Nelson Algren

[the jcs]

Who else loves this guy's writing and feels, like I do, that it's criminal how generally unrecognized he is?
You'd think someone Hemingway called "the second best writer" in the world (presumably next to himself) would be more widely read.

 

[romafan]

i've had a copy of 'the man w/ the golden arm(?)' somewhere on my shelvs for about 15 years - have never gotten around to it. maybe this will be the year...

 

[TheIdler]

Among my dorkier hobbies is, every year, choosing a few writers who were born 100 years before and reading their entire work. One of this year's is Algren (born March 28, 1909). So I've already read Nonconformity and The Man With the Golden Arm. Loved them both. Next up is A Walk on the Wild Side.

 

[tagutcow]

Wasn't he Lisa Simpson's imaginary boyfriend?

 

[the jcs]

You're confusing him with Langdon Alger.
He is very quiet and enjoys puzzles.

"Nonconformity" is terrific and "The Man With The Golden Arm" is probably my all time favorite book. I liked "Walk on the Wild Side", but it wasn't as good as the aforementioned books or "Never Come Morning".

Do American faces so often look lost because they are tragically trapped between a very real dread of coming alive to something more than merely existing, and an equal dread of going down to the grave without having done more than merely be comfortable?
If so, this is the truly American disease and would account in part for the fact that we lead the world today in insanity, criminality, alcoholism, narcoticism, psychoanalysm, cancer, homicide and perversion in sex as well as in perversion just for the pure hell of the thing.
Never on the earth of man has he lived so tidily as here amidst such psychological disorder. Never has any people lived so hygienically while daily dousing itself with the ritual slops of guilt. Nowhere has any people set itself a moral code so rigid while applying it quite so flexibly. Never has any people possessed such a superfluity of physical luxuries companioned by such a dearth of emotional necessities. In no other country is such great wealth, acquired so purposefully, put to such small purpose. Never has any people driven itself so resolutely towards such diverse goals, to derive so little satisfaction from attainment of any. Never has any people been so outwardly confident that God is on its side while being so inwardly terrified lest he be not.
Never has any people endured its own tragedy with so little sense of the tragic.

-Nelson Algren