Folks are always talking about the “The Great Gatsby” as a quintessentially American novel, and I hold the same to be true of Budd Schulberg’s 1941 classic, “What Makes Sammy Run?” If Neil Diamond is the Jewish Elvis, Sammy may be the Jewish Gatsby. Perhaps the parallel is not coincidental considering the personal association between the two authors, which culminated in Schulberg’s 1950 novel “The Disenchanted,” featuring a thinly disguised (and critically drawn) Fitzgerald at the nadir of his career, ten years prior. Also a dynamite novel. But back to “What Makes Sammy Run? Every couple of years I revisit this masterful case study in the American ethos. In spite of its vintage, “What Makes Sammy Run” could have been written yesterday. Shitheels never change, I guess, especially not in Hollywood. Speaking of which, it’s unbelievable to me that nobody ever made this book into a film. Especially considering Schulberg was the son of a studio head. Schulberg, however, did imitate himself in his 1957 screenplay for “A Face in the Crowd,” which was allegedly based on the life of Arthur Godfrey, but followed Sammy Glick’s arc to a tee.
But what I love most about this book is not Sammy’s arc, not the study in greed and ambition it presents, nor the wavering moral compass of the story’s narrator, but the writing. The writing is so good it’s not even there. The voice is so consistent and decisive and unadorned, and yet at the same time so punchy and complex and obsessively readable. Schulberg knows exactly what, when, and how much to describe. His scenes always seem to speak to the moral center of a story, even if the moral is undecided; the question really is more important, after all.
JE
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