Nelson Algren | |
|---|---|
 Algren in 1956 | |
| Born | Nelson Ahlgren Abraham (1909-03-28)March 28, 1909 |
| Died | May 9, 1981(1981-05-09) (aged 72) Long Island,New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Education | University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign (BA) |
| Genre | Novel,short story |
| Notable awards | National Book Award 1950 |
| Spouse | |
| Partner | Simone de Beauvoir (1947–1964) |
Nelson Algren (bornNelson Ahlgren Abraham; March 28, 1909 – May 9, 1981) was an American writer. His 1949 novelThe Man with the Golden Arm won theNational Book Award[2] and was adapted asthe 1955 film of the same name.
Algren articulated the world of "drunks, pimps, prostitutes, freaks, drug addicts, prize fighters, corrupt politicians, and hoodlums".[3]Art Shay singled out a poem Algren wrote from the perspective of a "halfy," street slang for a legless man on wheels.[4] Shay said that Algren considered this poem to be a key to everything he had ever written.[4] The protagonist talks about "how forty wheels rolled over his legs and how he was ready to strap up and give death a wrestle."[4]
According toHarold Augenbraum, "in the late 1940s and early 1950s he was one of the best known literary writers in America."[5] A lover of French writerSimone de Beauvoir,[5] he is featured in her novelThe Mandarins,[5] set in Paris and Chicago. He was called "a sort of bard of the down-and-outer"[5] based on this book, but also on his short stories inThe Neon Wilderness (1947) and his novelA Walk on the Wild Side (1956). The latter was adapted asthe 1962 film of the same name (directed byEdward Dmytryk, screenplay byJohn Fante).
Algren was born inDetroit, Michigan, the son of Goldie (née Kalisher) and Gerson Abraham.[6] At the age of three, he moved with his parents toChicago, Illinois, where they lived in a working-class, immigrant neighborhood on theSouth Side. His father was the son of aSwedish convert toJudaism and of aGerman Jewish woman, and his mother was of German Jewish descent. (She owned a candy store on the South Side.) When he was young, Algren's family lived at 7139 S. South Park Avenue (now S. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive) in theGreater Grand Crossing section of the South Side.[7]
When he was eight, his family moved from the far South Side to an apartment at 4834 N. Troy Street, in theNorth Side neighborhood ofAlbany Park. His father worked as an auto mechanic nearby on North Kedzie Avenue.[7][8]
In his essayChicago: City on the Make, Algren added autobiographical details: he recalled being teased by neighborhood children after moving to Troy Street because he was a fan of the South SideWhite Sox. Despite living most of his life on the North Side, Algren never changed his affiliation and remained a White Sox fan.[9]
Algren was educated in Chicago's public schools, graduated from Hibbard High School (now Roosevelt High School) and went on to study at theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, graduating with aBachelor of Science injournalism during theGreat Depression in 1931.[7] During his time at the University of Illinois, he wrote for theDaily Illini student newspaper.[10]
Algren wrote his first story, "So Help Me", in 1933, while he was in Texas working at a gas station. Before returning to Chicago, he was caught stealing a typewriter from an empty classroom at Sul Ross State University in Alpine. He boarded a train for his getaway but was apprehended and returned to Alpine. He was held in jail for nearly five months and faced a possible additional three years in prison. He was released, but the incident made a deep impression on him. It deepened his identification with outsiders, has-beens, and the general failures who later populated his fictional world.
In 1935 Algren won the first of his threeO. Henry Awards for his short story, "The Brother's House." The story was first published inStory magazine and was reprinted in an anthology of O. Henry Award winners.
His first novel,Somebody in Boots (1935), was later dismissed by Algren as primitive and politically naive, claiming he infused it withMarxist ideas he little understood, because they were fashionable at the time. The book was unsuccessful and went out of print.
Algren married Amanda Kontowicz in 1937. He had met her at a party celebrating the publication ofSomebody in Boots. They eventually would divorce and remarry before divorcing a second and final time.
His second novel,Never Come Morning (1942), was described byAndrew O'Hagan in 2019 as "the book that really shows the Algren style in its first great flourishing." It portrays the dead-end life of a doomed youngPolish-American boxer turned criminal.[11]Ernest Hemingway, in a July 8, 1942, letter to his publisherMaxwell Perkins, said of the novel: "I think it very, very good. It is as fine and good stuff to come out of Chicago." The novel offended members of Chicago's large Polish-American community, some of whose members denounced it as pro-Axis propaganda. Not knowing that Algren was of partly Jewish descent, some incensed Polish-American Chicagoans said he was pro-Nazi Nordic. His Polish-American critics persuaded MayorEdward Joseph Kelly to ban the novel from theChicago Public Library.
