Here are 100 books that The Man with the Golden Arm fans have personally recommended if you like
The Man with the Golden Arm.
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Growing up in theatre, I was completely immersed in plays, which tend to be deep dives of the human psyche, and I latched on to those examinations like a dog with a bone. I’ve always loved the complexities of the human mind, specifically how we so desperately want to believe that anything beautiful, expensive, or exclusive must mean that the person, place, or thing is of more value. But if we pull back the curtain, and really take a raw look, we see that nothing is exempt from smudges of ugliness. It’s the ugliness, especially in regard to human character, that I find most fascinating.
For me, insight into the extravagant celebrity status-like lives of the characters in this movie is akin to the guilty pleasure of watching reality TV. This book brings out the voyeur in me, giving me permission to explore a perfect example of rich kids gone wild and the horrific consequences of unchecked actions.
I grew up in a lower economic class family surrounded by very wealthy, undisciplined friends, and so many of the characters and decisions hit close to home. I won’t lie; I felt a little better about myself and my own life after I finished reading. Yet, I’ll also admit that I didn’t want the train wreck to end.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The timeless classic from the acclaimed author of American Psycho about the lost generation of 1980s Los Angeles who experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age. • The basis for the cult-classic film "Possesses an unnerving air of documentary reality." —The New York Times They live in a world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money in a place devoid of feeling or hope. When Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college, he re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porsches,…
Winner of the Robert F. Lucid Award for Mailer Studies.
Celebrating Mailer's centenary and the seventy-fifth publication of The Naked and the Dead, the book illustrates how Mailer remains a provocative presence in American letters.
From the debates of the nation's founders, to the revolutionary traditions of western romanticism,…
I like fiction which makes a character confront what the poet Thom Gunn called ‘the blackmail of his circumstances’: where you are born, the expectations of you. I like to think I am very much a self-created individual, but I can never escape what I was born into; the self is a prison that the will is trying to break out of. I like literature which reflects that challenge.
I could have chosen any Raymond Chandler novel for this list; he is such a brilliant stylist, one of the best in the language.
His lugubrious, heavy-drinking, first-person detective Philip Marlowe is my kind of fictional hero, a genre-defining character, perpetually alone though he yearns for the glamorous women he meets.
Raymond Chandler's first three novels, published here in one volume, established his reputation as an unsurpassed master of hard-boiled detective fiction.
The Big Sleep, Chandler's first novel, introduces Philip Marlowe, a private detective inhabiting the seamy side of Los Angeles in the 1930s, as he takes on a case involving a paralysed California millionaire, two psychotic daughters, blackmail and murder.
In Farewell, My Lovely, Marlowe deals with the gambling circuit, a murder he stumbles upon, and three very beautiful but potentially deadly women.
In The High Window, Marlowe searches the California underworld for a priceless gold coin and finds himself…
I consider myself a disruptor of sorts, both in my life and in the art I make (I’m an actor, too). So I am by nature drawn to novels that bend and reshape (and sometimes ignore altogether) the rules and conventions that are supposed to govern the novelist’s craft and lead me to experience the world—and often the art of writing fiction itself—in ways I have never experienced either before. The novels on my list do just that.
I once heard a friend of mine describe Last Exit to Brooklyn as “a significant minor novel.” He was wrong. It’s a good deal more than that.
Set in the same Brooklyn in which one will find Herschel Cain, the main character in my own novel, before he becomes professional wrestler Haystacks Kane, yet light years away, Last Exit is a searing portrayal of life in the raw amongst the American underclass, profoundly disturbing and terribly, terribly sad. It shook me to my core when I read it not long after it was published in the mid-1960s, and has remained with me ever since.
In countless ways, Selby’s novel thumbs its nose at traditional novel structure and the customary rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation in order to present virtually every moment of its bleak and upsetting narrative with a ferocious immediacy rarely found anywhere else.
Last Exit to Brooklyn remains undiminished in its awesome power and magnitude as the novel that first showed us the fierce, primal rage seething in America’s cities. Selby brings out the dope addicts, hoodlums, prostitutes, workers, and thieves brawling in the back alleys of Brooklyn. This explosive best-seller has come to be regarded as a classic of modern American writing.
Winner of the Robert F. Lucid Award for Mailer Studies.
Celebrating Mailer's centenary and the seventy-fifth publication of The Naked and the Dead, the book illustrates how Mailer remains a provocative presence in American letters.
From the debates of the nation's founders, to the revolutionary traditions of western romanticism,…
Why do I use the word “fraud?” The answer is agonizingly simple. My whole life, and I mean since I was ten, I wanted to be “a real writer.” Whatever that was. And now here we are, 55 years later. Despite my great good fortune to spend 24 years coming up with jokes for Dave Letterman, three years as a columnist at Sports Illustrated, and to have my name on four novels, if you asked me, “Are you a real writer?” I would tell you, “not yet….” Here are five real writers.
