Algren (47 page)

“made of pieces”
: Beauvoir to Algren, August 20, 1953, in Beauvoir,
Transatlantic
, 487.

“Leap year, silly!”
: Algren to Amanda Algren, date uncertain but likely fall of 1952, OSU libraries.

“old-fashioned guy”
: DeClue, interview by author, 2015.

“I must have loved”
: Shay, interview by author.

“sap”
: Holmes, “Arm: A Memoir,” in Algren,
Golden Arm
, 356.

“She knows how”
: Algren to Amanda Algren, November 12, 1952, OSU libraries.

“proudly and rather schoolboyishly”
: Van Allen Bradley, quoted in the afterword to the cited edition of Algren's
Nonconformity
, 98. Van Allen gives the year here as 1956, though Amanda and Nelson were divorced that year. He seems to be conflating two events—the time Nelson was engaged to Amanda again, and the time Nelson handed him a carbon copy of “Nonconformity” after giving up hopes of getting it published.

“by immeasurably increasing”
: Buhle et al.,
Encyclopedia of the Left
, 704.

“Murder by legal sentence”
: Algren, interview by Studs Terkel, February 14, 1961, Chicago History Museum archive.

“Any man who doesn't”
: Nelson quotes himself and Amanda in an unpublished autobiographical fragment, OSU libraries.

“He was cruel”
: David Peltz, interview by author.

“If you live”
: Timothy Fong, interview by author, 2015.

“For people who”
: Ibid.

“I woke up with”
: Algren, “Entrapment,” in
Entrapment
, 116.

“on the nod”
: Algren, interview, in Cowley,
Writers at Work
, 214.

“You know it ain't”
: Ibid.

“Love in October”
: Ibid., 163.

“iron rain”
: Ibid., 175.

“but all he could see”
: Ibid., 182.

“Under this arrangement”
: Algren, interview,
Caper
, July 1963.

“I renamed him Dove”
: Algren, autobiographical fragment, OSU libraries.

“I have no obligation”
: Preminger,
Preminger: An Autobiography
, 111.

“pretzel-shaped swimming pool”
: Nelson to Amanda Algren, February 1, 1955, OSU libraries.

“Because how can a movie”
: Algren,
Last Carousel
, 52.

“What is this”
: Clancy Sigal, “Recalling the Kindness of Algren,”
Los Angeles Times Book Review
, June 7, 1981.

“White goddess say”
: Donohue and Algren, afterword to Algren,
Never Come Morning
(1996), 285.

“intelligent, amusing”
: Preminger,
Preminger
, 111.

“I am happy to have”
: Algren, “Otto Preminger: Man with the Golden Prerogative,”
Los Angeles Times
, May 15, 1977.

“discipline of working”
: Algren to Amanda Algren, February 8, 1955, OSU libraries.

“And while you're standing”
: Algren to Jack Conroy, date uncertain but apparently February 1950, Newberry Library archives.

“He thought he was”
: David Peltz, interview by author.

“That's a pretty good”
: Sigal, “Recalling the Kindness.”

“Sometimes I almost think”
: Algren,
Walk on the Wild Side
, 131.

“a tourist's glance”
: Foster Hirsch,
Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 145.

“a pretty good picture”
: Delmore Schwartz,
New Republic
, February 6, 1956.

“It transforms”
: Savage, interview by author.

“through a presentation which”
: Algren, afterword to
Chicago
, 94.

“What's that movie”
: Shay,
Nelson Algren's Chicago
, xxiv.

CHAPTER 11
: RETURN OF THE NATIVE

“reader's book”
: Algren, interview, in Cowley,
Writers at Work
, 221.

“I began thinking”
: Cox and Chatterton,
Nelson Algren
, 74.

“solitary sapling”
: Algren,
Walk on the Wild Side
, 13.

“Papist rapists”
: Ibid., 38.

“Un-utter-uble sorrows”
: Ibid., 37.

“Had there been”
: Ibid., 5.

