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Pal Joey: The Novel and The Libretto and Lyrics
For its 75th anniversary and Frank Sinatra’s the Jazz Age masterpiece that inspired the iconic Sinatra film and the hit Broadway musical, and featuring the musical’s libretto and lyrics
On the seedy side of Chicago nightlife in the 1930s, Joey Evans is a poor man’s Bing Crosby—a big-talking, small-time nightclub crooner down on his luck but always on the make. In slangy, error-littered letters signed “Pal Joey,” he recounts his exploits with brash nightclub managers, shady business partners, and every pretty girl (“mouse”) he meets. Charismatic yet conniving, Pal Joey is a smooth operator whose bravado and big ideas disguise a far less self-assured soul, caught up in the rags-to-riches dream of the Jazz Age.
Originally serialized in The New Yorker and the inspiration for the 1940 Rodgers and Hart musical of the same name and the 1957 film starring Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, and Rita Hayworth, Pal Joey is the story of a true “heel,” as complex and memorable as any antihero in American literature.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
On the seedy side of Chicago nightlife in the 1930s, Joey Evans is a poor man’s Bing Crosby—a big-talking, small-time nightclub crooner down on his luck but always on the make. In slangy, error-littered letters signed “Pal Joey,” he recounts his exploits with brash nightclub managers, shady business partners, and every pretty girl (“mouse”) he meets. Charismatic yet conniving, Pal Joey is a smooth operator whose bravado and big ideas disguise a far less self-assured soul, caught up in the rags-to-riches dream of the Jazz Age.
Originally serialized in The New Yorker and the inspiration for the 1940 Rodgers and Hart musical of the same name and the 1957 film starring Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, and Rita Hayworth, Pal Joey is the story of a true “heel,” as complex and memorable as any antihero in American literature.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
208 pages, Paperback
First published November 17, 2015
22 people are currently reading
59 people want to read
About the author
John O'Hara
246 books290 followersAmerican writer John Henry O'Hara contributed short stories to the New Yorker and wrote novels, such as
BUtterfield 8
(1935) and
Ten North Frederick
(1955).
Best-selling works of John Henry O'Hara include Appointment in Samarra . People particularly knew him for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue. O'Hara, a keen observer of social status and class differences, wrote frequently about the socially ambitious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_O&#...
Best-selling works of John Henry O'Hara include Appointment in Samarra . People particularly knew him for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue. O'Hara, a keen observer of social status and class differences, wrote frequently about the socially ambitious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_O&#...
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 20, 2023
Not as fun as I wanted it to be. John O'Hara's short stories feel like a Damon Runyon knockoff. Like when you want a Dr Pepper but the store only has its generic brand, so you end up having a "Dr Skipper" or a "Dr Pop" instead. And I will recommend Damon Runyon's short stories to anyone and everyone who loves reading.
The main issue is that I didn't enjoy the way that the letters that Joey wrote to Pal Ted had frequent misspellings and weird abbreviations. My brain works like a copy editor, whether I want it to or not, and it was difficult for me to read without having to correct the mistakes in my head (and often had to work too hard to try to figure out exactly what Joey was trying to say.)
I did enjoy the story "Even the Greeks" very much. Will be reading that one out loud to my husband.
The version of the book I have also contains the libretto of the musical. I wasn't particularly keen on it either. Everything seemed so slight, like I never got to understand who any of the characters were. What makes them tick? Honestly, I don't know, except money, maybe, and the love of money is a pretty boring basis for a character.
3/5 stars for the novella
2/5 stars for the libretto, but adding a star for the song "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" (and its reprise.) Lorenz Hart's amazing lyrics in full force in this one. Enchanting.
So, TL;DR I'm not sorry I read it, I'm happy I read it, but won't be revisiting it any time soon.
The main issue is that I didn't enjoy the way that the letters that Joey wrote to Pal Ted had frequent misspellings and weird abbreviations. My brain works like a copy editor, whether I want it to or not, and it was difficult for me to read without having to correct the mistakes in my head (and often had to work too hard to try to figure out exactly what Joey was trying to say.)
I did enjoy the story "Even the Greeks" very much. Will be reading that one out loud to my husband.
The version of the book I have also contains the libretto of the musical. I wasn't particularly keen on it either. Everything seemed so slight, like I never got to understand who any of the characters were. What makes them tick? Honestly, I don't know, except money, maybe, and the love of money is a pretty boring basis for a character.
