Sammy tied his whole being on never, ever loving and killed himself inside for it. Can self-awareness and dogged personal ethics navigate this chasm? My money says it can. Is Al really the hero? Are you just jealous? Where was his self-reflection? Or was it all about Sammy? And what are you doing in Paris? What have you been doing man? If not, get on it. The way she plays the different characters, giving each of them a very distinct theme to represent, intertwines and conflicts them, is genius.
Which is what the best books do. For those years I barely read anything, not wanting to distract myself and conscious of the fact that I was taking those years to sort it out. Have you read The Virtue of Selfishness? I have it on my shelf but never picked it up. Is it worth reading? He was cruel, arrogant, power hungry, manipulative, aloof, and driven, right? First of all, they inhabit the same class. Not too virtuous. So the two have quite a few similarities.
Anyway, you can still avoid becoming either Glick or Gatsby, just by becoming yourself. Does it matter that Glick and Gatsby are accomplished, and you want to be accomplished too? Not at all, because the reasons behind your decision fundamentally differ from theirs. You know it. We all know it. Are you one of the gazillions who wondered how Hillary Clinton could lose an election to Donald Trump? Read this and wonder no more. Uh, no! What I appreciate most about this particular approach to this character study is the relationship between author Bud Schulberg and his anti-hero protagonist.
It would have been so easy for Schulberg to have written in a sneering judgmental way. But, but, but. They walk a thin tightrope and manage to keep from falling.
Definitely a worthy read, not just for the era in which it was written, but just as much for today. Aug 16, Thomas J. Hubschman rated it really liked it.
Good stuff. Great perennial American character, like Gatsby. A good example, though, of what Pritchett said about psychology being reduced to motivation in contemporary literature. The narrator is obsessed with finding out, well, what makes Sammy run--and run over so many people as he does so. I admire Schulberg if for no other reason than his old-fashioned attitude that there is more to write about than one's own ethnic group.
Waterfront the novel could have been written by an Irish-Catholic f Good stuff. Waterfront the novel could have been written by an Irish-Catholic from Hoboken, e.
And Sammy would be a great creation if he were Hindu or Zoroastrian. Aug 06, John Mccullough rated it really liked it. Sammy is the little guy, the one you miss seeing, who you forget about. But he is ruthless. And he is running. Always running. Schulberg provides us a chilling portrait of fairyland - where the movies aremade.
A very, very good read. The story is, on the surface, all about the antagonist -a. Sammy — and his rise from being a Lower East Side punk to being a successful Hollywood producer. He does not approve of the way Sammy leads his life but nevertheless stays close to him professionally and is, in fact, so fascinated by him, that he is able to record the account that, we the readers, understand to be the book in our hands.
In short, Manheim comes off as a bit holier-than-thou. On a related note, I appreciated the strong female role of Kit, who is a screen writer, labor organizer and confidant to Manheim.
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is what you could become. Running forever to reach what? The quotes'll capture it.
Quotes: "I can still see Sammy racing between the desks, his tie flying wild-eyed, desperate. He was running against time. It was funny as time went on This is what you could become. It was funny as time went on how the more I learned about one the more I understood about the other. Any yet they couldn't have been more different if one had been born an Eskimo and the other the Prince of Wales.
And there were so many Julian Blumbergs in the world. Jews without money, without push, without plots, without any of the characteristics which such experts on genetics as Adolf Hitler, Henry Ford and Father Coughlin try to tell us are racial traits.
I have seen too many of their lonely frightened faces packed together in subways or staring out of thousands of dingy rooms as my train hurled past them on the elevated from th Street into Grand Central, too many Jewish nebs and poets and staving tailors and everyday little guys to consider the fascist answer to What Makes Sammy Run? Nothing is ever quite so drab and repetitious and forlorn and ludicrous as truth.
Know who it was about? He was climbing up a rope and I was chasing him, only the rope didn't seem to be tied to anything-just going straight up in the air. And every time he got near the end, it just kept getting longer. And then I fell off Sammy's flame was deceptive because you were always looking at it through the powerful magnifying glass of his own ego.
But when the telephone wires filed to transmit the magnetic current it was like standing off and looking at a small, cold star. He would still have to send out frantic S. I'm lonely. I'm nervous.
I'm friendless. I'm desperate. Bring girls, bring Scotch, bring laughs. Bring a pause in the day's occupation, the quick sponge for the sweaty marathoner, the recreational pause that is brief and vulgar and titillating and quickly forgotten, like a dirty joke.
