Frank Treatment of Sexuality
O'Hara's books tended to push the limits of what was considered tolerable in a mainstream novel. His second, Butterfield 8, was notorious and was banned from importation into Australia until 1963. But Appointment in Samarra was controversial too. Biographer Geoffrey Wolff quotes a Saturday Review article by Yale University professor Henry Seidel Canby, entitled "Mr. O'Hara and the Vulgar School," who criticized the book's sensuality as "nothing but infantilism — the erotic visions of a hobbledehoy behind the barn."
Most of O'Hara's descriptions are indirect: "There was the time Elinor Holloway... shinnied half way up the flagpole while five young gentlemen, standing at the foot of the pole, verified the suspicion that Elinor, who had not always lived in Gibbsville, was not naturally, or at least not entirely, a blonde." However, passages like the following were quite unusual for the time:
| “ | She was wearing a dress that was cut in front so he could all but see her belly-button, but the material, the satin or whatever it was, it held close to her body so that when she stood up she only showed about a third of each breast. But when she was sitting down across the table from him she leaned forward with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, and that loosened the dress so that whenever she made a move he could see the nipples of her breasts. She saw him looking—he couldn't help looking. And she smiled. | ” |
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