The Man With the Golden Arm

[Duckfeet]

All this talk of Heidi's avatar actually got me remembering the great writer, Nelson Algren, who wrote the novel "The Man With the Golden Arm," which the first big junky movie was based on...but I was thinking of his collection of short stories, called "The Last Carousel," which had the best *short stories* I've ever read on a lost couple, with some beautiful deadly girl, strung out on heroin, and how they coped, and how it all ended, and so much of it was like my life...I thought the movie based on his novel was pretty crappy, but so were most movies made back then, IMHO....

This movie actually came out when I was a teenager down in Argentina, and me and some of my friends saw the movie, and I never even once thought I might end up a junky...seemed like big-city thing, or something...

"The Last Carousel," was a great find, for me, along with "Cain's Book," by Trocchi, and "The Man With the Golden Arm" was written in Algren's sort of poetic style and was very effective, and he obviously knew a bit about junky life...and the Chicago streets, for sure...

[Morphus]

I read the Man with the Golden Arm and watched the movie several times. The book of course is always better, but in the movie, if you werent paying attention you might have missed the fact that Frankie Machine was a junkie, it only shows him use a couple times, and then theres the famous "forced WD scene". Even that minimalist approach was apparently pretty shocking back when the movie came out. The book made it clear that frankie was much more of a practicing junkie than the movie did, and also did not have the happy ending the movie did.

[Duckfeet]

Yep: it was the first mainstream treatment I know of, of junkies...but years later, when I started trying to find more of Algren's writing, I came upon "Walk on the Wild Side," and "The Last Carousel," and they too, were great books, but "The Last Carousel," seemed to be the most accurate depiction of junkie relationships, and he described this one couple so well that I almost wept, as it was so like my life, and he even wrote a couple of poems in there, about junkies...and mostly, it was Nelson's unique writing style, very noticable in "Man w/the Golden Arm," which was different and cool...long before Trainspotting author was born...

One of the stories was about the guy trying to kick heroin on a greyhound bus, and having a bottle of pantopon or some kind of pre-methadone shit, and adding more and more water to it, and his totally delusional belief that he was going to "stay off dope for good." And his beautiful girl who he pimped out, and all the shit...was so much like my life at the time...

[libertine]

The Man with the Golden Arm is where Burroughs got some of his inspiration from for Junky, though he wouldn't admit it, the book was the only mainstream one about heroin addiction at the time, so he had to have read it, but he said his real inspiration was You Can't Win, by Jack Black, a thief in the 20's who smoked opium in the last of the real dens, stole, did time all over the country, and fucked his way through the underground of society before the counter-culture ever existed. I haven't read the book, but I saw a little of the movie when I was withdrawing, have never seen it on television before or since... my life is filled with small ironies


Also, what's really badass is that on the copyright page of You Can't Win is a message from the publishers saying that any convict can obtain a copy of the book by mailing them ten dollars and a contact address (the list price is sixteen US dollars).

[nick]

Yeah,I'm a fan of Jack Black's "you can't win."I've got a copy with a really cool Joe Coleman illustration.


Nelson Algren was a good writer till he "hung out" with Simone De Beauvoir.Let this be a lesson to all young writers-don't hang out with french intellectual types.

[Duckfeet]

Yeah, Burroughs was sort of--to me--one of the first of the sort of "intellectual" junky who sought out the sordid lifestyles, he kind of came of age--and mentioned--the old European Cocaine elite who floated around, and of course he brings to mind Ezra Pound and one of my heroes, the Scot, Alexander Trocchi...

But Algren was a great writer, and was one of the first I read who had compassion for junkies, and wrote a short story about a pusher that I thought showed much empathy...

And I don't like Burroughs personally, I mean, his bio is nothing but cruelty and destruction to those around him: he cold-blooded shot his wife dead in his stupid William Tell crap, and his son, seemed to have spent his life trying to get his Dad to be kind to him, and if not for the other beats, the son never found any support from Pop...

To me he was phony old pseudo-fag who always could dodge the bullets that Huncke and others had to pay the full price for, in harsh ways...

But he wrote junky, and that's our bible...fwiw...Algren was much better writer, and particularly if you're a Chicago kid, it's always good to check out Nelson Algren...