3/5 stars for the novella
2/5 stars for the libretto, but adding a star for the song "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" (and its reprise.) Lorenz Hart's amazing lyrics in full force in this one. Enchanting.
So, TL;DR I'm not sorry I read it, I'm happy I read it, but won't be revisiting it any time soon.
October 27, 2021
The original short stories from The New Yorker that make up the novella still work and are a lot of fun ... but the Rodgers/Hart musicalization is kind of a mess - O'Hara, who wrote the libretto, diffuses his own story with a lot of filler - and the score really only contains two first rate numbers ('Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered' and 'I Could Write a Book'). I'm wondering if the upcoming Broadway revival will revise the book - and/or incorporate some better known numbers (as did the widely derided film version). and delete some of the lesser known numbers.
Fun fact: June Havoc (the notorious Baby/Dainty June of the musical 'Gypsy'), originated the role of Gladys Bump in the original Broadway production .... and the number 'Zip' is about her sister, Gypsy Rose Lee!
Fun fact: June Havoc (the notorious Baby/Dainty June of the musical 'Gypsy'), originated the role of Gladys Bump in the original Broadway production .... and the number 'Zip' is about her sister, Gypsy Rose Lee!
August 21, 2017
I can't say I was particularly wowed by this. While I do appreciate the epistolary format O'Hara uses in the "novel" portion of this book, especially O'Hara's decision to have Joey write using "real" diction, complete with spelling mistakes that reflect the character's accent and education level, this alone isn't enough for me to feel captivated. The latter half, the libretto, has intertextuality with the "novel," and has a more clear story arc that evolves over the course of events, adding depth to Joey's character, but neither the lyricism nor the dialogue necessarily compels me to think critical thoughts. It's possible that there is some context I'm missing as a reader that is necessary to understand the ways this book is transgressive. Aside from the musical's cultural legacy, I don't know why Penguin made a classic's edition of this. It's not terrible. It's just not overly remarkable either.
Read
February 15, 2019I read this book.
September 4, 2024
My only helpful contribution at a recent pub quiz was remembering that a novel written in the form of letters is called “epistolary”. So it was a coincidence to discover that this is the way “Pal Joey” is written.
Another strange coincidence was that I first heard of “Pal Joey” at the very same pub quiz. The quiz master asked which musical “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” came from. I remembered that Posner sang it to his unrequited crush, Dakin, in “The History Boys” but I had no idea where the song came from and I guessed wildly (and wrongly) that it was “Paint the Waggon”.
Turns out the song comes from the 1940 Rodger’s and Hart musical stage-play, “Pal Joey”, which was then adapted into a Hollywood musical starring Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak.
Even more complicated, the original novel that everything else was based on was published by John O’Hara in 1940, drawing from a series of separate magazine articles he’d published earlier.
This probably explains why each chapter of the novel is a kind of stand-alone story, each recounted in the form of a letter from Joey in Chicago, a musician on the make, to his friend Ted, a band leader who’s having more luck back home in New York.
The letter format took me a little bit of getting used to. Not so much the “authentic” spelling and 1930s American slang. But more the actual idea that a single young male leading the chaotic life of a night-club crooner would ever have the time or inclination to write such lengthy, detailed letters to anyone, let alone to another male.
But perhaps this is just a reflection of our own times where even writing an email - let alone a handwritten letter - now feels a lot of faff when we can just text an emoji! In any case, it emerges later that Joey may not actually even be posting the letters that he’s written. “Pal Ted” might be more like the “Dear Diary” private reflections of a melancholic, lonely man.
From a contemporary perspective, it has to be said there’s a fair share of content that might offend modern sensibilities - including some reprehensible outdated slang and atavistic attitudes to women (“mice” as he disparagingly calls them).
Yet despite his chauvinist superiority, Joey finds himself constantly outsmarted by cannier women who he always ends up crediting for their savvy. When he’s scammed by Jean Benedict, for example, he still generously acknowledges that “You have to admire a girl like that from Buffalo, NY, where she is from. That is how English she is [despite her phoney Brit accent].”
