BOOK REVIEW
The Man With The Golden Arm, Nelson Algren, Penquin Books, New York, 1949
Growing up in a post World War II built housing project this reviewer knew first hand the so-called ‘romance’ of drugs, the gun and the ne’er do well hustler. And also the mechanisms one needed to develop to survive at that place where the urban working poor meet and mix with the lumpen proletariat- the con men, dopesters, grifters drifters and gamblers who feed on the downtrodden. This is definitely not the mix that Damon Runyon celebrated in his Guys and Dolls-type stories. Far from it.
Nelson Algren has gotten, through hanging around Chicago police stations and sheer ability to observe, that sense of foreboding, despair and the just plain oblivion of America’s mean streets down pat in a number of works, including this one. Here the plot revolves around Frankie Machine an urban hustler with a jones (and more than just the dope jones, his whole life is twisted by the vagaries of his fate). Alone the way we meet an array of stoolies, cranks, crackpots and nasty brutish people who are more than willing to put obstacles in the way of our anti-hero. And we have, at this point, not even mentioned his ‘home’ life with his ‘ever-loving’ disabled wife (or so he thinks). She might make anyone reach for the needle.
We, of late, have become rather inured to dope stories either of the death and destruction type or of the rehabilitative kind but at the time that this story was put together in the late 1940’s this was something of an eye-opener for those who were not familiar with the seamy side of urban life. The dead end jobs, the constant run-ins with the ‘authorities’ in the person of the police, many times corrupt as well. The dread of going to work, the dread of not going to work, the fear of being victimized and the glee of victimizing. The whole jumbled mix of people with few prospects and fewer dreams.
Algren has put it down in writing for all that care to read. These are not pretty stories. And he has centered his story on the trials and tribulations of a dope addict trying to get clean, to boot. That fight is a near thing. Damn, as much as I knew about the kind of things that Algren was describing this is still one gripping story. And, the truth be told, you know as well as I do that unfortunately this story could still be written today. Read Algren if you want to walk on the wild side.
In the movie version of this film that unfortunately cannot capture the pathos of the mean urban streets Frank Sinatra plays the lead role of the junkie in a very understated way. He gives an extremely strong performance, especially in those scenes when he is going ‘cold turkey’. Probably overrated as a singer he nevertheless was underrated as an actor, especially in his early career (think From Here to Eternity, Some Came Running and Suddenly). Kudos Frank.
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