I Read Therefore I Am discussion

Comment as soon as you like, but please hide any spoilers.

Oh this is going to be a tough one for me. I started yesterday and realized that my almost pathological allergy against novels about drug addiction or gambling is going to make this very painful. Allergy may not be the word, but it's this thing about knowing where it will most likely end and finding yourself shouting at a book 'NO! You fool!Dooooooooooooooooon't!!!!' and not knowing what to feel more uncomfortable with: the book or sitting there like a mad-woman shouting at a bundle of paper.

I know what you mean,Jenny - it's a bit like when I'm watching a horror film " No, don't go in there!" , "Stop walking backwards!" - "just run away now!"

Yes, pretty much just like that! ;) Has anybody else started yet?

Yeah, I'm always yelling 'No don't split up! That's a really stupid idea!' at the TV too lol! Haven't started yet although am picking my copy up from the library tomorrow.

I started yesterday and was within the hour aware that I was in the presence of a Master wordsmith. Having never even heard of Algren before only added to my pleasure; that of discovering not only an excellent author but also of confirming my sense that I had stumbled upon a diamond in the coal box when chancing upon I Read Therefore I Am (there are no accidents). Feel like a little kid in a toy store - acres and acres of toys! Kudos to you Lee.

Ahh! Thank you Antipodes - We have polls for the group reads so I can't take all the credit :0)
I'm really looking forward to starting this book now - just got to finish Kidnapped which I should quite soon as I'm simply galumphing through it - it's so exciting.

Only up to page 37 but I am already disliking this look at the grimy underbelly of society. I hope it doesn't get any worse or I'll need to go and have a walk in the clean, fresh air or take a shower!

It took me a while to attune my ear to the dialogue in this book (I was coming straight from the 18th century Scottish of Kidnapped).But I'm 15% in now (in the Tug and Haul Bar) and I'm really into it. The characters and their lives are certainly grim but it's marvellous the way that the author manages to keep your sympathy for them all (except maybe for Johnny the Drunk) . There's a great bit in the introduction to my copy (by Kurt Vonnegut) about what Nelson Algren hoped that people would get out of his books - "As I understand him (Algren) he would be satisfied were we to agree with him that persons unlucky and poor and not very bright are to be respected for surviving although they often have no choice but to do so in ways unattractive and blameworthy to those who are a lot better off".
Well I certainly agree with him so far - and am very thankful that it has not been my fate to be one of the characters he wrote about.

That is true Lee. It's certainly well written and I do agree about most of the characters attracting our sympathy. I wrote my previous comment just after meeting Drunk Johnie who I thought was loathsome. Have you come across Blind Pig yet? I could quite understand his attitude towards others although I really couldn't condone his way of showing how he felt!

Blind Pig is revolting isn't he?- the description of him drinking beer made me feel queasy.

Of course it's easy to feel sympathy for fictional characters - don't think I'd be quite so understanding if I met their real life counterparts :0)

How is everyone getting on with this then? I'm up to p67 where we are getting a look back at the history of Frankie and Sophie's relationship. Still finding it hard going but do agree that Algren is a very good writer.

I am struggling with this to be honest, I'm up to page 106. The writing is very good, even brilliant, at times and he can elicit my sympathy for the characters that I would most naturally dislike. However, the subject matter is pretty awful, not to my taste at all and I'm having to really persuade myself to pick it up because I just know it's going to get worse!

I'm 60% through and am having a short break because like Hilary says - it's just so depressing - every time you think it can't get any worse it does. I will come back to it soon though.

I've finished a while ago and I felt the same. Algren no doubt is a good writer, and sometimes there's a piece of dialogue or a scene that is just a little masterpiece in itself, but non of it could make me enjoy the book, for all the reasons I've mentioned in my first post. I am not someone who will shy away from bleak, depressing literature at all, but this one just pressed too many wrong buttons all at once, so my rating might actually say more about me as a reader than about the book itself.

I have in the meantime watched the movie, and it is interesting to see the differences in approach.

What do you all think of the relationship between Frankie and Sophie?

For the life of me I can't figure out why she married him in the first place! Or indeed why he married her. I appreciate the phantom pregnancy would have pushed them both into it, but why then stay together when there was no child? I think her "illness" is used not only to make sure that he feels guilty about the accident but to punish him for everything else too.

What did you think of the movie? My book has Frank Sinatra on the cover so I assume he played Frankie. The books only redeeming feature is that every time Frankie speaks I see and hear Frank saying the words (love Sinatra)

I feel sorry for both Frankie and Sophia (view spoiler)[ I think something in Sophia was seriously damaged the time that Frankie told her her didn't want to see her for a month and she begged him to come back to her - her illness is used to punish both of them - and I think that there's only a very small part of her that realises that it's not real (hide spoiler)]

That was my feeling about their relationship too in the movie, her way of instrumentalizing her illness is actually much more pronounced, infact it was really hard to feel sorry for her at all, and the 'hysterical woman in love' kind of portrayal which is very typical of american movies of the time I find didn't help to feel empathy for her at all. Also the movie ends very different to the book, apparently Algren felt quite betrayed by it. But it is interesting to watch after having finished the book, both for an idea of how they interpreted the book and for the cast itself. However the movie was just as painful to watch as the book was to read, so you might want to take a little break between one and the other.

