Product Description
The stories in The Neon Wilderness established Algren in the pantheon of American writers and formed the vein that he mined for all his subsequent novels and stories. Included are "A Bottle of Milk for Mother," about a youth being cornered for a murder, "The Face on the Barroom Floor," in which a legless man nearly pummels someone to death, and "So Help Me," Algren’s first published story. "Algren’s short stories are now generally acknowledged to be literary triumphs." — The New York Times ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

a rambling mess of forgettable stories
Sorry, but I have to completely disagree with the other reviewers.'The Neon Wilderness' contains several stories of down-and-outs living in Chicago in the 1940s.Although the author has the local language and the feel of the streets down pat, he forgot to write anything *interesting*.The characters are generally not likable or encourage sympathy, and oftentimes the prose is utterly incomprehensible.Nope, I really didn't like this book at all.


Bottom line: this book does not deliver a pleasant reading experience.

A Walk On The Wild Side-Hold On
Parts of this review were used in a review of Algren's classic Man With The Golden Arm. These short stories reflect the same milieu that Algren worked in that novel. Algren throughout his literary career was working that same small vein- but what a mother lode he produced.

Growing up in a post World War II built housing project this reviewer knew first hand the so-called `romance' of drugs, the gun and the ne'er do well hustler. And also the mechanisms one needed to develop to survive at that place where the urban working poor meet and mix with the lumpen proletariat- the con men, dopesters, grifters drifters and gamblers who feed on the downtrodden. This is definitely not the mix that Damon Runyon celebrated in his Guys and Dolls-type stories. Far from it. Just read "A Bottle of Milk For Mother".

Nelson Algren has gotten, through hanging around Chicago police stations and the sheer ability to observe, that sense of foreboding, despair and of the abyss of America's mean streets down pat in a number of works, including this collection of his better stories. Along the way we meet an array of stoolies, cranks, crackpots and nasty brutish people who are more than willing to put obstacles in the way of anyone who gets in their way. Read "A Face On The Barroom Floor"- that will put you straight. But to what end. They lose in the end, and drag others down with them.

We, of late, have become rather inured to lumpen stories either of the death and destruction type or of the rehabilitative kind but at the time that these stories were put together in the late 1940's and early 1950's this was something of an eye-opener for those who were not familiar with the seamy side of urban life. The dead end jobs, the constant run-ins with the `authorities' in the person of the police, many times corrupt as well. The dread of going to work, the dread of not going to work, the fear of being victimized and the glee of victimizing. The whole jumbled mix of people with few prospects and fewer dreams.

Algren has put it down in writing for all that care to read. These are not pretty stories. And he has centered his stories on the trials and tribulations ofgimps, prostitutes and other hustlers. Damn, as much as I knew about the kind of things that Algren was describing these are still gripping stories. And, if the truth were told, you know as well as I do that unfortunately these stories could still be written today. Read Algren if you want to walk on the wild side.

"Under any old moon at all."
I haven't read any Algren before The Neon Wilderness & was moved to do so by my recent visit to Chicago. I've been told that his stories are the place to begin. I have to confess that before this I mostly knew Algren as de Beauvoir's Lewis Brogan in The Mandarins.

It took me a little while to warm up to the stories. That's at least a little bit because he led with the story which, in my opinion, is the weakest in the book: "the captain has bad dreams". The stories do get better from there, so persevere.

All of the stories are gritty. There is not a lot of hope in his world. Life is mean, and times are hard. It sounds like a cliche, but not the way Algren writes it. He is deservedly considered a master of the short story form. I particularly liked "poor man's pennies" and "the brothers' house". I was less enchanted with the boxing stories. But, honestly, that's probably me and not Algren-- still too much of a girl to be fascinated with fighting.

Recommended, particularly if you are interested in the short story.