“a born world-shaker”
: Ibid., 56.

“You know what”
: Ibid., 85.

“a shadowy apprehension”
: Ibid., 94.

“I was only tryin'”
: Ibid., 164.

“Those with better sense”
: Ibid., 117–118.

“they believe”
: Ibid., 111.

“When we get more”
: Ibid., 109.

“You can always treat”
: Ibid., 241–242.

“Dove marveled”
: Ibid., 277.

“Never play cards”
: Ibid., 312.

“living boy, but just”
: Simone de Beauvoir to Algren, July 12, 1956, in Beauvoir,
Transatlantic
, 524.

“better-made book”
: James Kelly, “Sin Soaked in Storyville,”
Saturday Review
, May 26, 1956.

“
probably not Algren's best”
: Harnet Kane, “Corrosive Comment,” review of
A Walk on the Wild Side
,
Houston Post
, June 10, 1956.

“seldom unaware of Algren's”
:
Newsweek
, date unknown, clip found at OSU libraries.

“over-colored writing”
: Alfred Kazin, “Some People Passing By,”
New York Times
, June 1956, exact date not found, OSU libraries.

“literary cliché”
: Review of
A Walk on the Wild Side
,
Time
, May 28, 1956.

“As a protest novel”
: Norman Podhoretz, “The Man with the Golden Beef,”
New Yorker
, June 2, 1956.

“what final pleasure”
: Fiedler, “Noble Savages.”

“
might well be spent”
: William Root, “The Depraved—Are They Really the Best People,”
People Today
, June 24, 1956.

“the guilt of his ‘innocence'”
: Lawrence Lipton, “The Voyeur's View of the Wild Side,” reprinted in Algren,
Golden Arm
, 400.

“to put it mildly”
: Carla Cappetti,
Writing Chicago: Modernism, Ethnography, and the Novel
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 3.

“better fitted for measuring”
: Algren, “Tinkle Hinkle and the Footnote King,” in
Last Carousel
, 100.

“ice-water reviews”
: Algren, interview by John K. Hutchens,
New York Herald Tribune Book Review
, June 10, 1956.

“more vitality”
: Algren, interview by Robert Perlongo,
Chicago Review
, 1957.

“by sixteen furlongs”
: Algren, interview by David Ray, “A Talk on the Wild Side: A Bowl of Coffee with Nelson Algren,”
Reporter
, June 11, 1959.

“the best I've written”
: Algren, interview by John William Corrington,
New Orleans Review
1, no. 2 (Winter 1969), 130.

“got it just right”
: Gallagher, “Literary ‘Exile.'”

“a homegrown version”
: Russell Banks, 1989 introduction to Algren,
Walk on the Wild Side
, 4.

“without digging in her”
: William F. Michelfelder, “‘Golden Arm' Author Has Mean Elbow,”
New York World-Telegram and the Sun
, June 22, 1956.

“true truth”
: Simone de Beauvoir to Algren, July 12, 1956, in Beauvoir,
Transatlantic
, 524.

“Frenchy's thing … So you could”
: David Peltz, interview by author.

“cruel and inhuman”
: Algren divorce papers, OSU libraries.

“For Christ's sake”
: Algren to Amanda Algren, date unclear but from Montana State University in Missoula, which would put it in mid-1955, OSU libraries.

“He told her to quit”
: David Peltz, interview by author. The following quotations from Peltz are from the same interview.

“I'd kick her all”
: Gallagher, “Literary ‘Exile.'”

“anxiety state”
: Document dated February 18, 1957, Algren FBI file, National Archives.

“It is so much like”
: Simone de Beauvoir to Algren, January 1958, in Beauvoir,
Translatlantic
, 527. Nelson wrote her only once in 1957, and she heard about the ice accident later through a friend.

“I just took it”
: Art Shay, speaking at a 1981 memorial service for Nelson, recording from the Chicago History Museum.

