This fiftieth-anniversary critical edition of Man with the Golden Arm shows Algren at his very finest. The edition closes with over a hundred pages of reminiscences, letters, early press reviews and recent scholarly essays. If you are to judge a man by his friends, then we should rate Algren high indeed: Studs Terkel, Kurt Vonnegut, even Lou Reed wanted to include a testimonial...The Man with the Golden Arm is a great book...No reader with an interest in American literature, or in the sufferings of ordinary people, can afford to ignore it.
Times Literary Supplement
If you can’t get David Bowie to join your book club, do the next best thing and pick a book he’d recommend—his taste for Orwell is not-so-well hidden inside songs like “Big Brother.” It’s alway fun to spot a literary easter egg, tucked away in the music of everyone from hipster godfather Lou Reed to perennial Romeo-seeker Taylor Swift. […]
Hollywood feeds on writers. Now more than ever, the cinema awash in remakes, re-imaginings, sequels, and adaptations. For some writers, this is a wonderful thing. Whoever’s collecting royalty checks for Philip K. Dick must be overjoyed whenever a kid sees Blade Runner for the first time, knowing each new generation of fans will keep Dick’s […]