Note-perfect 200-page tent flap pullback of the gloriously flawed Henry Chinaski, the poster manchild for living life on your own terms. But you already knew that. Gambling, drinking, aimlessness, and all the stuff we love to get neck deep in. And by “we,” I mean me. And maybe the greatest opening line in the history of literature: “It began as a mistake.” Here’s why I am a fraud: I didn’t know about this book until four years ago.
Henry Chinaski is a lowlife loser with a hand-to-mouth existence. His menial post office day job supports a life of beer, one-night stands and racetracks. Lurid, uncompromising and hilarious, Post Office is a landmark in American literature, and over 1 million copies have been sold worldwide.
The new edition is augmented with an anecdotal introduction by the modern Welsh cult-literary author, Niall Griffiths - a writer who was working in a British post office when he first read Bukowski's Post Office.
I’d always known about the Lady of the Dunes. I’d read about how she was found in the dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts, on July 26, 1974. I didn’t know about the tens of thousands of other unidentified victims like her, stowed around the US in the back rooms of morgues and unmarked graves. As a journalist who has always given a voice to those who struggle to be heard, I feel compelled to research and write about these Jane and John Does and the people who work to keep their cases in the public eye. I share a unique bond with writers who do the same.
I am biased toward any writer who features amateur sleuths. Lori Rader-Day not only plunges readers into a compelling story with a delightfully twisty ending, she also pays tribute to the volunteers who slave away on real-life sites such as The Doe Network. When the protagonist comes across a picture of a missing person, she realizes it’s someone from her past and resolves, for complicated reasons, to track him down.
"This might well be my favorite Rader-Day so far: a brilliant premise intriguingly developed, totally believable characters and a climax that took my breath away." - Ann Cleeves, New York Times bestselling author of The Shetland and Vera Series
From the author of the Edgar Award (R)-nominated Under A Dark Sky comes an unforgettable, chilling novel about a young woman who recognizes the man who kidnapped her as a child, setting off a search for justice, and into danger.
Most people who go missing are never found. But Alice was the lucky one...
I love noir fiction and the hard-boiled detective novels that often best exemplify the genre. Both Dashiel Hammet’s Sam Spade and Raymond Chander’s Marlowe are two men who will sacrifice everything for the truth, no matter the cost. There is a stark beauty in that. Fantasy, the genre of myth, carries the deepest, most poignant truths. These are the hard truths that can break a hero’s heart, as in Gilgamesh, or give you the bittersweet ending of The Lord of the Rings. Blending them produces some of my favorite stories, stories I love to read as the fog rolls in, listening to the music of heartbreaking jazz.
Mixing elves and eldridge powers into the gang warfare of prohibition Chicago, this book is a fast-paced wild ride into the dark and seedy lives of those who use violence to hold on to power.
The key to a good noir story is that it forces the protagonist to confront something they’d rather not know and to survive, they must find a way to live with that dark truth. This is a journey too many of us face, and Ford writes just such a brilliant journey for his protagonist, Doc.
Once I started reading this, it gripped me like cold iron until I was done.
When Danny Holman leaves the cornfields of Iowa for the bright lights of Chicago, he expects his life to change. He just can't guess how much and how fast. A violent incident on the road brings Danny the favor of a man known only as Mr. Patrise, who gives Danny a job, a home, and a new identity.
The City is a different world from the one Danny--now called Doc--knew, and literally so. Long-vanished powers have returned, and more is going on in the streets than nightlife and street warfare. Power is gathering: a power rooted in terror, madness, and…
I've been writing for decades, as one genre evolved into another. Local Colorado history led to the identification of "Boulder Jane Doe," a murder victim. During that journey I learned a lot about criminal investigations and forensics. I devoured old movies (especially film noir), and I focused on social history including mysterious and intriguing women. Midwest Book Review (see author book links) credits In Search of the Blonde Tigress as "rescuing" Eleanor Jarman "from obscurity." So true! Despite Eleanor's notoriety as "the most dangerous woman alive," she actually was a very ordinary woman. I've now found my niche pulling mysterious and intriguing women out of the shadows.
Using photo and newspaper archives from the Chicago Tribune, the authors ofHe Had It Comingtell the stories of four Chicago female murderers from the 1920s.
The documentation (both primary and secondary sources) and, especially, the newspaper's original high-quality historical photographs inspired me to dig deeply into similar archives when researching and writing my book.
Beulah Annan. Belva Gaertner. Kitty Malm. Sabella Nitti. These are the real women of Chicago.