For all his tough talk and cynicism, some of Joey’s enterprises are surprisingly comic and quite touching in their zaniness. For example, I laughed out loud at the stories of him:
- buying the bow wow in the pet shop, solely as a means of ingratiating himself with the girl he’s seen admiring the doggy through the window;
- planning “The 1st Swing Band in Uniform”, ready to exploit the wave of popular patriotism should America go to war;
- taking Herta Gersdorf under his protective wing - the (presumed) Swedish, blond chanteuse who subsequently secures higher billing and better pay than Joey himself.
I also particularly enjoyed Joey’s hard-boiled turns of phrase, encapsulating his shady world of heels, dames and nite spots in some splendidly Film Noir-esque descriptions:
- “Charley is a man around 40 odd yrs of age and a mind like a steel trap and knows all the angles.”
- “Pete’s wife ran away with a wrestler and took their three little ones with them and Pete began hitting the sauce and got into a fight and somebody hit him over the conk with a bung starter and he was never the same after that.”
- “When she opens her trap she has an accent that is so British even Sir Nevile Chamberlin would not be able to understand her.”
- “My boss is known by the name Harry Bonbon which is a mob nickname he got from the mobsters not because of him liking chocolate bon-bon candy but his name was Burnbaum and they had a mobster with an impedima in his speech and the closest he could come to the name was Bonbon.”
- “Out of my own pocket I advanced her $9.50 so she could pour herself into a $39.50 no. that showed everything but her scar where she had the appendisetis if she ever had it (some spelling I admit.)”
As a final though, I was rather disappointed that I wasn’t able to clearly identify in Joey’s letters the character of the lush Vera Simpson, played by Rita Hayworth in the film, who sings (dubbed actually) the song that had set me off on this “Pal Joey” trail in the first place. Sadly, among the many direct references to popular songs of the time, there’s absolutely no trace of “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” …
Another strange coincidence was that I first heard of “Pal Joey” at the very same pub quiz. The quiz master asked which musical “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” came from. I remembered that Posner sang it to his unrequited crush, Dakin, in “The History Boys” but I had no idea where the song came from and I guessed wildly (and wrongly) that it was “Paint the Waggon”.
Turns out the song comes from the 1940 Rodger’s and Hart musical stage-play, “Pal Joey”, which was then adapted into a Hollywood musical starring Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak.
Even more complicated, the original novel that everything else was based on was published by John O’Hara in 1940, drawing from a series of separate magazine articles he’d published earlier.
This probably explains why each chapter of the novel is a kind of stand-alone story, each recounted in the form of a letter from Joey in Chicago, a musician on the make, to his friend Ted, a band leader who’s having more luck back home in New York.
The letter format took me a little bit of getting used to. Not so much the “authentic” spelling and 1930s American slang. But more the actual idea that a single young male leading the chaotic life of a night-club crooner would ever have the time or inclination to write such lengthy, detailed letters to anyone, let alone to another male.
But perhaps this is just a reflection of our own times where even writing an email - let alone a handwritten letter - now feels a lot of faff when we can just text an emoji! In any case, it emerges later that Joey may not actually even be posting the letters that he’s written. “Pal Ted” might be more like the “Dear Diary” private reflections of a melancholic, lonely man.
From a contemporary perspective, it has to be said there’s a fair share of content that might offend modern sensibilities - including some reprehensible outdated slang and atavistic attitudes to women (“mice” as he disparagingly calls them).
Yet despite his chauvinist superiority, Joey finds himself constantly outsmarted by cannier women who he always ends up crediting for their savvy. When he’s scammed by Jean Benedict, for example, he still generously acknowledges that “You have to admire a girl like that from Buffalo, NY, where she is from. That is how English she is [despite her phoney Brit accent].”
For all his tough talk and cynicism, some of Joey’s enterprises are surprisingly comic and quite touching in their zaniness. For example, I laughed out loud at the stories of him:
- buying the bow wow in the pet shop, solely as a means of ingratiating himself with the girl he’s seen admiring the doggy through the window;
- planning “The 1st Swing Band in Uniform”, ready to exploit the wave of popular patriotism should America go to war;
- taking Herta Gersdorf under his protective wing - the (presumed) Swedish, blond chanteuse who subsequently secures higher billing and better pay than Joey himself.
I also particularly enjoyed Joey’s hard-boiled turns of phrase, encapsulating his shady world of heels, dames and nite spots in some splendidly Film Noir-esque descriptions:
- “Charley is a man around 40 odd yrs of age and a mind like a steel trap and knows all the angles.”
