No one is more disposed to love “Golden Arm” more than I; it was my first literary love, after all. And I love the man who wrote it as if he were the uncle I never had. And you’re right; there are many moments–like the quoted paragraph, that represent Algren at his best, not as a chronicler of drug addiction, but as a true poet of the Chicago slums. But reading Algren now with an unsentimental critical eye—that is, the eye of someone who has been honing his own craft for many years—is to marvel at the many flights of pure sloppy rhetoric that mar his best work, and that expose an author more intent on sentimentalizing his subject than on rendering it. By polishing his prose to a fare-the-well, and working its rhythms into the equivalent of song, in passages like the opening one he gets away with it, but not with everyone and mainly with those who are in it for the music. But honestly, the whole notion of a Chicago slum police captain feeling guilty about his charges is as sentimental as the personification of beer signs and blowing newspapers and whores with “heart-shaped” faces (and implied hearts of gold to go with them). No, I’m afraid there are good reasons why except for a few die-heard devotees like us people don’t read Algren anymore. For the record, I’ll be teaching “Golden Arm” to my students in the Spring term, but with a sense of foreboding, for I doubt they’ll tolerate his sentimental style.

Think about the amazing poem you’ve quoted about the captain, who never drank. Think about how his anxieties lie on him the way Frankie’s do. This isn’t at all about heroin addiction. It’s about the relationships, the failures and the weariness that drive one to addiction. It’s a stunning novel for any time, and only someone looking for a novel about heroin addiction wouldn’t recognize that. Your 13 year old self was wiser than the Amazon commenter. I don’t blame you 40 years later. But I read it in 1990, and again in 2003 when I moved to Frankie’s Humboldt Park, and it’s still a hell of a novel.

This article didn’t signal that it wanted to address the misreadings that tie together these negative reviews. In fact, it generates a lot of humor not addressing the ways in which the negative reviews misread the books observed. What strikes me is that when the article narrows, it avoids a chance to address the wrongheadness of these reviewers. “Novels are meant to be experienced intimately, by individuals, not en masse, and just because the views expressed are those of a minority doesn’t make them less valid,” is the right move on the part of this article but leads to a dreary conclusion: “Works of fiction [are] not only open to interpretation, but subject to opinion.” Duh. At this point, the article argues on behalf of misreading by not directly addressing it. Further, the observation that “though a novel may be subject to opinion, its greatness isn’t,” becomes a minor grace when we are confronted with the misappropriation that transitions into it.

Why not openly task the way in which these negative reviewers misread rather than slyly (and gently) teasing them? Anonymity on Amazon is that powerful? Why do readers feel safe going there to beat up books they don’t want to understand? In public no less. And why is misreading so easily paired with snark and aggression?

G.C. Lichtenburg had the right idea. But apparently, an ass kicks the apostle, not the other way around.

The only thing new is Amazon gives everyone a forum to express their views, and for everyone else to read them.

90 percent of readers must be crap. To wade through their reviews would be heartbreaking. Why on earth would you want to read them? I’d rather chip my front teeth on a curb.