I guess they felt that the "hero" of an American film needed more of an excuse to cheat on his wife! - (view spoiler)[ In the film - does Frankie kill the drug dealer? (hide spoiler)]

From the sound of things, I'm pleased I'm not reading this. I'm going to concentrate on getting through The Idiot.

I have been trying for almost a week now to come up with the words to convey accurately what I think of Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm and what I perceive to be his core message. Now, I don't presume that this is it, but I came across this paragraph while reviewing some of my past highlights in other works while in search of a 'one line quote'. The highlight was within the following paragraph and the paragraph fairly succinctly provides the words that I could not and almost perfectly illuminated my sentiments for the novel.

"What the ego hates more than anything else in the world is to change - even when the present situation is not working or is horrible. Instead, we do more and more of what does not work, as many others have rightly said about addicts, and, I would say, about all of us. The reason we do anything one more time is because the last time did not really satisfy us deeply. As English poet W. H. Auden put it in 'Apropos of Many Things': 'We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the present and let our illusions die.' "

Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water

That last sentence says it all, for me, about The Man with the Golden Arm. I believe that we can all agree that Algren conveyed the dread masterfully, and I believe he did well on other notes. I gave the novel 5 stars and am looking forward to reading more of his work.

"

I think that's a brilliant summary of essence of the book, thanks for sharing that. I wish I could have moved out of my skin a little more and therefore enjoyed the novel more (and by that I don't mean the kind of enjoyment that you get from a light-hearted page turner, but the kind of enjoyment you get from a book that you can 'allow in' so to speak) but despite the fact that I had a really hard time with this one, I have a lot of respect for Nelson Algren writing it.

Although I disagree in some ways with the quotation as it stands, it certainly does sum up this novel. I'm not sure I would read more of his work if it is always so dark and the characters leading such desperately hopeless lives. I feel rather beaten by it, to be honest, at this point, and suspect it will only get worse.

I totally agree - it's an amazing book- and every few pages there's an idea, image or description that makes me have to stop reading and think - the sign of a classic. The only problem is that I am finding it seriously depressing and so am having a bit of a breather - I will come back to it though.

Have just finished and it will stay with me for a long time I think. Yes it's hard to get into at first, yes its characters are repulsive, and the 1940's American slang dialogue is hard to understand for UK readers like me...BUT... What fantastic writing! The narration is brilliant, almost poetic at times.

Algren uses beautiful imagery and metaphors to paint a bleak, despairing, hopeless situation. And made me eventually empathise with the sort of people who (like Lee) I would try to avoid in real life.

This book should have made Algren as famous as Hemingway or Scott Fitzgerald. Perhaps he was at first then his work fell out of favour with a more affluent society

My copy has got some bonus material at the back - has anybody else got this copy. It's really getting the book and Algren into perspective for me, which is a big help.

Mine has an intro by Irvine Welsh describing the part of Chicago that's in the book, and also Algren's life, which was quite checkered. I don't bother with intros normally but that one was worth reading.
There's also a bit at the back by Kurt Vonnegut who knew Algren towards the end of his life.

I got my copy from Norwich library. It has Frank Sinatra on the front. It's part of a 'memorial collection' to the 8th Air Force 2nd Air Division and has a dedication: "In memory of those American airmen who, flying from bases in these parts, gave their lives defending freedom 1942 - 1945". Isn't that moving!

I must have the same copy as you, Anna - (though it's not part of the Air Force memorial collection)

I'm reading that edition too although I thought I would leave the intro and postscript until I'd read the book. I'm going to have another assault on it this week.

I've just finished this - took me a while to get into it but then started to appreciate the poetry of it even though the subject matter and the characters are anything but pretty. Finished the last third in a rush as I couldn't put it down - (view spoiler)[my heart was in my mouth when the police are chasing Frankie (hide spoiler)] and then ending is so melancholy and haunting. (view spoiler)[ I liked the way he intercut what happened to Sophie with Frankie's last hours as well (hide spoiler)]

I'd be lying if I said I'd enjoyed this book. Yes, it's well written, occasionally beautiful and also moving. I was sympathetic to the characters in the end, well the main ones anyway! But I had multiple problems with this book. Not only did I find it a depressing tale of human weakness but I really struggles with the colloquial language. At times I had only a glimpse of what was meant by it and had a sneaking suspicion that because of that I might be missing something important.

It became a bit of a slog to be honest but I got there in the end. Am I the only one who found Frankie's ending a bit unbelievable?