Algren (43 page)

Savage, who teaches courses on Algren and other Chicago writers at Northwestern University and the Newberry Library, said that one of the reasons why Algren did not get rediscovered sooner has to do with race and gender politics in current literary studies. “Frankly, they didn't need another dead white guy,” Savage said. “He really did get passed over unjustly.”

Blades was not sure if Algren will ever really come back and be part of the literary canon, the way Fitzgerald and Hemingway are. The language of the books is often difficult, and Algren's take on America is very dark—and America prefers to think well of itself. But as Studs Terkel once pointed out, Algren fans surface in odd places—a Welsh miner Terkel met in London, an elevator operator in New York, a Kentucky woman on welfare who saw herself in the books. Billy Corgan, the lead singer of the rock band the Smashing Pumpkins, is a fan. So are film directors John Sayles and Philip Kaufman, who both cite Algren as an influence. Maybe not everyone reads Algren, but many of those who do respond with art.

Three years ago, I was covering the “Occupy Wall Street” protests in Chicago for Reuters. Around the Federal Reserve Bank at LaSalle and Jackson, crowds of mostly young people complained about the inequality of income in the United States and the federal government's failure to punish bankers whose actions helped lead to the 2008 recession. The protesters' complaints echoed Algren's—that people were being cheated, that they had been lied to, that justice was being perverted by money and racism, and that the poor were made to feel ashamed for not living up to the promises of the billboards. One of the young people I interviewed was a former Las Vegas card dealer who said that now that he was in Chicago, he wanted to read a book he had heard about that dealt with gambling and the underclass. The book was
The Man with the Golden Arm
. Algren may not be taught in classrooms alongside Hawthorne and Austen, but in backpacks across America, Algren still lives.

Many people gave their time and attention to this project, and they have my great thanks for this. They include John Blades, Mark Blottner, Peter Bohan, Michael Caplan, Chris Chandler, Andy Austin Cohen, Denise DeClue, Bruce Elliott, James Giles, Jan Herman, Fred Hogan; Lisa Iacobellis, Rebecca Jewett, and the helpful staff of the Ohio State University archives; Hugh Iglarsh, Heide Kehler, Henry Kisor, Rick Kogan, Warren Leming, Jan Lorys at the Polish Roman Catholic Union, Gloria Moroni, Susan Licciardi at Roosevelt High School, the Nelson Algren Society of Chicago, Suzanne McNear, Denis Mueller, Thomas Napierkowski, Neil Olson, Dominic Pacyga, Canio Pavone, Joe Pintauro, Lisa Reardon at Chicago Review Press; Tony, Kate, Aubrey, and Jo Sanfilippo for the Columbus, Ohio, hospitality; Bill Savage, Art Shay, Yvette Shields, Morag Walsh, and all the staff at the Chicago Public Library main and Independence Park branches; my mother, Bonny Wisniewski, for her insights into the old neighborhood, and Dave Witter for his insights into Miller. I also thank my former bosses at Thomson Reuters for granting me a leave of absence to complete this book, including Paul Thomasch and David Greising. I am also grateful to those who helped and have passed on, including Jon Anderson, Dave and Doris Peltz, Studs Terkel, and my father, Mitchell Wisniewski. Special thanks goes to my husband, Jim O'Malley, for both his moral support and indispensable technical help with backing up and storing records, and to my daughters, Zosia, Lucy, and Grace, for their encouragement.

CHAPTER 1
: CHILDHOOD DAYS

“secondhand sea”
: Ibid., 10.

“Not all the damned fools”
: Algren,
The Last Carousel
, 304.

“the screw works”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations with Nelson Algren
, 4.

“That was Uncle Theodore”
: Ibid., 5.

“My brave boy sleeps”
: Author unknown, Civil War song believed to be adapted for the Spanish-American War, retrieved from
www.bluegrasslyrics.com
.

“prosy family”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 11.