Fear of all the bright young men, the newer, fresher Sammy Glicks that would spring up to harass him, to threaten him and finally to overtake him.
Jun 12, Michael Rollins rated it really liked it Shelves: fiction , When I first started this book, I was immediately gripped by the fast paced storytelling as we saw Sammy's life go from lowly office boy to high flying Hollywood writer in a flash.
I found the contrast between the two main characters interesting, particularly the way we had Al acting almost purely as an observer and commentator whilst Sammy was more like a star in his own movie. I did find in some areas of the book the story to be a bit lacking, however I did enjoy the sections on the writers gu When I first started this book, I was immediately gripped by the fast paced storytelling as we saw Sammy's life go from lowly office boy to high flying Hollywood writer in a flash.
I did find in some areas of the book the story to be a bit lacking, however I did enjoy the sections on the writers guild, and Al going back to NY to discover Sammy's back story. Dec 15, Aubrey rated it really liked it Shelves: I didn't know what to expect when I started reading, except that F. Scott Fitzgerald recommended it. What I discovered, is a book with many quotable moments - many "aha" moments, so it didn't surprise me to learn that this novel had originally been a handful of short stories.
Overall, this novel is a glimpse at the shadow behind the American dream, but also a psychological and moral analysis. Interesting outlook on a young man who is ruthless in his tactics in getting ahead - it doesn't matter who he destroys on his way up -- it's all about him pg , paperback edition ". I know which note this is too, I said.
Mi mi mi mi mi. Apr 23, Neil Pasricha rated it really liked it. A cautionary tale about the dangers of unbridled ambition. I have some pretty raw ambitious streaks and this was a nice reminder to constantly ground and recenter.
Super snappy and fast-paced, too. Jan 04, Col rated it really liked it Shelves: s , Sammy Glick is a winner. Witty, clever, action-packed and acutely observed, this classic of American literature, which has sold over a million copies, is as compelling and revealing now as it was when first published in this country in Click here to see what others have read.
An interesting observation on Hollywood and the American dream played out to the nth degree. Eventually Sammy meets his match, when he encounters someone who can run faster than himself. I thought unconsciously, I had been waiting for justice suddenly to rise up and smite him in all its vengeance, secretly hoping to be around when Sammy got what was coming to him; only I had expected something conclusive and fatal and now I realised what was coming to him was not a sudden pay-off but a process, a disease he had caught in the epidemic that swept over his birthplace like plague; a cancer that was slowly eating him away, the symptoms developing and intensifying: success, loneliness, fear.
It was too late to hate him or change him Sammy's will had curled in on itself, like an ingrown hair festering, spreading infection.
He was known for his novel, What Makes Sammy Run? Bought copy recently from Amazon. Sep 09, Richard Thompson rated it really liked it Shelves: american-literature , entertainment. Sammy is a classic. Schulberg's characterization totally nails a personality type that all of us know. Sammy isn't unique to show business, but because show business rewards Sammy-type behavior more than most walks of life, we have a lot more of them in show business than most people see in regular everyday life.
The only thing that Schulberg got wrong is that this personality type is not something that can only arise in places like the tenements of New York's old time Lower East Side. I have me Sammy is a classic. I have met Sammys from all sorts of backgrounds -- rich, poor, east coast, west coast, south, Jewish, Christian, white, black, whatever.
It's an equal opportunity personality disorder. There are lots of great things about Sammy that go way beyond simple aggressive materialistic narcissism. He really does help people as long as it helps him to do so ; he is really loyal until it becomes to his benefit to dump you , and although some of his lies are just bald untruths, most of them are mildly harmless exaggeratons like putting out a press release claiming that he got double the actual figure in a deal.
He is so brazen about his lying that you can almost see things his way sometimes, even when the lie is hitting you on the head like a sledgehammer. There is certainly charisma in him that draws in Al and Kit so that they are unable to let go or to hate him completely, even when he is at his worst. His energy is charming, and so is his simplicity. You always know where he stands -- Just put on your Sammy goggles and look at the world with Sammy vision. Schulberg is also very smart in showing how the rest of us deal with the Sammys of the world.
Al likes to get on his moral high horse, lecture Sammy and look down on him, but in the end he accepts Sammy's help and owes his career to Sammy. Sheik and, of course, Julian also hang on to Sammy taking their bit of reflected glory and money, even when it demeans them to do so. They just can't resist.
