The Man with the Golden Arm (Paperback)

The story opens with Frankie and Sparrow being sent to jail for the night as vagrants, and we learn of Frankie and Sparrow's relationship with the law, and how their own came about. After their release, Frankie and Sparrow go their separate ways, with Frankie going home, reluctantly, to Zosh. In their tiny rented room, Zosh lays into Frankie about him getting her a dog - 'a little puppy pup' - to keep her company when he's not around like he should be to care for the cripple he created. For it's all Frankie's fault: 'her fatal accident' His fault that she has to endure life like the never ending El-Trains on their endless, round-and-round, going nowhere, travels. She could've been out dancing, having a good time; if only she'd listened to her father. But she hadn't. Frankie lets her rip: he's done his best; he's sorry for the accident, but what more can he do. They've been to the doctors who say there isn't anything physically wrong; and the quacks, like Big Boy. From Frankie's point of view, it's only a matter of her wanting to get out of the wheelchair, she should be able to, but it's as if she'd rather cut her own legs off to spite him from it. So Frankie makes his escape to the bar below, the Tug and Maul, where he intends to score a hit of morphine from Nifty Louie and have Sparrow get him a dog, legit, or by dog-napping.

This is a story of destructive dependence: Frankie is looking for someone other than Zosh or Sparrow, something other than morphine to depend on, and almost finds it from his association, with Molly Novotny. But he has it snatched away by Sparrow's coerced betrayal to the police of his panic-driven killing of Nifty Louie. As for Zosh. When Frankie narrowly dodges the police come to arrest him, and she subsequently learns that he's been cheating on her with Molly Novotny, two floors down, in the same rooming house, she finally cracks up and ends up in an institution. Frankie, trying to evade the police decides to hang himself in a hotel room, saying to himself, 'Have a good dream you're dancin', Zosh'.

The first hundred and ten pages of this book are an absolute pain-in-the-butt, not because of the overall nature of the contents, but in the way the contents are arranged, along with rapid changes in viewpoint, and a heavy handedness in the application of humour, simile, and metaphor. The overuse of humour tends to dilute the characters' credibility and sometimes makes them appear ludicrous instead of simply idiosyncratic. As for simile and metaphor, these two devices tend to stretch a scene beyond its natural length, create needless repetition, or in some cases, introduce an air of unlikely thinking with respect to the characters' point of view; it becoming more the author's point of view superimposed, which can come across as soap-boxing or a spot of champagne socialism. Something Nelson Algren didn't intend - I think. All of this could have been avoided by interleaving the various sections and applying some judicious pruning. But it wasn't. So this very fine piece of work, which could be just as popular as books by Iain Banks or William Gibson, will be relegated to being a literary curiosity instead of the popular masterpiece it should be, and for the aforementioned reasons, as opposed to those proposed by James R. Giles.

Even so this is a brilliant book well worth the effort. Also read Gerald Kersh's, Night and the City.

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM ( Copyright - 1947. The Modern Poetry Association.)

It's all in the wrist, with the deck or a cue, And Frankie Machine had the touch. He had the touch, and a golden arm - "Hold up, Arm," he would plead, kissing the rosary once for help With the faders sweating it out and - Zing! - there it was - Little Joe or Eighter from Decatur, Double trey the hard way, dice be nice, When you got a hunch bet a bunch, It don't mean a thing if it don't cross that string, Make me five to keep me alive, Tell 'em where you got it 'n how easy it was - We remember Frankie Machine And the arm that always held up. We remember in the morning light When the cards are boxed and the long cues racked Straight up and down like the all-night hours With the hot rush hours past

For it's all in the wrist with the deck or a cue And if he crapped out when we thought he was due It must have been that the dice were rolled, For he had the touch, and his arm was gold: Rack up his cue, leave the steerer his hat, The arm that held up has failed at last.

Yet why does the light down the dealer's slot Sift soft as light in a troubled dream? ( A dream, they say, of a golden arm That belonged to the dealer we called Machine.)

NELSON ALGREN 1909 -1981

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