Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara
Published 1934 · 240 pages · 62,000 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is Appointment in Samarra to read?
Appointment in Samarra scores 45 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 38 out of 100
- Period American prose with upper-class vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 40 out of 100
- Controlled sentences with social observation.
- Abstraction: 45 out of 100
- Fate and self-destruction in American society.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- Dense with 1930s Pennsylvania social detail.
- Narrative indirection: 45 out of 100
- Multiple perspectives on Julian's destruction.
- Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
- The appointment, Gibbsville, class carry weight.
- Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
- O'Hara's stance toward characters is knowing.
- Resolution withholding: 40 out of 100
- Fate is inevitable; destruction complete.
- Structural complexity: 40 out of 100
- Multiple perspectives across three days.
How Appointment in Samarra is regarded
Appointment in Samarra holds a literary regard score of 59 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.