The Definitive Algren Book
If you only have time to read one Algren book and want to know what he is all about, then 'Neon Wilderness' is the tome to get.
It acts as a template for all Algrens repartee; life on Division street, the pimps, the hustlers, the corruption, the prostitutes. Life for the people whom the American dream is pure illusion. They survive in a world of crime by crime, yet they're always the ones who get punished;always the games biggest losers.
Many of the stories in 'Neon Wilderness' have appeared either slightly altered or in elongated form in Algrens other works. The line ups in the jail feature everywhere in Algrens novels.'Face on the Barroom Floor' 'Bottle of milk for Mother' in 'Walk on the Wild Side' and 'Never come Morning'
Algren just basically wrote the same novels over and over with slightly different takes;sometimes humouress, sometimes bleak. He wrote about the people and life he knew in his Chicago.
Read this and you will have Algren in a nutshell. BUt its well worth catching his other works-despite the feeling of deja-vu they give you!

CLASSIC IS RIGHT!
A true marvel. Not many writers come close. Nelson Algren is at the very top of the heap: original, compassionate, funny, insightful. You know, we read many books, and once we have finished with the book we toss it aside and forget about it. With Algren it's different. You read his stuff and can't help feeling cheated at not having known the man, not having ever had a chance to meet the guy. Wish there was a way to sit down and have a beer with the man, light up a stogie and have a good chat with the genius who created this masterful story collection. The writing is gritty and true, heartfelt. Brings to mind several other writers who had this knack of writing in this kind of honest, unflinching style: John O'Brien (Leaving Las Vegas), B. Traven (take your pick: Treasure of Sierra Madre, Cottonpickers, etc.) Knut Hamsun (Hunger), Eugene O'Neill (Long Day's Journey Into Night), Celine (Journey to the End of the Night), Kirk Alex (Working the Hard Side of the Street), Chester Himes (If He Hollers Let Him Go).
All of the above had their own style, of course, but the thing they had in common was in the balls they showed by not flinching away from the gritty, life lived by so many who weren't born with deep pockets, who didn't have it easy.

Writing from the gut. Algren lives. Read THE NEON WILDERNESS, and give some of the others a try as well.
This is writing for people who love books and love to read. Shut your TV sets off and pick up a good book--and you can start right here, with Algren's story collectiion. ... Read more

Product Description
The winner of the first National Book Award for The Man with the Golden Arm and author of Walk on the Wild Side discusses writing and the writer in relation to society. IP. Amazon.com Review
During the McCarthy era, writer Nelson Algren was fingered as aCommunist. The author of hugely successful novels including The Man with the Golden Arm andA Walk on the Wild Side,Algren lost a contract with his publisher, Doubleday, for a book of essays.The manuscript for those essays had been missing for nearly four decades. Butpublisher Daniel Simon has resurrected the work, a collection of diatribesand rants on the life and philosophy of the modern writer. The book reflects thedepth of Algren's sensitivity, which was at odds with the tough-guy image hetried to present. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A meaningful YAWP
Nelson Algren was one of a kind... or was he? In this wonderful volume, we see that Algren suffered with those who suffered for their individuality and seethed at those who would smother it in any of us, artists or not. This is a very quick read, and has been edited (which I know thanks for an amazing Afterword) for perfect clarity. He wrote this in the '50s, and so some of his references are unfamiliar -- but HA! No problem, because the editors have made extensive footnotes about these references, footnotes which are interesting reading in their own right. If you care about American literature, politics, or freedom, reading this book will help you see you're the latest in a long line of brilliantly similar-minded people.

Disappointing
Disappointing, compared to Algren's brilliant fiction. To me, this work is a result of Algren being hounded by critics and media types to "explain" who he is and how he writes. His comments are all over the map, just basically rambling, not coherent essays. Algren is one of my favorite writers, but it's all about his short stories and novels. This work is strangely unrelated, and draws upon the media's need to dissect his mind, and justify his existence... Algren's fiction is revelatory, poetic, disturbing and sad. That's where his genius lies. Don't waste time on apologetics. Read Man with the Golden Arm and Never Come Morning. They go straight to the heart. They are works of genius.