Algren served as a private in theEuropean Theater ofWorld War II as a litter bearer. Despite being a college graduate, he was denied entry into Officer Candidate School. There is conjecture that it may have been due to suspicion regarding his political beliefs, but his criminal conviction would have most likely excluded him from OCS.
According to Bettina Drew in her 1989 biographyNelson Algren: A Life on the Wild Side, Algren had no desire to serve in the war but was drafted in 1943. An indifferent soldier, he dealt on theblack market while he was stationed in France. He received a bad beating by some fellow black marketeers.
Algren's first short-story collection,The Neon Wilderness (1947), collected 24 stories from 1933 to 1947. The same year, Algren received an award from theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters and a grant from Chicago'sNewberry Library.[12]
It was in that same year that Algren began an affair withSimone de Beauvoir. Mary Guggenheim, who had been Algren's lover, recommended that Beauvoir visit Algren in Chicago. The couple would summer together in Algren's cottage in the lake front community ofMiller Beach, Indiana, and also travel toLatin America together in 1949. In her novelThe Mandarins (1954), Beauvoir wrote of Algren (who is 'Lewis Brogan' in the book):
At first I found it amusing meeting in the flesh that classic American species: self-made leftist writer. Now, I began taking an interest in Brogan. Through his stories, you got the feeling that he claimed no rights to life and that nevertheless he had always had a passionate desire to live. I liked that mixture of modesty and eagerness.
Algren and Beauvoir eventually became disenchanted with each other, and a bitter Algren wrote of Beauvoir and her longtime companionJean-Paul Sartre in aPlayboy magazine article about a trip he took toNorth Africa with Beauvoir, that she and Sartre were bigger users of others than a prostitute and her pimp in their way.[13]
Algren's next novel,The Man with the Golden Arm (1949), would become his best known work. It won theNational Book Award for Fiction in 1950.[2] The protagonist of the book, Frankie Machine, is an aspiring drummer who is a dealer in illicit card games. Frankie is trapped indemimonde Chicago, having picked up amorphine habit during his brief military service duringWorld War II. He is married to a woman whom he mistakenly believes became crippled in a car accident he caused.
Algren's next book,Chicago: City on the Make (1951), was a scathing essay that outraged the city's boosters but portrayed the back alleys of the city, its dispossessed, its corrupt politicians and its swindlers. Algren also declared his love of the City as a "lovely so real".
The Man With the Golden Arm was adapted as a1955 movie of the same name, starringFrank Sinatra and directed and produced byOtto Preminger. Algren soon withdrew from direct involvement. It was a commercial success but Algren loathed the film.[11] He sued Preminger seeking an injunction to stop him from claiming ownership of the property as "An Otto Preminger film", but he soon withdrew his suit for financial reasons.[14]
In the fall of 1955, Algren was interviewed forThe Paris Review by rising authorTerry Southern. Algren and Southern became friends through this meeting and remained in touch for many years. Algren became one of Southern's most enthusiastic early supporters and, when he taught creative writing in later years, he often used Southern as an example of a great short story writer.[15]
Algren had another commercial success with the novelA Walk on the Wild Side (1956). He reworked some of the material from his first novel,Somebody in Boots, as well as picking up elements from several published short stories, such as his 1947 "The Face on the Barroom Floor".[citation needed] The novel was about a wandering Texan adrift during the early years of theGreat Depression. He said it was superior to the earlier book. It was adapted as the1962 movie of the same name. Some critics thought the filmbowdlerized the book, and it was not commercially successful.
A Walk on the Wild Side was Algren's last commercial success. He turned to teaching creative writing at theUniversity of Iowa'sWriters Workshop to supplement his income.
In 1965, he met Betty Ann Jones while teaching at the Writers Workshop. They married that year and divorced in 1967.[16] According toKurt Vonnegut, who taught with him at Iowa in 1965, Algren's "enthusiasm for writing, reading and gambling left little time for the duties of a married man."[17]
Algren played a small part inPhilip Kaufman's underground comedyFearless Frank (1967) as a mobster named Needles.
In 1968, he signed theWriters and Editors War Tax Protest pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against theVietnam War.[18][19]
According to Bettina Drew's biography, Algren angled for a journalism job inSouth Vietnam. Strapped for cash more than a decade after his only two commercially successful novels, he saw Vietnam as an opportunity to make money, not from journalism fees but dealing on the black market.