“knocked themselves out to repudiate”
: Ibid., 12.

“Father & Son”
: Algren,
Last Carousel
, 313.

“Ich bin klein”
: Algren,
Algren at Sea: Notes from a Sea Diary and Who Lost an American?
, 199.

“When he did, it drove him bonkers”
: Algren,
Last Carousel
, 211.

“He was an intellectual before his time”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 8.

“Hey! I'm coming with you!”
: Ibid., 9.

“writer and a lecturer”
:
El Paso Herald-Post
, date unknown but about 1956, loose clipping in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of the Ohio State University libraries (hereafter OSU libraries).

“There is no truth”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 10.

“a fixer of machinery”
: Algren,
Algren at Sea
, 197.

“some picket would take him aside”
: Ibid.

“Garden Plots to Kaiser Blot”
: Duis,
Challenging Chicago
, 128 and 141.

“It's those Irish bums again”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 15.

“ought to go and learn something”
: Ibid.

“He gave us nothing”
: Ibid., 14.

“talked money through their noses”
: Rudyard Kipling in “From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel,” quoted in Pierce,
As Others See Chicago: Impressions of Visitors, 1673–1933
, 252.

“It became a Jesuit kite”
: Algren,
Algren at Sea
, 188.

“Then let him look at his ass”
: Ibid., 189.

“a dirty old man”
: Ann Esch to Algren,
Chicago Tribune
, June 18, 1972.

“Go back from whence”
: Algren,
Last Carousel
, 313.

“When he walked into the kitchen”
: Algren,
Algren at Sea
, 196.

“lived under an oppression”
: Ibid., 197.

“America, I Love You”
: Ibid., 193.

“Why can't you be a good boy”
: Algren,
Last Carousel
, 290.

“I'm as reckless”
: Ren Shields and Kerry Mills, “Take Me Out for a Joy Ride,” quoted in Algren,
Last Carousel
, 303.

“loving, concerned mother”
: David Peltz, interview by author, 2005.

“straight as an arrow”
: Ibid.

“Never eat at a place called Mom's”
: Algren,
A Walk on the Wild Side
, 312.

“pregrant”
: Cox and Chatterton,
Nelson Algren
, 19.

“Electrocuted
,
Mother”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 17.

“In the darkness shapes”
: Robert Louis Stevenson, “Night and Day,” in
A Child's Garden of Verses
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905), 82.

“Don't Treat Me Like”
: Algren,
Algren at Sea
, 191.

“You send valentines”
: Ibid., 192.

“Everything inside”
: Ibid., 199.

“like a strip of raw meat”
: Ibid.

“Snow White is fairer far”
: Algren to Ann Esch,
Chicago Tribune
, June 18, 1972.

“Baseball was the most”
: Jim Gallagher, “Literary ‘Exile' Pleasant for Algren,”
Chicago Tribune
, March 29, 1977.

“We all make mistakes”
: Algren,
Chicago
, 38.

“Dearest, sweetest, funniest”
: Autograph book, OSU libraries.

“Nelson Abraham's great height”
:
The Lantern
, Roosevelt High School yearbook.

“I can't charge more”
: Algren, unpublished memoir, OSU libraries.

“A cop can't do that”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 18.

“Yet I'd feel a pang of shame”
: Algren, unpublished memoir, OSU libraries
.

“Kum-Inn”
:
The Lantern
, Roosevelt High School yearbook.

“Tell your tire troubles”
: Ibid.

“Open it yourself “
: Algren, unpublished memoir, OSU libraries.

CHAPTER 2
: COLLEGE AND THE CRASH

“Had the faculty tolerated me”
: Cox and Chatterton,
Nelson Algren
, 19.

“She was the only one”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 16.

“nowhere can a man”
: Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations
, book 4, section 3, quoted in
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 36.

“Give this country four more years”
: Will Rogers, quoted in Ellis,
A Nation in Torment: The Great American Depression, 1929–1939
, 43.

“healthy attitude”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 28.

“certainly a mixed-up kid”
: Cox and Chatterton,
Nelson Algren
, 20.

“entitled”
: Algren, in Irwin Saltz, “Nelson Algren on the Make,”
Chicagoland
, May 1970
.

“lifting against the sky”
: Morris Markey, quoted in Pierce,
As Others See Chicago
, 504.

“Idle, depressed, hungry”
: Ellis,
Nation in Torment
, 250.

“the entire course”
: Algren, appendix to
Noncomformity: Writing on Writing
, 116.

“Oh, the old man”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 11.

“the final solution”
: Ellis,
Nation in Torment
, 230.

“And what, may I ask”
: A. A. Dornfeld,
Hello Sweetheart, Get Me Rewrite! The Story of the City News Bureau of Chicago
(Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1988), 93.

“I'll phone you”
: Algren,
Last Carousel
, 328.

“To other applicants”
: Ibid.

“Well, sit down”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 31.

“I just wanted you”
: Cox and Chatterton,
Nelson Algren
, 20.

“I would have been very happy”
: Algren, quoted in
Nelson Algren: Der Mann mit dem goldenen Arm
, directed by Wolf Wondratschek, in the documentary
Nelson Algren: The End Is Nothing, the Road Is All
.
“Give me a ride”
: Ellis,
Nation in Torment
, 288.

“There were whole families”
: Richard Wormser,
Hoboes: Wandering in America, 1870–1940
(New York: Walker, 1994), 111.

“We never use language”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 48.

“Beware Beaumont”
: Cox and Chatterton,
Nelson Algren
, 22.

“Ah'm not no nigger”
: Algren,
Somebody in Boots
, 122.

“It is so cold”
: Algren, “Lest the Trap Door Click,” in Bettina Drew,
The Texas Stories of Nelson Algren
, 7.

“Heed the housewife's woes”
: Algren,
Walk on the Wild Side
, 121.

“This is God's country”
: Hondo, Texas, website,
www.hondo-tx.org
; and “Hondo, Texas,”
Wikipedia
,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hondo,_Texas
.

“this lad here got”
: Algren, preface to
Somebody in Boots
(1965), 6.

“Se habla espanol”
: Ibid., 5.

“till I was nearly blind”
: Algren, interview, in Cowley,
Writers at Work: The
Paris Review
Interviews
, 218.

“I felt that one of the carnies”
: Cox and Chatterton,
Nelson Algren
, 23.

“I wasn't an editorial writer”
: Ibid., 23.

“I guess I did”
: Algren, interview by Robert Perlongo,
Chicago Review
, 1957.

“All these scenes”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 55.

“bard of the stumblebum”
: Leslie Fiedler, “The Noble Savages of Skid Row,”
Reporter
, July 12, 1956.

“Like Christ, as we know”
: Kurt Vonnegut, 1986 introduction to Algren,
Never Come Morning
(1996), xx.

CHAPTER 3
: PRISON AND SOMEBODY IN BOOTS

“Jew kid”
: Algren, “So Help Me,” in
Texas Stories
, 18.

“We're cut apart!”
: Ibid., 28.

“He didn't want to operate”
: David Peltz, interview by author, 2004.

“Are you planning a novel”
: And following dialogue were taken from an autobiographical fragment in Algren's archive at the Ohio State University.

“The son of a bitch”
: Art Shay, interview by author, 2004.

“You had to know”
: Saltz, “Algren on the Make.”

“The Mississippi”
: Algren, notebook, OSU libraries.

“the moonlight lay”
: Ibid.

“The miners came”
: Old song, various sources, used at the start of Algren,
Somebody in Boots
.

“Angel of the Americas”
: Algren, autobiographical fragment, OSU libraries.

“lovely, homesick sight
”: Cox and Chatterton,
Nelson Algren
, 23.