IniciGrupsConversesMésTendències
Cerca al lloc
Aquest lloc utilitza galetes per a oferir els nostres serveis, millorar el desenvolupament, per a anàlisis i (si no has iniciat la sessió) per a publicitat. Utilitzant LibraryThing acceptes que has llegit i entès els nostres Termes de servei i política de privacitat. L'ús que facis del lloc i dels seus serveis està subjecte a aquestes polítiques i termes.

Resultats de Google Books

Clica una miniatura per anar a Google Books.

S'està carregant…

The Man with the Golden Arm (1949)

de Nelson Algren

Altres autors: Mira la secció altres autors.

MembresRessenyesPopularitatValoració mitjanaMencions
6491135,481 (3.78)70
"A novel of rare genius, The Man with the Golden Arm describes the dissolution of a card-dealing WWII veteran named Frankie Machine, caught in the act of slowly cutting his own heart into wafer-thin slices. For Frankie, a murder committed may be the least of his problems. The literary critic Malcolm Cowley called The Man with the Golden Arm "Algren's defense of the individual," while Carl Sandburg wrote of its "strange midnight dignity." A literary tour de force, here is a novel unlike any other, one in which drug addiction, poverty, and human failure somehow suggest a defense of human dignity and a reason for hope. Seven Stories Press separately publishes the critical edition of The Man with the Golden Arm, the first critical edition of an Algren work, featuring an extra 100+ pages of insightful essays by Russell Banks, Bettina Drew, James R. Giles, Carlo Rotella, William Savage, Lee Stringer, Studs Terkel, Kurt Vonnegut, and others"--… (més)
  1. 20
    Bastard Out of Carolina de Dorothy Allison (echo2)
    echo2: These books are both epic, heartbreaking novels that explore the impact of poverty and addiction on families -- albeit they seem nothing alike in any other respect.
  2. 10
    Johnny Got His Gun de Dalton Trumbo (andomck)
  3. 00
    A Million Little Pieces de James Frey (GYKM)
    GYKM: The 21st century's phony, bubblegum version of Algren's classic novel, which sold over 5 million copies and was translated into 29 languages.
  4. 00
    Crònica de l'ocell que dóna corda al món de Haruki Murakami (andomck)
S'està carregant…

Apunta't a LibraryThing per saber si aquest llibre et pot agradar.

No hi ha cap discussió a Converses sobre aquesta obra.

» Mira també 70 mencions

Es mostren 1-5 de 11 (següent | mostra-les totes)
Frankie Machine vive en el Chicago de los años cuarenta, y tiene claro que como crupier clandestino «Todo es cuestión de muñeca y yo tengo el toque». Porque él tiene el toque, y un brazo de oro. Mafiosos, camellos, drogadictos, prostitutas, éste es el ambiente que rodea a Frankie, en el barrio polaco de la ciudad. Como veterano de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, Frankie se esforzará por estabilizar su vida personal, tratando de ganarse la vida y luchando contra una creciente adicción a la morfina, pero no le va a resultar nada sencillo huir de la vida de perdedor que le augura su entorno.
  Natt90 | Jul 18, 2022 |
8475308503
  archivomorero | Jun 27, 2022 |
"Yet the week ran out on Saturday night and he was no richer than he had been Monday morning. The old merry-go-round was rolling again and he had to ride as hard as any."

"Some cats just swing like that."

It took me quite a while to get into this book, which was the winner of the first National Book Award, I think primarily because of the extensive use of 1940's slang, particularly slang related to cards and gambling, drug addiction, and the out and out poverty, despair and ugliness surrounding all the book's characters. It's set in the Polish ghetto of Chicago in the years immediately after World War II. The main character, Francis Majcinek, aka Frankie Magic, aka the Dealer, is the man with the golden arm. He's a card dealer, a good one, and he deals the game run every night in the back room by Schwieftia. He is almost always accompanied by Solly Saltskin, aka the Sparrow, aka the Punk, aka the Steerer, and together they commit petty crimes to get by, whenever they are not involved in a card game or some serious drinking or in jail for a bit.

There's another reason Frankie is the man with the golden arm--he's also a drug addict. Because of a wound during the war, he is frequently in pain, and craves the relief morphine brings. He frequently believes he can kick it at any time, and is not an addict, but his fixer, and we the reader, know otherwise.

Frankie is married to Sophie, and she has been in a wheelchair since a car accident with Frankie drunk at the wheel left her apparently unable to stand or walk. Her only outlet in life is in keeping a scrapbook of fatal accidents. Frankie doesn't love Sophie, and no longer wants to be married to her, but stays with her out of guilt. And Sophie reminds Frankie constantly that he is the cause of her predicament.