You probably know Roxie and Velma, the good-time gals of the 1926 satirical play Chicago and its wildly successful musical and movie adaptations. You might not know that Roxie, Velma, and the rest of the colorful characters of the play were inspired by real prisoners held in "Murderess Row" in 1920s Chicago-or that the reporter who covered their trials for the Chicago Tribune went on to write the play Chicago.
Now, more than 90 years later, the Chicago Tribune has uncovered photographs and newspaper clippings…
I don’t think I’m alone in considering cults and those who join cults fascinating, but I’ve also always found it frustrating when non-fiction accounts or documentaries focus on the logistics of how the communes operate rather than finding out the why. Why do people join a cult, why do they stay, why do they follow increasingly erratic and dangerous instruction? For me, researching cults for my new novel The Sleepless – about a commune whose disciples believe that sleep is a social construct – was about finding out about the characters, the individuals, who are drawn into organisations which often ask you to relinquish that self-same sense of individuality.
It wasn’t until I picked up this book that I realised how little I actually knew about Charles Manson and his followers.
Sure, it had filtered down to me – through a variety of popular culture – that he was a notorious murderer and that his female followers were truly brainwashed, but how had that come to be and was there any way of making sense of his seemingly senseless violence and crimes? Guinn’s meticulously-researched book has the answers.
After more than forty years, Charles Manson continues to mystify and fascinate us. One of the most notorious criminals in American history, Manson and members of his mostly female commune killed nine people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate. Now, drawing on new information, bestselling author Jeff Guinn tells the definitive story of how this ordinary delinquent became a murderer.
Mansonhelps us understand what obsessed him and, most terrifying of all, how he managed to persuade others to kill. Guinn interviewed Manson's sister and cousin, neither of whom has ever previously cooperated with an author. Childhood friends, cellmates, and even some…
Michael Stanley is actually two people—Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip both South Africans, passionate about Africa and its cultures. We read a lot of books set in or concerning Africa. We think of African thrillers as Sunshine Noir—things are always at their most deadly in the glare of the sun! The diverse cultures generate complex character clashes and intriguingly original plots. We believe some of the best thrillers anywhere are set in Africa and written by African writers. Michael writes an article every month titled Africa Scene for the International Thrillers Writers magazine (The Big Thrill) where he interviews an author about a new thriller set in Africa.
Sipho is a young man with nothing to lose. He drops out of high school and joins a car-stealing syndicate. The novel is part thriller and part coming-of-age tale, and the story takes the reader on an emotional journey as Sipho is sucked deeper and deeper into South African township crime. The author grew up in this township, and but for his other talents might have followed the same path as his protagonist. A remarkable look at the reality of township life and its effect on the youth.
Sipho lives in Umlazi, Durban – he is seventeen, has dropped out of school and helps out at his father’s mechanic shop. But odd jobs do not provide the lifestyle his friend Musa has, with his BMW and designer clothes. Soon Sipho’s love for fast cars and money leads him into a life of crime that brings him close to drugs, death and prison time.
When I was eight, my mother was called in to see the principal…yet again. He pulled me out of class, stood me in the hall for maximum intimidation value, then said to my mom, “Your son has no respect for authority.” Mom asked, “What about that, Larry?” My reply—and this is totally true—was, “He doesn’t mean respect. He means courtesy. You can demand courtesy, but you have to earn respect.” Those sentiments have not changed, which is why, I suppose, I have an extremely critical eye for history, especially American history, that deifies the winners. I don’t think we make ourselves stronger as a nation by pretending our leaders were somehow not as human in their flaws as the rest of us. I prefer to look under what is called “conventional wisdom,” because that’s where the real story often lies.
A brilliant hypnotic novel that almost no one read. Albert French was the victim of a publishing nightmare—his editor and his publisher, both of whom had primed his novel for a major publicity push, left for new jobs before the pub date, after which his book was orphaned and abandoned. For anyone not in the book business, it might seem hard to believe that a terrific novel would be left to languish, but, sadly, such an event is not uncommon in American publishing.
Set in an African American section of Pittsburgh in 1950,I Can’t Wait on God evokes both the day-to-day lives of ordinary people and the striving and hopelessness of African Americans trying to escape the doomed existence to which so many are condemned. French weaves a tale that is starkly realistic, yet with a mystical overtone that creates a sort of intoxicating haze. The narrative seems straightforward,…
The crowded joys and familiar despair of poor, back-alley life in 1950 Pittsburgh have a hold on most people there, but there are those who need to escape. Jeremiah Henderson and his woman, Willet Mercer, set their sights on New York City - but making good is easier said than done. Left with no choice but to give in to the pimp who'd like to try Willet on for size before selling her to his clientele, Jeremiah and Willet try to focus on the future. But just before the pimp has his way with her, Willet balks, stabbing him to…
