The Man With the Golden Arm

Marshall Zeringue at The Campaign for the American Reader was kind enough to solicit and publish my essay on one of my favorite novels, Nelson Algren's The Man With the Golden Arm. The essay focuses on page 69 of the novel, using "The Page 69 Test" (explained here) of initially assessing a new book to help decide whether one wants to read further.

I'm sure the test isn't infallible, but as my essay mentions it works quite well for this book. I've already used the test to reject several potential bookstore purchases, so it's already saved me a few bucks.