The Man With the Golden Arm
- 12 Jan 2005
- 9781841955612
- £12.99
- 480 pp
- 129×198mm
- 4 Jun 2009
- 9781847676429
- £10.39
- 480 pp
In a few words
Canons edition of the modern American classic with an introduction by Irvine Welsh and an afterword by Kurt Vonnegut
In a few words
Canons edition of the modern American classic with an introduction by Irvine Welsh and an afterword by Kurt Vonnegut
This is a man writing and you should not read it if you cannot take a punch - Mr Algren can hit with both hands and move around and he will kill you if you are not awfully careful ... Mr Algren, boy, you are good.
Ernest Hemingway
Algren's skill brings his city to life; his writing carries you into his heart and his outraged compassion ensures that his story is as relevant now as ever.
This is a man writing and you should not read it if you cannot take a punch . . .Mr Algren can hit with both hands and move around and he will kill you if you are not awfully careful . . . Mr Algren, boy, you are good
Ernest Hemingway
Powerful, grisly, antic, horrifying, poetic, compassionate . . . [there is] virtually nothing more that one could ask
More about
the book
The Man with the Golden Arm tells the story of Frankie Machine, the golden arm dealer at a back street Chicago gambling den. Frankie reckons he’s a tough guy in the Chicago underworld but finds that he’s not tough enough to kick his heroin addiction. With consummate skill and a finely-tuned ear for the authentic dialogue of the backstreets, Algren lays bare the tragedy and humour of Frankie’s world.
Features the first UK publication of a foreword by Kurt Vonnegut and an afterword by Studs Terkel.
More about
the book
Frankie Machine, a veteran of the Second World War, returns to Chicago’s Northwest side with a morphine habit. Nicknamed the ‘kid with the golden arm’, Frankie is an aspiring drummer by day and an illicit card-dealer by night. In Molly, an old flame, he sees the chance for redemption, for hard work and success – but the demons that chase Frankie are not quite ready to let go.
Nelson Algren’s critically acclaimed and enormously powerful novel probes the lives of the displaced and dispossessed of post-war America.
What Runyon did for New York with Guys and Dolls, Algren does for the 'windy city'....On its last page The Man with the Golden Arm lapses into - or should that be achieves - the condition of poetry, something Algren's writing was always close to.
America's finest, yet most neglected writer...Nelson Algren's enduring love for the Windy City and its struggling immigrants fired his hauntingly brilliant prose....Thanks to Rebel Inc, The Man with the Golden Arm may now be remembered as Algren's work. It would be only a fragment of what he deserved.
The finest American novel published since the war
A classic portrayal . . . stylish, atmospheric and moving
A true novelist's triumph
Profound
Nelson Algren
View profileNelson Algren was born in 1909 in Detroit and lived mostly in Chicago. His published works include A Walk on the Wild Side (which inspired the Lou Reed song of the same name), Somebody in Boots and Never Come Morning. He was also a prolific writer of short stories, essays, travelogues and poems. In 1950 The Man with the Golden Arm earned him the first American National Book Award.
His life was a succession of gambling problems, disastrous marriages and wild extremes – ranging from Texas prisons and skid-row soup-kitchens to Hollywood parties and literary celebrations. He also had a passionate love affair with French feminist Simone de Beauvoir.
Algren died in 1981, shortly after being appointed as a fellow of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
Nelson Algren
View profileNelson Algren was born in 1909 in Detroit and lived mostly in Chicago. His life was a succession of compulsive gambling, disastrous marriages and wild extremes – ranging from Texas prisons and skid-row soup-kitchens to Hollywood parties. He also had a passionate love affair with French feminist Simone de Beauvoir while she was living with Jean-Paul Sartre.
Algren received the inaugural National Book Award for The Man with the Golden Arm. He died in 1981, shortly after being appointed as a fellow of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