In 1975, Algren was commissioned to write a magazine article about the trial ofRubin "Hurricane" Carter, the prize fighter who had been found guilty of double murder. While researching the article, Algren visited Carter's hometown ofPaterson, New Jersey. Algren was instantly fascinated by the city of Paterson and he immediately decided to move there. In the summer of 1975, Algren sold off most of his belongings, left Chicago, and moved into an apartment in Paterson.[20]
In 1980, Algren moved to a house inSag Harbor,Long Island. He died of a heart attack at home on May 9, 1981. He is buried in Oakland Cemetery,Sag Harbor,Long Island.[21]
After Algren died, it was discovered that the article about Hurricane Carter had grown into a novel,The Devil's Stocking, which was published posthumously in 1983.[16]
In September 1996, the bookNonconformity was published bySeven Stories Press, presenting Algren's view of the difficulties surrounding the 1955 film adaptation ofThe Man With the Golden Arm.Nonconformity also presents the belief system behind Algren's writing and a call to writers everywhere to investigate the dark and represent the ignored.The Neon Wilderness andThe Last Carousel were also reprinted by Seven Stories Press and recognized as theLibrary Journal Editors' Best Reprints of 1997.
In 2009, Seven Stories then publishedEntrapment and Other Writings, a major collection of previously unpublished writings that included two early short stories, "Forgive Them, Lord," and "The Lightless Room," and the long unfinished novel fragment referenced in the book's title. In 2019,Blackstone Audio released the complete library of Algren's books as audiobooks. And in 2020 Olive Films releasedNelson Algren Live, a performance film of Algren's life and work starringWillem Dafoe andBarry Gifford, among others, produced by the Seven Stories Institute.[22]
Algren's friend Stuart McCarrell described him as a "gut radical," who generally sided with the downtrodden but was uninterested in ideological debates and politically inactive for most of his life. McCarrell states that Algren's heroes were the "prairie radicals"Theodore Dreiser,John Peter Altgeld,Clarence Darrow andEugene V. Debs.[23] Algren references all of these men – as well asBig Bill Haywood, theHaymarket defendants and theMemorial Day Massacre victims – inChicago: City on the Make.
Algren told McCarrell that he never joined theCommunist Party, despite its appeal to artists and intellectuals during theGreat Depression. Among other reasons, he cited negative experiences both he andRichard Wright had with party members.[23] However, his involvement in groups deemed "subversive" during theMcCarthy years drew the attention of theFederal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Among his affiliations, he was a participant in theJohn Reed Club in the 1930s and later an honorary co-chair of the "SaveEthel and Julius Rosenberg Committee" in Chicago.[24][25] According toHerbert Mitgang, the FBI suspected Algren's political views and kept a dossier on him amounting to more than 500 pages but identified nothing concretely subversive.[26]
During the 1950s, Algren wished to travel to Paris with his romantic companion,Simone de Beauvoir, but due to government surveillance his passport applications were denied.[25] When he finally did get a passport in 1960, McCarrell concludes that "it was too late. By then the relationship [with de Beauvoir] had changed subtly but decisively."[23]
Algren describedAshland Avenue as figuratively connecting Chicago toWarsaw in Poland.[4] His own life involvedthe Polish community of Chicago in many ways, including his first wife Amanda Kontowicz. His friendArt Shay wrote about Algren, who while gambling, listened to old Polish love songs sung by an elderly waitress.[27] The city'sPolish Downtown, where he lived for years, played a significant part in his literary output. Polish bars that Algren frequented in his gambling, such as the Bit of Poland onMilwaukee Avenue, figured in such writings asNever Come Morning andThe Man With the Golden Arm.[4]
His novelNever Come Morning was published several years after theinvasion of Poland byNazi Germany and theSoviet Union, a period when Poles, like Jews, were labeled an inferior race byNazi ideology.[9] Chicago'sPolish-American leaders thoughtNever Come Morning played on theseanti-Polish stereotypes, and launched a sustained campaign against the book through the Polish press, thePolish Roman Catholic Union of America, and other Polish-American institutions. Articles appeared in the local Polish newspapers and letters were sent to MayorEd Kelly, theChicago Public Library, and Algren's publisher,Harper & Brothers. The general tone of the campaign is suggested by aZgoda editorial that attacked his character and mental state, saw readers who got free copies as victims of a Nazi-financed plot, and said the novel proved a deep desire to harm ethnic Poles on Algren's part. ThePolish American Council sent a copy of a resolution condemning the novel to the FBI. Algren and his publisher defended against these accusations, with the author telling a library meeting that the book was about the effects of poverty, regardless of national background. The mayor had the novel removed from theChicago Public Library system, and it apparently remained absent for at least 20 years.[9] At least two later efforts to commemorate Algren in Polish Downtown echoed the attacks on the novels.