- “Pete’s wife ran away with a wrestler and took their three little ones with them and Pete began hitting the sauce and got into a fight and somebody hit him over the conk with a bung starter and he was never the same after that.”
- “When she opens her trap she has an accent that is so British even Sir Nevile Chamberlin would not be able to understand her.”
- “My boss is known by the name Harry Bonbon which is a mob nickname he got from the mobsters not because of him liking chocolate bon-bon candy but his name was Burnbaum and they had a mobster with an impedima in his speech and the closest he could come to the name was Bonbon.”
- “Out of my own pocket I advanced her $9.50 so she could pour herself into a $39.50 no. that showed everything but her scar where she had the appendisetis if she ever had it (some spelling I admit.)”
As a final though, I was rather disappointed that I wasn’t able to clearly identify in Joey’s letters the character of the lush Vera Simpson, played by Rita Hayworth in the film, who sings (dubbed actually) the song that had set me off on this “Pal Joey” trail in the first place. Sadly, among the many direct references to popular songs of the time, there’s absolutely no trace of “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” …
October 14, 2019
Joey is a self-serving jerk everyone falls in love with for reasons I don't understand. Pal Joey features songs you've never heard! You definitely haven't seen this play because it's not that great!!!! Anyways, here's my analysis.
Pal Joey a Different Kind of Protagonist
In the musical Pal Joey written by John O’Hara, with music by Richard Rodgers, and lyrics by Lorenz Hart, the title character Joey is the protagonist and hero of the story, however, he is not very heroic.
At the top of the show, we learn that Joey is a liar and a womanizer. He tells Mike, who runs the club he is trying to get a job at that:
JOEY. Why last month when I was at the Waldorf-Astoria-
MIKE. Don’t give me that.
JOEY. Huh?
MIKE. Now look Laddie, I know all about you so just try to get by on your merit and not
on some tall story. Your last job was playing a dump in Columbus, Ohio, and you got run
out of town because you was off side with the banker’s daughter. (1.1).
On one of Joey’s first nights working in the club, Vera, a wealthy married woman enters. Joey starts flirting with her (1.3). This flirting causes Vera to leave, and Joey loses his job because of it (1.3). Even though, losing his job was entirely his own fault, Joey calls up Vera and blames her for it, telling her:
JOEY. Listen, I just wanted to tell you what I think of you. You know you cost me my
job...I just thought I’d tell you to go to hell before I leave. (1.4).
For reasons I don’t understand, Vera finds Joey’s candid nature attractive, singing: “There are so many, so many fish in the sea/ Must I want the one who’s not for me?(1.4).” Vera then has an affair with Joey.
A typical hero and musical theatre protagonist, is virginal and upstanding. But Joey is neither of those things. He lusts after every woman he sees, he lies, he has an affair with a married woman, and he doesn’t even love her. Because he’s actually in love with Linda. A typical musical theatre protagonist is also someone the audience can root for, but the audience can’t root for Joey because he can’t even stand up for himself. The one time he tries to stand up against Lowell,“(LOWELL knocks him out.)”(2.4).
At the end of a musical the protagonist should end up with the love interest, but Joey doesn’t:
JOEY. Okay. I may shoot you a wire and let you know how things go.
LINDA. Oh, that would be wonderful. Goodbye.
(She leaves-He waves after her.)
JOEY. And thanks-thanks a million. (2.5).
At the end of Pal Joey, Joey is left alone. He did not get the girl, he was not an upstanding virtuous man, yet he was still the protagonist and hero. This complicates the concept of what a musical theatre protagonist can be, because it shows that the hero does not have to be a good man.
Pal Joey a Different Kind of Protagonist
In the musical Pal Joey written by John O’Hara, with music by Richard Rodgers, and lyrics by Lorenz Hart, the title character Joey is the protagonist and hero of the story, however, he is not very heroic.
At the top of the show, we learn that Joey is a liar and a womanizer. He tells Mike, who runs the club he is trying to get a job at that:
JOEY. Why last month when I was at the Waldorf-Astoria-
MIKE. Don’t give me that.
JOEY. Huh?
MIKE. Now look Laddie, I know all about you so just try to get by on your merit and not
on some tall story. Your last job was playing a dump in Columbus, Ohio, and you got run
out of town because you was off side with the banker’s daughter. (1.1).
