A Walk on the Wild Side

A Walk on the Wild Side PDF Author: Nelson Algren
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780374525323
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
With its depiction of the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers, and hustlers of Perdido Street in the old French Quarter of 1930s New Orleans, "A Walk on the Wild Side" tells, in Algren's own words, "something about the natural toughness of women and men, in that order".

A Walk on the Wild Side

A Walk on the Wild Side PDF Author: Nelson Algren
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780374525323
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
With its depiction of the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers, and hustlers of Perdido Street in the old French Quarter of 1930s New Orleans, "A Walk on the Wild Side" tells, in Algren's own words, "something about the natural toughness of women and men, in that order".

Nonconformity

Nonconformity PDF Author: Nelson Algren
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 9781888363623
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
The struggle to write with deep emotion is the subject of this extraordinary book, the previously unpublished credo of one of America's greatest 20th-century writers. "You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich," writes Nelson Algren in his only longer work of nonfiction, adding: "A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery." Nonconformity is about 20th-century America: "Never on the earth of man has he lived so tidily as here amidst such psychological disorder." And it is about the trouble writers ask for when they try to describe America: "Our myths are so many, our vision so dim, our self-deception so deep and our smugness so gross that scarcely any way now remains of reporting the American Century except from behind the billboards . . . [where there] are still . . . defeats in which everything is lost [and] victories that fall close enough to the heart to afford living hope." In Nonconformity, Algren identifies the essential nature of the writer's relation to society, drawing examples from Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Twain, and Fitzgerald, as well as utility infielder Leo Durocher and legendary barkeep Martin Dooley. He shares his deepest beliefs about the state of literature and its role in society, along the way painting a chilling portrait of the early 1950s, Joe McCarthy's heyday, when many American writers were blacklisted and ruined for saying similar things to what Algren is saying here.

The Devil's Stocking

The Devil's Stocking PDF Author: Nelson Algren
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1609802055
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
The Devil’s Stocking is the story of Ruby Calhoun, a boxer accused of murder in a shadowy world of low-purse fighters, cops, con artists, and bar girls. Chronicling a battle for truth and human dignity which gives way to a larger story of life and death decisions, literary grandmaster Nelson Algren’s last novel is a fitting capstone to a long and brilliant career.

Never a Lovely So Real

Never a Lovely So Real PDF Author: Colin Asher
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0393357899
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This definitive biography reclaims Nelson Algren as a towering literary figure and finally unravels the enigma of his disappearance from American letters. For a time, Nelson Algren was America’s most famous author, lauded by the likes of Richard Wright and Ernest Hemingway. Millions bought his books. Algren’s third novel, The Man with the Golden Arm, won the first National Book Award, and Frank Sinatra starred in the movie. But despite Algren’s talent, he abandoned fiction and fell into obscurity. The cause of his decline was never clear. Some said he drank his talent away; others cited writer’s block. The truth, hidden in the pages of his books, is far more complicated and tragic. Now, almost forty years after Algren’s death, Colin Asher finally captures the full, novelistic story of his life in a magisterial biography set against mid-twentieth-century American politics and culture. Drawing from interviews, archival correspondence, and the most complete version of Algren’s 886-page FBI file ever released, Colin Asher portrays Algren as a dramatic iconoclast. A member of the Communist Party in the 1930s, Algren used his writing to humanize Chicago’s underclass, while excoriating the conservative radicalism of the McCarthy era. Asher traces Algren’s development as a thinker, his close friendship and falling out with Richard Wright, and his famous affair with Simone de Beauvoir. Most intriguingly, Asher uncovers the true cause of Algren’s artistic exile: a reckless creative decision that led to increased FBI scrutiny and may have caused a mental breakdown. In his second act, Algren was a vexing figure who hid behind a cynical facade. He called himself a “journalist” and a “loser,” though many still considered him one of the greatest living American authors. An inspiration to writers such as Hunter S. Thompson, Martha Gellhorn, Jimmy Breslin, Betty Friedan, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Russell Banks, and Thomas Pynchon, Algren nevertheless struggled to achieve recognition, and died just as his career was on the verge of experiencing a renaissance. Never a Lovely So Real offers an exquisitely detailed, engrossing portrait of a master who, as esteemed literary critic Maxwell Geismar wrote, was capable of suggesting “the whole contour of a human life in a few terse pages.”

The Oxford Book of American Short Stories

The Oxford Book of American Short Stories PDF Author: Joyce Carol Oates
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195092622
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 788

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Book Description
This volume offers a survey of American short fiction in 59 tales that combine classic works with 'different, unexpected gems', which invite readers to explore a wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers. Authors include: Amy Tan, Alice Adams, David Leavitt and Tim O'Brien.

The Last Carousel

The Last Carousel PDF Author: Nelson Algren
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Short stories, American
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Ordination

Ordination PDF Author: Scott A. Kaukonen
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 0814209912
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
"This is a debut collection of short fiction, eight stories that explore the gap between the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we have lived. In "Punitive Damages," a father, the beneficiary of a huge financial settlement in compensation for his son's death, must confront the truth of the life that the son's death has provided. In "Punnett's Squares," winner of the Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Award, an adopted son seeks to prove, against all evidence to the contrary, that his adoptive father is in fact his biological father. In "Induction Ceremony," a small-town basketball hero returns to his hometown no longer a man but now a woman, and his onetime teammate-and-friend must reconsider who they were and who they are now. In the pair of pieces that bookend the collection, "Ordination" and "Be a Missionary," a Baptist preacher's son must reconcile the distance between the evidence of things seen and the evidence of things unseen." "These are men and boys who like to see themselves as worthy of the titles of father, son, husband, lover, and friend, but who must fight their own instincts and desires to claim such honors. These are boys and men for whom questions of identity - biological, cultural, sexual, religious, moral - are unavoidable, men and boys always seeking to be who they want to be, always aware of who they are."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Chicago

Chicago PDF Author: Nelson Algren
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780226013862
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Ernest Hemingway once said of Nelson Algren's writing that "you should not read it if you cannot take a punch." The prose poem, Chicago: City on the Make, filled with language that swings and jabs and stuns, lives up to those words. In this sixtieth anniversary edition, Algren presents 120 years of Chicago history through the lens of its "nobodies nobody knows" the tramps, hustlers, aging bar fighters, freed death-row inmates, and anonymous working stiffs who prowl its streets.

He Swung and He Missed

He Swung and He Missed PDF Author: Nelson Algren
Publisher: Creative Company
ISBN: 9780886824907
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 30

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Book Description
Rocco, an honest young boxer, agrees to throw a fight to earn money for his wife, but his pride makes it difficult for him to lose on purpose.

Algren

Algren PDF Author: Mary Wisniewski
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781613735329
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Algren: A Life is a new biography of Chicago writer Nelson Algren, author of The Man with the Golden Arm, A Walk on the Wild Side, Never Come Morning, multiple short stories, and travel essays" --