“That's for the money”
: David Peltz, speaking at a 1981 memorial service for Nelson, recording from the Chicago History Museum.

“He was an aggressive loser”
: Shay, interview by author.

“I also keep moving”
: Algren, interview by Corrington.

“piece of junk”
: David Peltz, interview by author.

“This life we've led”
: Cox and Chatterton,
Nelson Algren
, 89.

“damn close”
: Gallagher, “Literary ‘Exile.'”

CHAPTER 12
: GOOD-BYE TO FICTION

“Second-Hand City”
: Algren, 1961 afterword to
Chicago
, 85.

“Anyone who lives inside”
: Ibid., 95.

“it came over me”
: Gerald D. Suttles,
The Man-Made City: The Land-Use Confidence Game in Chicago
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 250.

“listening to the bookies”
: Royko, “Algren's Golden Pen,” reprinted in Royko,
Best of Mike Royko
, 147.

“Nelson, what the”
: David Peltz, interview by author.

“He liked women”
: DeClue, interview by author.

“I wonder why she's”
: Terkel, interview by author.

“He was crazy about”
: Suzanne McNear, interview by author, 2013.

“I don't see anybody”
: Algren, interview by Studs Terkel, February 2, 1959, Chicago History Museum archive.

“Of course Frankie had
”: Algren, “Author Bites Critic,”
Nation
, August 2, 1958.

“all out”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 309.

“the biggest argument”
: Atlas,
Bellow
, 342.

“I'd as soon attempt”
: Algren to John Clellon Holmes, quoted in Holmes, “Arm,” 354.

“literary hoax”
: Algren's introduction to the 1963 edition of Ben Hecht's
Eric Dorn
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press)
.

“Not surprised you haven't”
: Algren, interview by David Ray,
Reporter
, quoted in Wixson,
Worker-Writer
, 470.

“You know, that Nelson”
: Brent,
Seven Stairs
, 45.

“he chose to be”
: James Blake to Lorraine Fallon, quoted in Wixson,
Worker-Writer
, 471.

“Nelson didn't have”
: Shay, interview by author.

“He couldn't sustain”
: David Peltz, interview by author.

“It was as if ”
: Holmes, “Arm,” 360.

“I wanted to see”
: Douglas Wixson, interview by author, 2015. Wixson did not recall the friend's name.

“He would break away”
: Studs Terkel, interview,
End Is Nothing
.

“grumpy old rebel”
: Andy Austin Cohen, interview by author, 2008.

“One never knew”
: Stephen Deutch, speaking at a 1981 Algren memorial, recording from the Chicago History Museum.

“rain-sodden black pudding”
: Algren,
Algren at Sea
, 51.

“Our split-level people”
: Algren, interview by Studs Terkel, radio broadcast, March 14, 1961, Chicago History Museum archive.

“Isn't he wonderful”
: Quoted in Amy Goodman, “An Interview with Studs Terkel,”
Democracy Now!
, November 15, 1999,
www.democracynow.org/1999/11/16/an_interview_with_studs_terkel
.

“biblical”
: Algren on Juliette Gréco, “Last Rounds in Small Cafes,”
Chicago
, January 1980.

“She had broken through”
: Algren,
Algren at Sea
, 83.

“when a crime is committed”
: Algren in a tribute to Richard Wright,
Nation
, January 28, 1961, 85.

“a little mess of shaking”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 328.

“Well, I have to”
: Ibid.

“In order to learn your name”
: James Baldwin, in an interview with Studs Terkel, July 16, 1961, recorded at WFMT studios, included in Fred L. Stanley and Louis H. Pratt, eds.,
Conversations with James Baldwin
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1989), 16.

“Listen, boy”
: The details of this encounter come from Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 235–240.

“ta-ta and huggy-vous”
: Algren,
Algren at Sea
, 30.

“an inferior woman”
: Donohue and Algren,
Conversations
, 320.

“when a challenge is”
: Algren,
Algren at Sea
, 394.