William J. Savage, Jr.

My reading preferences seem to have changed since I first attempted this book. I remember being underwhelmed by The Man With the Golden Arm, putting it down maybe fifty pages in wondering what was so great about it that it merited a National Book Award (which I put a lot more stock in than the Pulitzer).

Maybe I set it aside because the dialogue is phonetically spelled to portray dialect (which feels outdated, stylistically) and at times the novel reads more like a beat poem. It can also be as frustratingly incomprehensible as Naked Lunch when it narrates the action from the perspective of its drug-addled protagonist. Working through these challenges reveals the sad but engaging story of WWII veteran Frank Majcinek, better known as Frankie Machine, a card-dealing morphine addict struggling to get clean and find honest work in post-war Chicago. Frankie's life is a mélange of disreputable characters stumbling their way through petty crimes, police encounters and piteous relationships with low class people whose moral compasses similarly don't point north. As the novel progresses, the train wreck which will alter the lives of most of these characters becomes inevitable, but as a reader you just can't look away.

The Man With the Golden Arm provides a realistic glimpse of the seedy side of life without judging those caught up in it.… (mais)

This tells the story of Frankie Machine and his struggles with life after coming home from WWII. After an injury he's become addicted to heroin and every fix he claims will be the last. He lives with his wife Sophia who uses a wheelchair following a car accident but is the problem psychological in nature

Enjoy is not necessarily the word to use as the book spares no punches on the reality of the world that Frankie and his friends live in.

It takes a while to get into but definitely worth the effort. The language can be hard to follow but is so descriptive that you can almost feel you are there with them.

Frankie desperately tries to please his wife while his dream is to be a drummer in a band and constantly practices.

Written when it was it was the first book that really dealt with the reality of addiction. It's never glamorised but neither does it downplay the hold heroin has.

A book which will stay with me for a long time… (mais)

I recently read Ironweed by William Kennedy, and found similarities between The Man with the Golden Arm and Ironweed. Both deal with individuals who begin with poor prospects in life and through a series of choices, missteps and bad luck progress into a downward spiral with no real chance of breaking away from their lifestyle. Sound depressing? It can be. The Man with the Golden Arm was extremely well written, but I enjoyed Ironweed more. I struggled though as to why. Francis Phelan in Ironweed has a chance at a different life, but there is an acceptance on his part of the life that he had come to know. Did that somehow make me feel better about Francis Phelan in Ironweed as compared to Frankie Machine in The Man with the Golden Arm. I hope not. Francis was a more likable character than Frankie. Francis cared about those around him and tried to help them. Maybe that was the difference. But that might just mean the story of Frankie Machine was more realistic.… (mais)

The novel itself is wonderful. "We are all members of each other" seems to be the key. Low life Chicago. It's part of my family - my father grew up in Chicago; Polish was his first language. My cousin was a judge there, my uncles were fire fighters. A lot of the speech mannerisms captured by Algren in this book were used by my dad, mostly when he was in a nasty mood. This is the world he worked very hard to escape. He could never understand how I could fail to appreciate my good fortune in not being stuck back there.

I do think, reading a book like this, or walking through homeless camps etc., there but for the grace of God go I. Exactly how my middle class behavior helps to keep people stuck down at the bottom... I don't have any grand theories. I guess my best idea would be that social evolution is like species evolution. My body somehow keeps plodding along & it is not so easy to see why. These organisms are complicated beyond anyone's ability to comprehend. We can work out some of the major patterns.

This is a remarkable combination of sublime lyricism with total bleakness. Death of a Salesman, Revolutionary Road.. different worlds but similarly bleak. The lyricism is very effective at making the point: we are all members of each other. Our experiences are very similar in their depth and power. How we respond, what resources we have with which to respond, that varies enormously.

The critical essays at the end were excellent. I am no scholar of literature, but the essays seemed to cover a nice variety of responses & to augment the work itself very well.… (mais)