Only pretentious dweebs title their online reviews
I've been writing for ten years and this book has become a bible for me. I planned on reading one chapter one night before going to bed, and instead stayed up until dawn reading it and thinking about what the author'scompelling essays.It's the best book I've ever read about the art ofwriting and the responsibility of writers.

It used to be much easier tosubmit reviews. These days every company pretends like its website is theonly one people will ever visit on the web. Gack.

Brilliance Cooked To Critical Mass
This book stalks sure footed through the dense thicket of modern American literature, with The Novel and Nelson Algren firmly at its center. It is at once entirely personal and, sonehow, universal at the same time. What ithas to say about aboutwriting evokes the kindred spirit shared by allgreat writiers, vastlty differing though thier style and temperments mightbe. Each exquisitely realized chapter is peppered with excerpts of theirprose in such a way that it fairly leaps off the page, providing a criticalmass of context and vibrancy to the very difficult subject of what it isthat writers do and do best. Get it. Read it. Love it. I certainly did.

Brilliance Cooked To Critical Mass
This book stalks sure footed through the dense thicket of modern American literature, with The Novel and Nelson Algren firmly at its center. It is at once entirely personal and, sonehow, universal at the same time. What ithas to say about aboutwriting evokes the kindred spirit shared by allgreat writiers, vastlty differing though thier style and temperments mightbe. Each exquisitely realized chapter is peppered with excerpts of theirprose in such a way that it fairly leaps off the page, providing a criticalmass of context and vibrancy to the very difficult subject of what it isthat writers do and do best. Get it. Read it. Love it. I certainly did. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Blackie and Baby Join Frankie and Molly-O
What a start I got when I saw "Entrapment" next to "The Man with the Golden Arm" in Barnes & Noble. (Sorry, Amazon.com). Was it 1959 again, and had the full novel been published? Hardly, but this collection of assorted fiction and non-fiction is, I agree, an essential Algren text. It contains "The Lightless Room," a never-published story from the 1930s about a boxer killed in the ring. It is told in multiple voices--the girlfriend's, the manager's. But the most compelling witness is the fighter, who in a single sentence tells us all we need to know about boxing:"I should of set with my feet on the desk like Judge Costello hisself and never be after getting my mouth bust open of a Monday night off some Chicago Av'noo Polack for twelve dollars and expenses, just because a crowd likes to see an Irishman take it." Another heart-stopping story, "Forgive Them, Lord," describes a racial killing. That's just the start: Algren weighs in on the Vietnam War, expresses regard for James T. Farrell, and describes the profession of "stooping"--looking for uncashed winning tickets at the racetrack. But what about the centerpiece--the unfinished novel "Entrapment?" Here I'm a little disappointed. Obviously, editors Horvath and Simon never intended to recreate the entire work out of scraps, but this Algren devotee wishes they had. "Watch Out for Daddy," the first of the two parts, was initially published in "The Last Carousel," and ranks with Algren's finest work. The opening scene sets the stage: Beth-Mary is turned on to heroin by her lover and pimp "on that day so still so burning." The "new" piece, a long interior reflection by a man in a hotel room who has just lost his woman, seems to continue the story, but there's no bridge between the two. How did Christian Kindred, the pimp in the first section, become the bookie in the second? (Horvath and Simon acknowledge this discrepancy). How did Beth-Mary become Baby? What accounts for the absence of heroin in the second segment? (We're told that Baby kicked it, but this is not depicted in the text.) Then there's this: The editors note that "Moon of the Arfy Darfy," a story published in "The Last Carousel," was initially part of "Entrapment," but ended up in an unfinished racetrack novel. Despite the explanation that it no longer fit, some version of it should have been included here so we could see where Algren was going. Finally, why reproduce the first page of the typewritten manuscript when it is not used in the text? It would have been a classic Algren opener: "`Now remember this if you can,' the ancient one-eyed jackal warned Real High Daddy, `you can always treat a woman too good. But you can never treat her too bad.'" But this is easy to say for someone who didn't wade through Algren's papers at the University of Ohio. I'm grateful to the editors for what they've delivered. Seven Stories Press has kept the Algren name alive by issuing both published and unpublished work, independent of chronology. "The Last Carousel," "The Devil Stocking" and the travel books have been packaged in the same noirish way as the bestselling novels. And now, almost 30 years after Algren's death. Blackie, the bookie and Baby have joined Frankie Machine and Molly-O in our hearts. What's next--a collection of Algren's literary criticism? Here's hoping.


... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Grim
This novel precedes the "Grapes of Wrath" by four years, and if not for its relentless misery unleavened by the comic humanity of Steinbeck's masterpiece, it might have been the defining novel of the Depression. That a 24-year-old could have written it as a first novel I find astonishing.

To read it is to glimpse an America with one foot still in the nineteenth century and one placed in the maelstrom that brought the second world war and the welfare state.

Cass McCay, the hero, is one of the landless, unlettered, unloved, underfed, lonely drifters of the Depression, what Algren called a Final Descendant of the South, one of the "wild and hardy tribe that had given Jackson and Lincoln birth...slaveless yeomen who had never cared for slaves or land..."He explains in the Preface:"Nobody owned a man who owned a gun along the wild frontier. But now that the frontier was gone, where did the man go?"

Cass is the offspring of one of those who have nowhere to go. In the Rio Grande valley of West Texas Cass lives in a shack "like a casual box on the border;wooden and half-accidental" with his brother and sister and father. They live a life about a half step up from that of a family of coyotes, eating only oatmeal or rice for days on end, scrounging coal from halted boxcars, taking turns to go get what the "Relief Station" is giving that week. So one can see how his people spun out of the chaos of the Civil War, still bleeding after 60 years, and drifting toward Franklin Roosevelt's and Lyndon Johnson's way of poverty. His older brother is scarred from a war in France where he was gassed while fighting for something he hadn't the slightest understanding of: "...nobody told nothin' but Jesus-killin' lies. Told us it was dooty to fight fo' this pesthole--told me...Oh, ah didn't believe all they told, none of us did, but we laughed and went anyhow. Now look at me."

Cass spends a lot of time down by the railroad tracks listening to men and boys who ride the rails, dreaming: "Ah'd like to get out of this pesthole someday. Ah'd go to Laredo or Dallas or Tucson."

When his father bludgeons Bryan in the face over some trifle, Cass leaves home without saying goodbye, as one would flee a war or epidemic, and takes to the railroads.

And then he is what Algren called a "Final Descendant": a rootless anonymity, a "youth alienated from family and faith, illiterate and utterly displaced...a Southerner unable to bear scorn, who had yet born scorn all his days...who wandered through some great city's aimless din, past roar of cab and cabaret, belonging to nothing and nobody." He pilfers and begs and stares in incomprehension.

He is a gentle boy stumbling through a world of unspeakable brutality and cruelty. The "Boots" of the title is a symbol of the men most feared by Cass and his ilk: the railroad bull, the jailer, the cop...Boots are used as weapons and are the mark of authority. But as awful as the booted men are, they are not as bad as the ever-present hunger, the "wolf howling behind your navel".

Today's dispossessed in the US often as not struggle with obesity instead of hunger. "Somebody in Boots" is one of the last chronicles of the struggle with starvation that went on for hundreds of generations, and that is now clearly over. The authoritarianism and brutality and callousness toward pain that Cass endures is unfortunately still with us. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (11)

The Many Uses of Chicago, City on the Make:
I bought it as a critique.


I read it as a love-letter.


I will remember it as the myth we keep telling ourselves...

Used to be a Writers Town & Always been a Fighters Town
Algren breaks down Chicago in a real way. Written in 1951 the book was banned in Chicago originally, even though it's really a lovesong to the city. Algen celebrates the gamblers, grifters, sceneshifters, writers & fighters. The book was also an answer to Carl Sandburg's CHICAGO poem as well. The result is an 80 page prose poem in 7 chapters. This is a brilliant short book.

