What is it about human nature that attracts us to outrageous people? Even in our weakest moments, most of us have a code of ethics. Yet we’re fascinated, if repulsed, by those who have none.
Al Manheim, the narrator of What Makes Sammy Run?, is obsessed with Sammy Glick, an ambitious copyboy at the 
newspaper where Al writes a theatre column. One minute Al is ordering Sammy around. The next, Sammy has published his own column using stolen material. Before Al can recover, Sammy is in Hollywood, plagiarizing his way into script writing.
What drives this 1941 novel is Sammy’s brazenly relentless pace that keeps Al mesmerized and the reader turning the pages. There is no lie he won’t tell, no trick he won’t pull, no friend he won’t betray to get what he wants. His drive to power reflects the ruthless Hollywood studio system which chews up talented screenwriters while guys like Sammy prey on their ambitions to feed his own. As Al remarks to a colleague, “Sammy’s built like a boomerang. The harder you try to throw him out the faster he comes back.”
Even in Hollywood there are good people like Julian Blumberg, a writer who wants only to make a decent living, and Rosalie Goldbaum, a romantic interest. Sammy steamrolls over both of them.
As much as he hates Sammy, Al decides to investigate his background. The result is a disturbing vision of big-city poverty that fosters an adapt-or-die mentality.
Equally disturbing is the vein of antisemitism that runs through this novel, although the author himself was Jewish. Profanity and indirect sexual references deepen one’s sense that beneath Hollywood’s glitzy veneer is a festering corruption that breeds people like Sammy and ultimately leads to their downfall.
Featured by Chevron Ross
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Weapons of Remorse The Seven-Day Resurrection The Samaritan’s Patient
