It was with surprise and pleasure that I discovered there is a Cengage Learning-brand student guide to John O’Hara’s novel Appointment in Samarra. Surprise and pleasure because I didn’t think anyone taught O’Hara anymore.

Sophomores and juniors at high schools across the country will soon be working their way through what is perhaps the most universally taught standard in the American literary canon, The Great Gatsby. Its author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, is one of the few serious writers the average teen is likely to know.