The List

(page 7 of 10)

TALES FROM THE GUTTER

The Man with the Golden Arm (1949), by Nelson Algren

"All had gone stale for these disinherited. Their very lives gave off a certain jailhouse odor: it trailed down the streets of Skid Row behind them till the city itself seemed some sort of open-roofed jail with walls for all men and laughter for very few."

The story: A Division Street hustler, drug addict, and jazz drummer fights for survival in the urban underbelly of post–World War II Chicago.

Why the book resonates: "I got this whole different perspective on the city and the idea of finding something humane in the most unlikely places," says Joe Meno, author of the indie bestseller Hairstyles of the Damned and winner of the 2003 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction. More than a junkie exposé, The Man with the Golden Arm gives voice to Chicago's marginalized. Algren celebrates the ugly—the drunks, the addicts, the lonely, and the despised—with a comic edge. Not everyone appreciated the portrait. Although Algren had Hemingway's backing, his gritty portrayal was accused of idealizing the poor, and his books went out of print for nearly 30 years, until Kurt Vonnegut wrote an introduction for a 1989 reissue. "Here are the people we don't want to acknowledge," says Bill Savage, who has been teaching the book for nearly 20 years at Northwestern University and coedited the 50th-anniversary edition. "If you claim to know and love Chicago, then you have to know these people, too, because they are Chicago." 

The author (1909-81): Raised on the South Side and in Albany Park. University of Illinois graduate. Jailed for vagrancy. Notorious for gambling. Boyfriend of French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir. Winner of the first National Book Award in 1950. His monument on Milwaukee and Ashland is littered with trash, just as he would have wanted.
—S. Y.

 
 

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