Shortly after his death in 1981, his last Chicago residence at 1958 West Evergreen Street was noted by Chicago journalistMike Royko. The walk-up apartment just east of Damen Avenue in the former Polish Downtown neighborhood ofWest Town was in an area that had been dominated by Polish immigrants and was once one of Chicago's toughest and most crowded neighborhoods. The renaming of Evergreen Street to Algren Street caused controversy and was almost immediately reversed.[28]
In 1998, Algren enthusiasts instigated the renaming after Algren of thePolish Triangle in what had been the center of the Polish Downtown. Replacing the plaza's traditional name, the director of thePolish Museum of America predicted, would obliterate the history of Chicago ethnic Poles and insult ethnic Polish institutions and local businesses. In the end a compromise was reached where the Triangle kept its older name and a newly installed fountain was named after Algren and inscribed with a quotation about the city's working people protecting its essence, from Algren's essay "Chicago: City on the Make".[9]
A passage featured in Algren's bookThe Devil's Stocking (1983) was broadcast on TV some six years earlier during theSouthern Television hoax in the UK which generated international publicity when students[29] interrupted the regular broadcast through the Hannington transmitter of theIndependent Broadcasting Authority for six minutes on November 26, 1977.[30] Issue No. 24 ofFortean Times[31] (Winter 1977) transcribed the hoaxer's message as:
This is the voice of Asteron. I am an authorized representative of the Intergalactic Mission and I have a message for the planet Earth. We are beginning to enter the period of Aquarius and there are many corrections which have to be made by Earth people. All your weapons of evil must be destroyed. You have only a short time to live to learn to live together in peace. You must live in peace or leave the galaxy.
The Devil's Stocking is Algren's fictionalized account of the trial of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a real-life prize-fighter who had been found guilty of double murder, about whom Algren had written a magazine article forEsquire in 1975. In the book, as a period of unrest within the prison begins, the character 'Kenyatta' gives a speech closely mirroring theFortean Times transcript of the 1977 hoax, and those of other American newspaper reports of the broadcast. The passage in Algren's book says:
I am an authorized representative of the Intergalactic Mission," Kenyatta finally disclosed his credentials. "I have a message for the Planet Earth. We are beginning to enter the period of Aquarius. Many corrections have to be made by Earth people. All your weapons of evil must be destroyed. You have only a short time to learn to live together in peace. You must live in peace" – here he paused to gain everybody's attention – "you must live in peace or leave the galaxy!"[32]
Algren won his firstO. Henry Award for his short story "The Brother's House" (published inStory Magazine) in 1935. His short stories "A Bottle of Milk for Mother (Biceps)" (published in theSouthern Review) and "The Captain is Impaled" (Harper's Magazine) were O. Henry Award winners in 1941 and 1950, respectively.[33] None of the stories won the first, second or third place awards but were included in the annual collection of O. Henry Award stories.
The Man with the Golden Arm won theNational Book Award for Fiction in 1950.[2]
In 1947 Algren won an Arts and Letters Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the forerunner to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1974 the Institute awarded him the Award of Merit Medal for the novel. And three months before he died in 1981, Algren was elected to the Academy of Arts and Letters.
Algren was also honored in 1998 with the Nelson Algren Fountain[34] located in Chicago'sPolish Triangle, in what had been the heart ofPolish Downtown, the area that figured as the inspiration for much of his work. Appropriately enough,Division Street, Algren's favorite street as well as the onetimePolish Broadway, runs right past it.[4]
In 2010, Algren was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.[35]
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Each year theChicago Tribune gives a Nelson Algren award for short fiction. Winners are published in the newspaper and given $5,000. The award is viewed with more than a little irony by Algren admirers; theTribune panned Algren's work in his lifetime, referring toChicago: City on the Make as "an ugly, highly scented object."[39] In an afterword to that book, Algren accused theTribune of imposing false viewpoints on the city and promoting mediocrity.
Studs Terkel, writer Warren Leming, and three others founded the Nelson Algren Committee in 1989. At the time, there was a renewed interest in Algren's work.Somebody in Boots andNever Come Morning, both long out of print, had been republished in 1987. The first biography of Algren, Bettina Drew'sNelson Algren: A Life on the Wild Side, was published in 1989 by Putnam. All of Nelson Algren's words are now back in print.
The Committee awards community activists an annual Algren award and sponsors an Algren birthday party.
goldie kalisher algren.
Algren received a 1947 Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a grant from Chicago's Newberry Library.
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