Looking Back With Anger
This is a magnificent prose poem-eulogy even- by Nelson Algren to his city.
He takes you through all the characters and diverse cultures and corruptions that ingrained the Chicago he grew up in and are either being erased from the image the commercial big guns want to promote,or have just fallen by the wayside.
There's a lot of visceral anger coming through in this book, and it is significant that Algren wrote it during the odious McCarthy anti Communist witch trails that was stiffling the freedoms of speech Algren so valued (he dumped his communist party interests as soon as the lack of free thought became obvious to him-now 'free' society was doing the same!)and distorting and promoting a mythical America that just didn't exist outside of a Disney film!
The afterword and annotations in the 50th anniversary edition are vital to get the maximum from this book. Algren re articulates what his views are, and -to my mind-makes a postumous apology to his friend Richard Wright who he slammed for leaving Chicago for Paris and 'not sticking it out'. What could one black man who had suffered a life time of rejection and abuse do but say he'd had enough. I liked Algren the better for this acknowledgement.

An amazing book but...
I had the pleasure of reading Chicago: City on the Make in part, on a hot summer's day sitting in the back of a moving van with the door open, using a cargo strap as a seat belt. Riding along to the next job reading my first Algren made it an afternoon of twists and turns literal and figurative.

As others have pointed out, this book is not a novel, novella or story collection, but a prose poem. They say it like that is a bad thing; as if any potential reader is such an idiot that the book should be printed with an I.Q.-based warning label ("Warning: unless you can handle Sartre in the original, this book might make your eyes bleed"). The book is a prose poem but so what? It's one of those rare and sometimes great books that can be read aloud for the language alone and for the most part, Algren makes every word about the cold wind off the river and the deep corruption count. When he is at his best, he makes the place sound positively holy--like something that glows.

Chicago: City on the Make was like nothing I had ever read then and it is vastly unlike anything I have read since. I am re-buying it for someone else to read (a Chicago native, in fact) but I'm going to get to peek into it again before I give it to him. Chicago: City on the Make is more than just a book it is an experience, a way of doing things that only top-flight, internationally famous authors have the stones to write anymore.

My experience of the book is old, in fact, so old, so that I remember only a few words from a few lines clearly and I am left with two major impressions in memory. The first is that it was a brilliant thing, fully worthy of being called "literature.'

The second was that after an amazing job of keeping his prose flying high above what other authors could ever hope for, the thing bogs down in the end. Algren's voice becomes tired, his segues more and more stretched until there's nothing left of the energy you find in the beginning, but you soon find that you can't really blame him. Algren was not up to the task of finishing his amazing slender volume, but you can't blame him for it: it is certain that no one else could have done any part of it at all.

Not Algren's Strongest Piece
For a great American writer like Algren and with his love of the city, one could expect more.Perhaps this sort of loose style (it has been called a prose poem) just wasn't his forte.The book starts off strong, but breaks into highly personal memories, and gets a little slow as he covers the same ground again and again.In short, it needed editing.Many of the references are so particular that they don't translate well and have aged poorly- Algren failed to find the universal like Whitman did.

Don't let this book turn you off to Algren's superb fiction writing.He remains a giant in American literature.This just wasn't his day. ... Read more

Product Description
Back in print at last is this masterwork of one of the truly original voices in 20th-century American literature. Chicago card dealer and junkie Frankie Machine is as tough as anyone in the Windy City's underworld--but not tough enough to break his habit. This fiction classic was made into an acclaimed film directed by Otto Preminger, starring Frank Sinatra. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (23)