On one of Joey’s first nights working in the club, Vera, a wealthy married woman enters. Joey starts flirting with her (1.3). This flirting causes Vera to leave, and Joey loses his job because of it (1.3). Even though, losing his job was entirely his own fault, Joey calls up Vera and blames her for it, telling her:
JOEY. Listen, I just wanted to tell you what I think of you. You know you cost me my
job...I just thought I’d tell you to go to hell before I leave. (1.4).
For reasons I don’t understand, Vera finds Joey’s candid nature attractive, singing: “There are so many, so many fish in the sea/ Must I want the one who’s not for me?(1.4).” Vera then has an affair with Joey.
A typical hero and musical theatre protagonist, is virginal and upstanding. But Joey is neither of those things. He lusts after every woman he sees, he lies, he has an affair with a married woman, and he doesn’t even love her. Because he’s actually in love with Linda. A typical musical theatre protagonist is also someone the audience can root for, but the audience can’t root for Joey because he can’t even stand up for himself. The one time he tries to stand up against Lowell,“(LOWELL knocks him out.)”(2.4).
At the end of a musical the protagonist should end up with the love interest, but Joey doesn’t:
JOEY. Okay. I may shoot you a wire and let you know how things go.
LINDA. Oh, that would be wonderful. Goodbye.
(She leaves-He waves after her.)
JOEY. And thanks-thanks a million. (2.5).
At the end of Pal Joey, Joey is left alone. He did not get the girl, he was not an upstanding virtuous man, yet he was still the protagonist and hero. This complicates the concept of what a musical theatre protagonist can be, because it shows that the hero does not have to be a good man.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 19, 2021
At the end of the 1930s, Americans went crazy for an amoral, skirt-chasing Chicago nightclub crooner: the title character of John O’Hara’s Pal Joey stories, which were soon adapted into a Broadway musical by O’Hara, Richard Rodgers, and Lorenz Hart.
The stories are styled as letters from Joey to his friend Ted, complete with misspellings and malapropisms. They’re very episodic and you sense that O’Hara was making it up as he went along. He even incorporates current events: the start of World War II in Fall 1939 prompts Joey to suggest that he and Ted should put together a military-themed swing band in order to be ready when the U.S. joins the war. (The level of Joey’s delusions here makes this one of the funniest letters.) Many of the stories recount Joey’s misadventures with various “mice” (women), including a great episode where he falls prey to a female grifter who easily outsmarts him.
Since the stories have no overarching plot and are mostly notable for Joey’s idiosyncratic voice, it’s kind of surprising that they got turned into a musical right away. Musicals are all about characters expressing emotions in song that they can’t express in words—but in these stories, neither Joey nor anyone else has a complex inner life.
O’Hara gives the musical a more coherent (if predictable) structure, making Joey get caught in a love triangle between worldly, wealthy Vera and girl-next-door Linda. It seems like the goal was to write a gritty character study: Joey might be the first Broadway-musical antihero, there are references to cocaine and homosexuality in the very first scene, and Vera’s songs “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” and “What Is A Man” are sad and wry and horny. (She definitely has an inner life.) But these attempts at tough realism then get undercut and padded out by a lot of intentionally ridiculous nightclub-act songs.
By Penguin Classics’ standards, this edition is also a little disappointing: there’s an introduction, but no footnotes. If you’re not well versed in 1930s pop culture, you��ll probably find some of Joey’s statements incomprehensible. (How many people this century will understand “Well you know how I am. Like Berlin. I can fake a tune in one key” is a reference to how Irving Berlin could only play the piano in a single key?) I would also have appreciated some information from theater historians about what the original production (starring Gene Kelly as Joey!) was like. For instance, the first act ends with the bare stage direction “Ballet.” What was the scenario of the ballet?
The stories are styled as letters from Joey to his friend Ted, complete with misspellings and malapropisms. They’re very episodic and you sense that O’Hara was making it up as he went along. He even incorporates current events: the start of World War II in Fall 1939 prompts Joey to suggest that he and Ted should put together a military-themed swing band in order to be ready when the U.S. joins the war. (The level of Joey’s delusions here makes this one of the funniest letters.) Many of the stories recount Joey’s misadventures with various “mice” (women), including a great episode where he falls prey to a female grifter who easily outsmarts him.