Algren has been described as the "poet of the lost," and the book is unrelentingly bleak and dark. Beyond the main characters I've described above there are many other denizens of this gritty decrepit urban neighborhood with whom the book involves us, many of them known just by their nicknames or occupations. Besides the Fixer, there is the landlord of the seedy rooming house where Frankie and Sophie live known as "the jailer," there's Drunkie John, "a mouth at the end of a whiskey glass," Blind Pig, whose actions lead to the ultimate downfall of Frankie, and many other poor and lost souls. All of them are in on "the great secret and special American guilt of owning nothing, nothing at all in the land where ownership and virtue are one."

Despite the hopelessness of his characters, Algren writes beautifully. He is an amazing prose stylist. As I said, because of the slang, it was at first hard to follow, but once I learned the characters (many of whom are referred to by multiple names) and got into the flow of the story and the language it was hard to put the book down. I can well understand why this book won the National Book Award, and why it is on the 1001 list.

First line(s): "The captain never drank. Yet toward nightfall in that smoke-colored season between Indian summer and December's first true snow, he would sometimes feel half drunken."

Last line: "To rustle away down the last dark wall of all."

4 1/2 stars ( )
  arubabookwoman | Mar 23, 2022 |
The book has been staring at me for some time and finally I got to reading it.

Unfortunately can't get through. I've tried, putbit away, tried again, but the result is the same.
The language used is slang, which doesn't make it easier to follow the story, keep apart the scenes, the characters.
For now I give up.
I think I'll look for a Dutch edition, if there is one. Sometimes reading in my own language works wonders.
  BoekenTrol71 | Oct 8, 2016 |
I understand why this book is considered a classic of a sorts. I understand that it was groundbreaking, and there still are not a lot of books like it. But I wasn't crazy about it. I found the vernacular hard to wade through. On top of that, Algren often writes an opaque sentence full of flourish, in which meaning gets lost, rather than just saying what's happening. But most importantly, these are ugly people who have given up even before they have come of age. I didn't like any of them, except for the prostitute Molly-O. I found that most of the time, I just didn't care what happened to them. I am not sorry I read this book, because it is important to read the classics, the books that made a mark, but if you don't share that value with me, I'd say skip it. Bleh. -cg ( )
1 vota Carissa.Green | Mar 30, 2013 |
Es mostren 1-5 de 11 (següent | mostra-les totes)
I’m still amazed that this dark and risky novel, The Man with the Golden Arm—it ends with a poem/epitaph!—won such high canonical praise (perhaps making way for descendents like Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree, and Denis Johnson’s Angels?).
 

» Afegeix-hi altres autors (9 possibles)

Nom de l'autorCàrrecTipus d'autorObra?Estat
Nelson Algrenautor primaritotes les edicionscalculat
Gifford, BarryIntroduccióautor secundarialgunes edicionsconfirmat
Kliphuis, J.F.Traductorautor secundarialgunes edicionsconfirmat
Has d'iniciar sessió per poder modificar les dades del coneixement compartit.
Si et cal més ajuda, mira la pàgina d'ajuda del coneixement compartit.
Títol normalitzat
Títol original
Títols alternatius
Data original de publicació
Gent/Personatges
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès. Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
Llocs importants
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès. Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
Esdeveniments importants
Pel·lícules relacionades
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès. Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
Epígraf
Dedicatòria
Primeres paraules
Citacions
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès. Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
- -  "The old country. . .?"
   
      - - "Thereʻs no one left in the old country."
Darreres paraules
Nota de desambiguació
Editor de l'editorial
Creadors de notes promocionals a la coberta
Llengua original
Informació del coneixement compartit en alemany. Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
CDD/SMD canònics
LCC canònic

Referències a aquesta obra en fonts externes.

Wikipedia en anglès (1)

"A novel of rare genius, The Man with the Golden Arm describes the dissolution of a card-dealing WWII veteran named Frankie Machine, caught in the act of slowly cutting his own heart into wafer-thin slices. For Frankie, a murder committed may be the least of his problems. The literary critic Malcolm Cowley called The Man with the Golden Arm "Algren's defense of the individual," while Carl Sandburg wrote of its "strange midnight dignity." A literary tour de force, here is a novel unlike any other, one in which drug addiction, poverty, and human failure somehow suggest a defense of human dignity and a reason for hope. Seven Stories Press separately publishes the critical edition of The Man with the Golden Arm, the first critical edition of an Algren work, featuring an extra 100+ pages of insightful essays by Russell Banks, Bettina Drew, James R. Giles, Carlo Rotella, William Savage, Lee Stringer, Studs Terkel, Kurt Vonnegut, and others"--

No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca.

Descripció del llibre
Sumari haiku

Debats actuals

Cap

Cobertes populars

Dreceres

Valoració

Mitjana: (3.78)
0.5
1 2
1.5 1
2 4
2.5 3
3 11
3.5 7
4 32
4.5 4
5 16

Ets tu?

Fes-te Autor del LibraryThing.

 

Quant a | Contacte | LibraryThing.com | Privadesa/Condicions | Ajuda/PMF | Blog | Botiga | APIs | TinyCat | Biblioteques llegades | Crítics Matiners | Coneixement comú | 202,659,983 llibres! | Barra superior: Sempre visible