilly's face.

Later we learn Julian borrowed a significant amount of money from Reilly to keep his Cadillac dealership afloat at the start of the Depression. Julian's tossing of the drink was the unofficial start of his downward spiral.

Like the petulant child he basically is, Julian's relationship with his wife is immature as everything descends into a fight, even just trying to have sex, since he doesn't understand, or like, compromise. Worse, Julian, a handsome man who's had his way with women his entire life, cheats on his wife, but is viciously jealous of any man who shows his wife even just friendship.

A day after Christmas, at a nightclub, Julian, in front of his wife and their friends, takes a singer out to his car for what everyone assumes was to have sex. Julian not only blew up his marriage that evening, but alienated the local mob boss as the singer is the mob boss' girlfriend.

As opposed to the movies, the mob boss isn't going to "rub Julian out," but his influence in the Italian community will cost Julian business, something Julian can't afford to lose.

To complete his destruction, the next day, Julian, at his club, has a fist fight with a handicapped WWI vet. Whatever was left of Julian's goodwill with his own clique, let alone the larger community, has ended.

In only a few days, Julian English, perhaps Gainesville's most-prominent young citizen, has ruined his business by angering his major investor, alienating his friends and customers and destroyed his marriage. All of it was fueled by alcohol and anger, but anger at what?

It's hard to find any way to respect or justify Julian's anger as he had so much handed to him and has, what most would consider, a very good life. Maybe some people are just wired to be mad at the world.

Or maybe O'Hara sees Julian as a representative of a class, the old-line WASPs, losing its grip and position as the growing wealth and power of other groups, combined with the flattening of everyone by the Depression, erodes its status and influence.

Julian could be Tom Buchanan from The Great Gatsby if the Depression had forced Buchanan to have to earn a living. Buchanan's arrant racism and superiority complex would be enraged by having to "deign" to work with, and even ask favors from, those he considers his racial and social inferiors.

While most races and religions are denigrated at some point in Appointment in Samarra, there is a soft, but constant anti-semitism running throughout in the background. It might only be a comment here or there about the "Jews" or about "a Jew pushing his way in," but it's relentless and spiteful. It's another, in this case ugly, thread that touches back to Fitzgerald's Jazz Age stories.

(Spoiler alert) Julian's and the novel's denouement is a long lonely night of drinking, including rejection from a female reporter he made a pass at, followed by a trip to the garage - motor on, doors and windows sealed - with the coroner declaring it a suicide. It was Julian's only out.

O'Hara has a talent for exposing the nuances, sinews and shades of small-town life and society. Writing in 1930, O'Hara could not have known the Depression would last for a long, enervating decade, but he saw its start, in real time, as a turning point in America. Julian English is O'Hara's unflattering look at the old guard being forced to cede space to others and not liking it one bit.

For us today, Appointment in Samarra is a contemporaneous look at America on the brink of a major social and cultural pivot. It's also a short insightful novel that sits right next to Fitzgerald's work on the literary continuum of the American story.