Only Kit and in the end also Laurette can be around Sammy without being infected by him -- Kit because she is good, pure and strong; Laurette because she is so toxic that she out-Sammys Sammy himself. I'm afraid that I have probably been more like Al Manheim in dealing with the modern day Sammys in my corner of show business. Maybe I could take some lessons from Kit. May 28, David rated it it was amazing. At one point he asked which book did she think best summed up Hollywood; she didn't hesitate: "What Makes Sammy Run?
But Bette's reminder was enough for me to get around to a read. The story has a narrator a drama critic - it's through his eyes that we Sammy rise like a rocket from over-eager newspaper cop Bette Davis recommended this indirectly, of course - I saw her on YouTube being interviewed by Dick Cavett.
The story has a narrator a drama critic - it's through his eyes that we Sammy rise like a rocket from over-eager newspaper copy boy to ruthless movie mogul. Sammy personifies the saying 'the bad sleep well'; he's an unrepentant user without a conscience and without empathy. That doesn't as written make him a hardcore sociopath It does make him a character who is not all that interesting - his sleaze factor is endless; lacking both wit and charm.
But where the book succeeds is in its thorough breakdown of how Sammy operates or, rather, runs. The narrator Al Manheim is a likable guy who serves as our moral compass. At one point, he ends up with a love interest Kit Sargent - a woman who is a sharpshooter as both a screenwriter and an observer of human nature; when they combine forces, we get all the buffer we need to keep from completely falling into the pit of Sammy's snake oil.
Near the end of the novel, we get a rather thorough examination of how Sammy 'got that way', so we see how learned behavior results in his arrested development.
Like a large number of people, Sammy has he believes figured out how the world works and is only interested in making the world pay him for that. He gains just about everything through his steamroller approach To me, this is among the great American novels. May 12, Viktor rated it really liked it. Very good book. Awesome even. Maybe a bit long on the union politics -- ok, VERY long on the union politics -- but it pays off a bit later on.
Also included are the two original short stories that started Sammy running. Well worth the extra effort to read them -- not that they add to Sammy's "legacy", but rather to see the acorns that grew the mighty oak.
Although Manheim is quite open about his feelings for Kit, she makes it clear that it is Sammy she prefers, especially in bed. When she met Sammy, she tells Manheim, she had "this crazy desire to know what it felt like to have all that driving ambition and frenzy and violence inside me.
The bosses prefer to have carte blanche when dealing with their writers, ranging from having them work on a week-to-week basis to giving them a seven-year contract. In the film industry, Manheim remarks at one point in the novel, it is the rule rather than the exception that "convictions are for sale," with people double-crossing each other whenever the slightest chance presents itself to them.
Hollywood, he notices, regularly and efficiently turns out three products: moving pictures, ambition, and fear. Manheim becomes an eyewitness to the birth of what was to become the Writers Guild, an organization created to protect the interests of the screenwriters. After one of the studio's periodic reshufflings, Manheim finds himself out of work and goes back to New York. There, still preoccupied with Sammy Glick's rise to stardom, he investigates Sammy's past.
He comes to understand, at least to some degree, "the machinery that turns out Sammy Glicks" and "the anarchy of the poor". Manheim realizes that Sammy grew up in the "dog-eat-dog world" of New York's Lower East Side Rivington Street , much like the more sophisticated dog-eat-dog world of Hollywood. The one connection between Sammy's childhood days and his present position seems to be Sheik, someone who went to school with him and regularly beat him up.
Now Sheik is working as Glick's personal servant or almost slave —possibly some kind of belated act of revenge on Sammy's part, or the "victim's triumph".
When Manheim returns to Hollywood he becomes one of Glick's writers. There he realizes that there is also a small minority of honorable men working in pictures, especially producer Sidney Fineman, Glick's boss. Manheim teams up with Kit Sargent to write several films for Glick, who has successfully switched to production and moved into a gigantic manor in Beverly Hills. Fineman's position becomes compromised by a string of flops, and Manheim attempts to convince Harrington, a Wall Street banker representing the film company's financiers, that Fineman is still the right man for the job.
This is the moment when Glick sees his chance to get rid of Fineman altogether and take his place. At a reception, Glick meets Laurette, Harrington's daughter; he immediately and genuinely falls in love with this "golden girl," discarding his girlfriend. He feels that he is about to kill two birds with one stone by uniting his personal ambition and his love life. Fineman, only 56, dies soon after losing his job to Sammy—of a broken heart, it is rumoured.
Sammy's wedding is described by Manheim as "a marriage-to-end-all-marriages" staged in the beautiful setting of Sammy's estate.
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