Ernest Hemingway was Correct
When The Man with the Golden Arm came out, the great Hemingway himself wrote a stellar review for Algren. Hemingway being a less than polite figure of course trashed many of his peers along the way. Hemingway said the book does more than throw a punch. Algren uses both hands and moves around and he will even kill you if you're not careful. Of course he was speaking in metaphor. But true, nonetheless. The syntax can be very difficult to read. But Algren writes with such grit. The characters are raw. There is no sugar coating in his book. The characters are dyfunctional but real. He takes us through the world of a junky after the Second World War. And that world is anything but pretty. Algren writes with such depth and emotion. One ends up having symphany for some of these characters, including Frankie Machine. A well written book. I would advise any of my friends to take the time to actually read it. Algren doesn't spell anything out for the reader. One probably won't even get the point of the book until the first hundred pages. But the scenes and characters are written with such beautiful and raw poetry. One just easily gets lost within the prose. It doesn't matter if you're not getting it. The writing is amazing. But the book is most definetly not for faint of heart. It does take some guts to read this book.

Lion
The double edged sword about being able to post Amazon reviews is that mere mortals like us are able to comment on giants like Algren. Something I, for one, feel like I have no business doing. But here I am. So. A lesser writer could have wrought at least 3 books from this one; it's that densely and intensely packed. And probably made more money too. But clearly this was never Algren's way. I struggled through at least 35 pages of street slang catching bits and pieces of these characters until I could hear their voices. Poor, broken, despairing voices. The prose, the writing, the characters, are unforgettable. The sheer weight of it began to crush me by the end and I actually felt somewhat glad for Frankie at the end. At least relieved.

Lyrical, hard hitting brilliance
This is a stunning novel. It's centred around a group of Chicago low lives and addicts, and it lives and breaths a type of humanity that rarely surfaces in fiction.

Algren's prose style is beautiful and evocative, and this novel is truly a major piece of art. Amazing.

Down Those Mean Streets
Growing up in a post World War II built housing project this reviewer knew first hand the so-called `romance' of drugs, the gun, the ne'er do well hustler and the mechanisms one needed to develop to survive at that place where the urban working poor meet and mix with the lumpen proletariat- the con men, dopesters, grifters drifters and gamblers who feed on the downtrodden.This is definitely not the mix that Damon Runyon celebrated in his Guys and Dolls-type stories. Far from it.

Nelson Algren has gotten, through hanging around Chicago police stations and sheer ability to observe, that sense of foreboding, despair and just plain oblivion of America's mean streets down pat in a number of works, including this one. Here the plot revolves around Frankie Machine an urban hustler with a jones (and more than just the dope jones, his whole life is twisted by the vagaries of his fate). Alone the way we meet an array of stoolies, cranks, crackpots and nasty brutish people who are more than willing to put obstacles in the way of our anti-hero. And we have, at this point, not even mentioned his `home' life with his `ever-loving' disabled wife (or so he thinks). She might make anyone reach for the needle.

We, of late, have become rather inured to dope stories either of the death and destruction type or of the rehabilitation kind but at the time that this story was put together in the late 1940's this was something of an eye-opener for those who were not familiar with the seamy side of urban life. The dead end jobs, the constant run-ins with the `authorities' in the person of the police, many times corrupt as well. The dread of going to work, the dread of not going to work, the fear of being victimized and the glee of victimizing. The whole jumbled mix on people with few prospects and fewer dreams.Algren has put it down in writing for all that care to read.These are not pretty stories. And he has centered his story on the trials and tribulations of a dope addict trying to get clean, to boot. That fight is a near thing. Damn, as much as I knew about the kind of things that Algren was describing this is still one gripping story. And, the truth be told, you know as well as I do that unfortunately this story could still be written today. Read Algren if you want to walk on the wild side.