Since the stories have no overarching plot and are mostly notable for Joey’s idiosyncratic voice, it’s kind of surprising that they got turned into a musical right away. Musicals are all about characters expressing emotions in song that they can’t express in words—but in these stories, neither Joey nor anyone else has a complex inner life.
O’Hara gives the musical a more coherent (if predictable) structure, making Joey get caught in a love triangle between worldly, wealthy Vera and girl-next-door Linda. It seems like the goal was to write a gritty character study: Joey might be the first Broadway-musical antihero, there are references to cocaine and homosexuality in the very first scene, and Vera’s songs “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” and “What Is A Man” are sad and wry and horny. (She definitely has an inner life.) But these attempts at tough realism then get undercut and padded out by a lot of intentionally ridiculous nightclub-act songs.
By Penguin Classics’ standards, this edition is also a little disappointing: there’s an introduction, but no footnotes. If you’re not well versed in 1930s pop culture, you��ll probably find some of Joey’s statements incomprehensible. (How many people this century will understand “Well you know how I am. Like Berlin. I can fake a tune in one key” is a reference to how Irving Berlin could only play the piano in a single key?) I would also have appreciated some information from theater historians about what the original production (starring Gene Kelly as Joey!) was like. For instance, the first act ends with the bare stage direction “Ballet.” What was the scenario of the ballet?
January 11, 2024
Pal Joeyis great epistolary novella by John O'Hara composed of a series of letters from Joey Evans, a nightclub singer in Chicago, to a much more successful bandleader friend in New York.
Be aware that if you've seen the musical or the movie, starring Sinatra, it is much different and more expanded than the original book, almost to the point of being a different story.
But the book is much better than the movie, at least, if not the musical as well.
Be aware that if you've seen the musical or the movie, starring Sinatra, it is much different and more expanded than the original book, almost to the point of being a different story.
But the book is much better than the movie, at least, if not the musical as well.
March 21, 2025
Oh man, Frank O'Hara, the vocal cadences of my youth. I loved the libretto, just wallowed in the genius of lyrics of musicals of the day. "My life had no color / Before I met you / What could have been duller / The time I went through?" What's best of all is how the women give as good as they get; no victims here.
October 28, 2019
Great Read
Clever, witty, great character . Joey is classic character of old New York. He is unforgettable, a real individual. Read it and do yourself a favor.
Clever, witty, great character . Joey is classic character of old New York. He is unforgettable, a real individual. Read it and do yourself a favor.
October 29, 2020
Time piece. Cleverly done.
February 12, 2021
I prefer the libretto to the "novel" - prefer both to the movie
July 20, 2020
I wish I could say that I loved this book, especially since the last four books I've read by Mr. O'Hara I considered classics, but that's just not the case. "Pal Joey," was originally serialized in the New Yorker and it became famous as a Broadway play (a separate part of this book and the lyrics by Lorenz Hart are simply fantastic) and later a film starring Frank Sinatra, which I have not seen.
The novel is a series of letters from Joey to his pal, or occasional ex-pal Ted, signed Pal Joey. He recounts his exploits, people he has met, pretty women who he is seeing, who he affectionately calls "mice," and shady business deals he is involved in, while making a name for himself as a nightclub singer in the bitter cold city of Chicago. At times, just barely surviving, but always just a step away from being back in New York and on top. The letters are filled with error littered slang, which I am quite familiar with and whose magic disappeared for me a very long time ago.
Like I said, I did not really like this book, but then that is just my opinion. It is undoubtedly one of Mr. O'Hara's most popular works, but simply not to my liking.
The novel is a series of letters from Joey to his pal, or occasional ex-pal Ted, signed Pal Joey. He recounts his exploits, people he has met, pretty women who he is seeing, who he affectionately calls "mice," and shady business deals he is involved in, while making a name for himself as a nightclub singer in the bitter cold city of Chicago. At times, just barely surviving, but always just a step away from being back in New York and on top. The letters are filled with error littered slang, which I am quite familiar with and whose magic disappeared for me a very long time ago.
Like I said, I did not really like this book, but then that is just my opinion. It is undoubtedly one of Mr. O'Hara's most popular works, but simply not to my liking.
March 1, 2016
Awesome use of the English language, much like Damon Runyon. Also: Mount Holyoke sighting in the second to last chapter!
July 11, 2023
This was a resounding "meh".
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews