Algren (44 page)

“a big bosomy”
: Algren, autobiographical fragment, OSU libraries.

“I began telling”
: Ibid.

“Yes, Nelson, slums”
: “Milton” (no last name) to Algren, October 15, 1933, OSU libraries.

“I believe I told them”
: Algren to William Targ, October 8, year unknown, possibly 1964, OSU libraries.

“keep making it longer”
: Algren, interview, in Cowley,
Writers at Work
, 215.

“I wanted a typewriter”
: Statement to Brewster County sheriff, from the FBI file on Algren, National Archives.

“Before a month”
: Algren,
Somebody in Boots
, 205.

“on account of ”
: Ibid., 129.

“Men found guilty”
: Rules of court found in OSU libraries.

“I didn't particularly”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 42.

“Dear Mr. Henle”
: Algren, notebook, OSU libraries.

“There was an Indian maid”
: Ibid.

“One terror”
: Algren, notebook, OSU libraries.

“a formal and conventional”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 45.

“ankle around”
: Jack Conroy to Algren, March 16, 1934, OSU libraries.

“The Chicago John Reed Club”
: Description of the Chicago branch by Richard Wright in Richard Crossman, ed.,
The God That Failed
(New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1949), 116.

“the Chicago Post Office school”
: Wixson,
Worker-Writer in America: Jack Conroy and the Tradition of Midwestern Literary Radicalism, 1898–1990
, 361.

“aid in the building”
: Untitled clip,
Left Front
, OSU libraries.

“She didn't need”
: Algren to Ann Esch,
Chicago Tribune
, June 18, 1972.

“nude dancers, wind-tunnels”
: Algren,
Somebody in Boots
, 235.

“never heard an abler”
: Rowley,
Richard Wright: His Life and Times
, 89.

“an uneven novel”
: Algren, 1963 preface to
Somebody in Boots
, 9.

“schoolboy poetry”
: Algren, autobiographical fragment, OSU libraries.

“Final Descendant”
: Algren, preface to
Somebody in Boot
s, 8.

“left his health”
: Algren,
Somebody in Boots
, 15.

“the damned feeling”
: Ibid., 12.

“Of the sweet purple clover”
: Ibid., 15.

“a common bush”
: Ibid., 20–21.

“she must have just slipped”
: Ibid., 29.

“There were only”
: Ibid., 55.

“Reckon the wrongest”
: Ibid., 69.

“hay-bag”
: Ibid., 184.

“so black he looks”
: Ibid., 247.

“as one upon whom”
: Ibid., 70.

“that awkward strength”
: Mike Royko, quoted on the back of the Thunder's Mouth Press edition of
Somebody in Boots
.

CHAPTER 4
: MARRIAGE AND THE WPA

“We poke along”
: Taylor,
Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America
, 12.

“grim … terrible vividness”
: Edith Walton, review of
Somebody in Boots
,
New York Sun
, April 6, 1935.

The influential H. W. Boynton
: H. W. Boynton, “
Somebody in Boots
and Other Recent Works,”
New York Times Book Review
, April 7, 1935.

“parable of the down-and-outs”
: Review of
Somebody in Boots
,
London Daily Herald
, September 19, 1935.

“truly shattering”
: Recommended books,
Constable
, August 1935.

“It is a novel for sadists”
: Review of
Somebody in Boots
,
Guardian
(Manchester), September 24, 1935.

“kept me living”
: Algren, interview by Joe Pollack,
St. Louis Globe Democrat
, July 22, 1959.

“We write for”
: Wixson,
Worker-Writer
, 395.

“For which, he will”
: James T. Farrell diary entry, November 14, 1937, quoted in Robert K. Landers,
An Honest Writer: The Life and Times of James T. Farrell
(San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2004), 207.

“barely conscious”
: Drew,
Nelson Algren: A Life on the Wild Side
, 88.

“fancied-up mediums”
: Nelson to Amanda Algren, no date but probably 1942 because of
Never Come Morning
reference, OSU libraries.

“fine lad”
: Hoyte D. Kline to Algren, November 11, 1935, Jack Conroy Collection at Newberry Library.

“finger by finger”
: Algren to Amanda Algren, undated but sometime in 1955, OSU libraries.

“She was just there”
: Shay, interview by author.

Author's note: Some of the details of Amanda and Nelson's courtship, including their conversations by the lake, were taken from Drew,
Nelson Algren
, 94. The detail of people sleeping on the lakefront is from various Chicago historical sources. Amanda's family background is from census records.

“world had gotten”
: Nelson to Amanda Algren, May 4, 1943, OSU libraries.

“simply distracting”
: Cox and Chatterton,
Nelson Algren
, 26.

“beaming, gleaming”
: Nelson to Amanda Algren, June 1946, OSU libraries.

“
Ain't got no Pulitizare
”: Bud Fallon, quoted in Wixson,
Worker-Writer
, 434.

“lusty, smoky and virile”
: Federal Writers' Project,
The WPA Guide to Illinois
, 310. The section on East St. Louis could have been written by Algren or Conroy.

“I feel I am of them”
: Walt Whitman, “You Felons on Trial in Courts,” in
Leaves of Grass
(New York: New American Library, 1980), 306.

“down my way”
: Algren,
Never Come Morning
(1996), 196.

“I believe he was”
: Cox and Chatterton,
Nelson Algren
, 87.

“hold up a mirror”
: Taylor,
Soul of a People
, 5.

“ugly duckling”
: Neil Harris and Michael Conzen, introduction to Federal Writers' Project,
WPA Guide to Illinois
, xvii.

“We Poke Along”
: Taylor,
Soul of a People
, 12.

“Whistle, Piss and Argue
:
”
Ibid.

“pencil leaners”
: Ibid.

“written by some incredibly lazy”
: John Cheever, quoted in Douglas Brinkley, “Unmasking Writers of the W.P.A.,”
New York Times
, August 2, 2003.

“Had it not been”
: Taylor,
Soul
, 9.

“one of the noblest”
: W. H. Auden, quoted in Brinkley, “Unmasking Writers.”

“We were as ill-assorted”
: Taylor,
Soul
, 29.

“any kind of articulation”
: David Peltz, interview by author.

“I still had”
: Ellis,
Nation in Torment
, 512.

“
totally lost control”
: David Peltz, interview by author.

“He never knew”
: Ibid.

“Sometimes if you let them”
: Bessie Jaffey, Federal Writers' Project staff conference notes, July 13, 1939, Library of Congress,
www.loc.gov/resource/wpalh0.07020105/?sp=5
.

“What do you want”
: Taylor,
Soul
, 62.

“I rather looked up to them”
: Atlas,
Bellow: A Biography
, 64.

“It gave me leisure”
:
The New Deal for Artists
, directed by Schulz-Keil, 1976, included in
End Is Nothing
.

“a well educated young fellow”
: Federal Writers' Project (Illinois),
Galena Guide
, 20.

“acres of prairie”
: Ibid., 33.

“Fever river”
: Ibid., 38.

“Galena knew the meaning”
: Ibid., 40.

“you could knock”
: Algren,
America Eats
, 10.

“a closely guarded secret”
: Ibid., 35.

“Whiskey by the barrel”
: Ibid., 20.

“Hello boys”
: Ibid., 46.

“those who”
: Wixson,
Worker-Writer
, 442.

“Politically, speaking”
: Algren to Howard Rushmore, July 30 (no year), Rushmore told the FBI it was in 1937, OSU libraries.

“very distressing rumors”
: Franklin Folsom to Algren, May 24, 1938, OSU libraries.

“cleared on the ground”
: Algren FBI file, National Archives.

“In those days”
: David Peltz, interview by author.

“
conniving, bigoted”
: Wallie Wharton to Jack Conroy, December 22, 1939, Wixson,
Worker-Writer
, 444.

“delivered a stern lecture”
: Wixson,
Worker-Writer
, 443.

“The books were certainly”
: Stuart McCarrell, interview by Denis Muellen,
End Is Nothing.

“Russian stoolpigeons”
:
Truth
, May–June 1940, from a scrapbook in the OSU libraries.

“My old Friend”
: Rowley,
Richard Wright
, 201.

“You've done a very”
: Algren to Richard Wright, quoted in David A. Taylor, “Literary Cubs, Canceling Out Each Other's Reticence,”
American Scholar
(Spring 2009).

“big buildup … If they take”
: Richard Wright to Algren, May 21, 1940, OSU libraries.

“Trouble and tribulation”
: Algren to Wright, quoted in Taylor, “Literary Cubs.”

CHAPTER 5
: POLONIA AND NEVER COME MORNING

“had a tremendous”
: David Peltz, interview by author.

“one-man campaign”
: This is Algren's description at the beginning of his notes on the Syph Patrol, from the OSU libraries. The quotes from his research come from these notes.

“poor, trembling”
: Wixson,
Worker-Writer
, 448.

“But so many people”
: Algren, interview,
Fling
, January 1963.

Quotes from Algren's Syph Patrol notes come from the OSU libraries.

“were nearly the only ones”
: William G. Hundley obituary,
Washington Post
, June 14, 2006.

“It is requested”
: John Edgar Hoover to the special agent in charge in New York, October 26, 1940, Algren FBI file, National Archives.

“Scandinavian … blonde”
: H. E. Sackett to J. Edgar Hoover, December 10, 1940, Algren FBI file, National Archives.

“It's hard to die”
: Algren, autobiographical fragment, OSU libraries.

“They saw his right”
: Algren,
Last Carousel
, 317.

“so the son knew that”
: Ibid.

“I think some plot”
: Richard Wright to Algren, September 7, 1940, OSU libraries.

“great integrity”
: Edward Aswell to Algren, November 26, 1941, OSU libraries.

“night would be”
: Algren,
Never Come Morning
(1996), 223.

“I got it coming”
: “Killer of Four Put to Death in Electric Chair,”
Chicago

Tribune
, January 17, 1942.

“Snapping his bubble gum”
: “Crime: Tough Guy,”
Time
, July 14, 1941.

“Of course the second”
: William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki,
The Polish Peasant in Europe and America
(Champaign: University of Illinois Press 1996), 259.

“If they had stayed”
: Algren,
Never Come Morning
(1996), 16.

“Life is just that way”
: Clifford R. Shaw,
The Jackroller: A Delinquent Boy's Own Story
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 161.

“It is a game”
: Quoted in Century,
Barney Ross: The Life of a Jewish Fighter
, 20.

“
I felt that”
: Algren, preface to
Never Come Morning
(1996), xv.

“too old to understand”
: Algren,
Never Come Morning
(1996), 3.

“a ceaseless series”
: Ibid., 31.

“Knew I'd never get”
: Ibid., 284.

“forever in some degrading posture”
: Ibid., 223.

“no guts”
: Ibid., 246.

“It's just like”
: Ibid., 181.

“reluctant to admit”
: Richard Wright, introduction to Algren,
Never Come Morning
, 1st ed., x.

“Algren has his own”
: John Chamberlain, review of
Never Come Morning
,
New York Times
, undated clip, OSU libraries.

“knockout”
: Benjamin Appel, review of
Never Come Morning
,
Saturday Review of Literature
, April 18, 1942.

“powerful and important”
: James T. Farrell to Edward Aswell, quoted by Aswell in a letter to Algren, May 12, 1942, OSU libraries.

“as fine and good”
: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, July 8, 1942, quoted in Drew,
Nelson Algren
, 143.

“hasn't a dull or useless”
: Martha Gellhorn Hemingway to Algren, July 11, 1942, OSU libraries.