Reading Nelson Algren

This is a wonderful book! Nelson Algren knocks spots off of his contemporaries;chiefly because he actually lived the lives of those he wrote about.
The language is fabulously arkane and is only just seeping into everyday usage.We now know that a 'mark' is a person about to be 'hustled'(ie conned and robbed) and thanks to TV poker we know what the punk has when he looks at 3 J's wired! Unfortuneately,we also know all the drug terms as well.
The plot is wafer thin and largely irrelevent-Frankie Machine kills Louie the pusher;his run ins with the law;his dead beat marriage and affair with Molly-O-;its the cast of division line Chicago slum dwellers that are everything.If you read this fishing for a plot to hook into,you'll soon get lost.But if you read each segmented paragraph as a short story in its own right that merges into a bigger picture;you can't fail to love this magnificent book.Dickens never had such a cast of characters to call on! ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Wonderful Glimpse of History
With an artful eye master photojournalist Art Shay gives a treasured glimpse of American culture and Chicago history. Not just outstanding images, but Shay provides a wonderful read as well.

Fabulous
Art Shay's latest work will certainly contribute to his status as an American Icon. Every time I look through the book I delight in finding something new. This book would make a great gift for Nelson Algren and Chicago fans alike. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Walk On The Wild Side- Hold On
Parts of this review were used in a review of Algren's classic Man With The Golden Arm and of the collection of short stories in The Neon Wilderness. These short stories in the Last Carousel reflect the same milieu that Algren worked in that novel although he has taken some of the stories out of Chicago and some of them are from a later period in the 1960's and 1970's. In a strange sense Algren throughout his literary career was working that same small vein- but what a mother lode he produced.

Growing up in a post World War II built housing project this reviewer knew first hand the so-called `romance' of drugs, the gun and the ne'er do well hustler. And also the mechanisms one needed to develop to survive at that place where the urban working poor meet and mix with the lumpen proletariat- the con men, dopesters, grifters drifters and gamblers who feed on the downtrodden. This is definitely not the mix that Damon Runyon celebrated in his Guys and Dolls-type stories. Far from it.

Nelson Algren has gotten, through hanging around Chicago police stations and the sheer ability to observe, that sense of foreboding, despair and of the abyss of America's mean streets down pat in a number of works, including this collection of his better stories. Along the way we meet an array of stoolies, cranks, crackpots and nasty brutish people who are more than willing to put obstacles in the way of anyone who gets in their way. But to what end? They lose in the end, and drag others down with them.

We, of late, have become rather inured to lumpen stories either of the death and destruction type or of the rehabilitative kind but at the time that these stories were put together in the late 1940's and early 1950's this was something of an eye-opener for those who were not familiar with the seamy side of urban life. The dead end jobs, the constant run-ins with the `authorities' in the person of the police, many times corrupt as well. The dread of going to work, the dread of not going to work, the fear of being victimized and the glee of victimizing. The whole jumbled mix of people with few prospects and fewer dreams.

Algren has put it down in writing for all that care to read. These are not pretty stories. And he has centered his stories on the trials and tribulations ofgimps, prostitutes and other hustlers. Damn, as much as I knew about the kind of things that Algren was describing these are still gripping stories. And, if the truth were told, you know as well as I do that unfortunately these stories could still be written today. Read Algren if you want to walk on the wild side.

Some Real Gems in a Very Mixed Bag
There are some excellent stories (tales of growing up on Chicago's south side in the 19-teens), somevery good stories (about bookies, railbirds, and down-on-their luck jockeys), and some mediocre stories (essays from atrip to Viet Nam and stories of pimps and prostitues in Saigon) in thiscollection.The best pieces made the collection well worth it for me.

Algren is one of the most lyrical writers that I've read.Few havewritten prose that gives me the sense of rhythm and melody in the Englishlanguage that I get from Algren's best stuff (Toni Morrison comes to mind). My favorite passage in this book, from EVERYTHING INSIDE'S A PENNY -- "My father was a fixer of tools, a fixer of machinery; a fixer oftables gone wobbly and windows that had stuck....Other men wished secretlyto be forever drunken.He wished to be forever fixing." ... Read more

Product Description
With its depictions of the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers, and hustlers of Perdido Street in the old French Quarter of 1930s New Orleans, A Walk in the Wild Side has found a place in the imaginations of all generations since it first appeared. As Algren admitted, the book "wasn't written until long after it had been walked . . . I found my way to the streets on the other side of the Southern Pacific station, where the big jukes were singing something called 'Walking the Wild Side of Life.' I've stayed pretty much on that side of the curb ever since."