[nick]

Yeah, Burroughs was sort of--to me--one of the first of the sort of "intellectual" junky who sought out the sordid lifestyles, he kind of came of age--and mentioned--the old European Cocaine elite who floated around, and of course he brings to mind Ezra Pound and one of my heroes, the Scot, Alexander Trocchi...

But Algren was a great writer, and was one of the first I read who had compassion for junkies, and wrote a short story about a pusher that I thought showed much empathy...

And I don't like Burroughs personally, I mean, his bio is nothing but cruelty and destruction to those around him: he cold-blooded shot his wife dead in his stupid William Tell crap, and his son, seemed to have spent his life trying to get his Dad to be kind to him, and if not for the other beats, the son never found any support from Pop...

To me he was phony old pseudo-fag who always could dodge the bullets that Huncke and others had to pay the full price for, in harsh ways...

But he wrote junky, and that's our bible...fwiw...Algren was much better writer, and particularly if you're a Chicago kid, it's always good to check out Nelson Algren...

Yes,I appreciate uncle Bill's mind,but I wouldn't want to hang out with him.Uncle Bill makes the mistake of trying to deny his humanity and that's not possible.You can dislike humanity,like Buk,but you can't deny it.
and for the record his son was a better writer.Bill was more of a visionary philosopher.

[dugwylor]

for the record his son was a better writer.Bill was more of a visionary philosopher.
I'd like to read something of his son's, but I happen to think Burroughs Sr. was quite a damn good prose poet. You can't read his work as though it's any kind of real narrative, just giving yourself up to the style. It's a little bit hard to judge the quality of that kind of work against something more structured (which it looks like the 2 novels by Billy Burroughs Jr. are). But I'd honestly be damn surprised if I agree with you on that point.

Burroughs is best at his most philosophical... ("The Job" is a great read for that purpose -- half interview, half Burroughs collection -- and helps illuminate a lot of his work, with the central axiom that language is a virus to be transcended.) But I think he's also one of the better poets of the century.

[Duckfeet]

I think I was just so infatuated w/those guys in my youth, that, almost predictably, I quit liking them as I got older...When I was in Vietnam, they'd give you 30 days leave, anywhere in the world, if you'd extend for six months, and I went to Tangier Morocco, just on odd chance I'd see Burroughs, or just to, you know, "hang out in the same neighborhood," and I read all his books that came out after Junky, Nova Express and stuff, and of course, by then, I just about had Kerouac memorized, and had read the Electric Koolaid Acid Test by Kesey, which came out in back then, and talked alot about Cassady...and on and on..."Junky" was handed out as an anti-drug book, during the "heroin epidemic" at least when I was w/the 101st Airborne, they did...

But finally I guess I read more, and got to be a full-blown junky myself--not that Bill ever recommended it, btw--and just saw it all differently: On The Road, to me, is a sad book, and I've reread Big Sur more than once, and it's sadder still:...and honestly, I don't think any of Burrough's other stuff would have seen the light of day, for the times, except for Kerouac's fame had more to do w/it than the quality of his writing...but it's different tastes, of course...I think as far as prose poetry and stuff, again, that Nelson Algren's writing was much better, and had more music and heart...we'll see...they both are sort of fading out, anyway...Henry Miller had stuff that was magic...and "structure" like all art, is there perhaps to connect w/others in ways that moves them, and gets them to feel or see something the writer wants them to see...if not, why bother...might as well write alone in a room and throw the pages out the window...

But you're not alone: the cut-up method, he kind of adopted from his painter friend had it's fans...in the end, tho, like so many from that era, he became famous for who he was, not what he had written...kind of like Timothy Leary, IMO...

I'd like to read something of his son's, but I happen to think Burroughs Sr. was quite a damn good prose poet. You can't read his work as though it's any kind of real narrative, just giving yourself up to the style. It's a little bit hard to judge the quality of that kind of work against something more structured (which it looks like the 2 novels by Billy Burroughs Jr. are). But I'd honestly be damn surprised if I agree with you on that point.
Burroughs is best at his most philosophical... ("The Job" is a great read for that purpose -- half interview, half Burroughs collection -- and helps illuminate a lot of his work, with the central axiom that language is a virus to be transcended.) But I think he's also one of the better poets of the century.