Perhaps the author's own words describe this classic work best: "The book asks why lost people sometimes develop into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives. Why men who have suffered at the hands of other men are the natural believers in humanity, while those whose part has been simply to acquire, to take all and give nothing, are the most contemptuous of mankind."
... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Bad poetry, worse fiction
I was excited to read this, having read an Algren interview in the Paris Review wherein his off-the-cuff stories were more entertaining than most polished fiction (No, I haven't read any other Algren, and, yes, I will). This book was then a great let-down. It is a wash of mildly poetic language, poetic in the sense of being obscure, which obscures the tale of a young man gone to New Orleans to seek his fame and fortune and find his bottle, whores and destruction. I have read stories far more obscured by poetry (Ulysses, The Alexandria Quartet, The Obscene Bird of Night), but the poetics of these works excuse themselves by being a joy in themselves. With this work, the poetics do replicate a boozy, confused New Orleans of one night bleeding into the next, but it is so boring that one constantly tries to look past it to find the story, or simply wants to put down the book. It's a kind of 'Brown Bunny' approach to aesthetics--the form is supposed to justify itself. Your supposed to be disgusted, bored, etc. That means it's effective. To my mind this is a cheap technique and exactly the one Algren employs. The characters are not so much unreal or unenjoyable as inert--they appear, they push the plot in a given direction and then they fade back into the background. Only Dove, the main character, remains, getting tossed about by all these disparate forces. There are whores, fights, pimps, lots of con-men and other stock characters (everyone is trying to get ahead and looking out for themselves, a pure Machivelian world, but no-one even has the sophistication of desire to want anything but bottle, cash or sex)... I don't know, I really wanted to like this book. Algren was a self-made writer, a very respectable human being by all accounts, and not without talent. But this book missed the mark for me. I'll try 'Man with the Golden Arm' when I stop being mad about this one.

Absolutely stunning
Nelson Algren's novel relates the adventures of Dove Linkhorn, an illiterate young man who leaves poverty and a failed love affair behind him to wander the countryside.He has many adventures along the way until he settles for a time in New Orleans, where he will experience happiness and great tragedy.

Linkhorn is an appealing character, whose desire to better himself makes him easy to sympathize with.The real star of this novel, however, is Algren's prose.Hemingway himself felt that Algren was one of the best writers in America, although their styles couldn't be more different.In contrast to Hemingway's stark, deceptively simple prose, Algren's is full of flourishes and wordplay.I have never encountered a writer that was more adept at breaking my heart and making me laugh out loud on the same page--sometimes in the same paragraph.There are verbal fireworks going off in this book.His characters are extreme types living on the fringe of society, but Algren makes them come alive.Highly recommended.

Down Those Mean Streets with Algren
As I have mentioned in other reviews of Nelson Algren's work, such as The Man With The Golden Arm, I am personally very familiar with the social milieu that he is working. Growing up in a post-World War II built housing project this reviewer knew first hand the so-called `romance' of drugs, the gun, the ne'er do well hustler and the fallen sister. And I also learned the complex mechanisms one needed to develop in order to survive at that place where the urban working poor meet and mix with the lumpen proletariat- the con men, dopesters, grifters, drifters and gamblers who feed on the downtrodden. This is definitely not the mix that Damon Runyon celebrated in his Guys and Dolls-type stories. Far from it.

Nelson Algren has once again, through hanging around Chicago police stations (does anyone describe that milieu, cops and criminals, better?), other nefarious locales and the sheer ability to observe, gotten that sense of foreboding, despair and the just plain oblivion of America's mean streets down pat. In this, probably his best literary endeavor in that vein,Algren has gotten down to the core of existence for the would be world-beater hustler Dove Linkhorn a character who symbolizesa certain aspect of American life in his way, as say, Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby or Hemingway's Robert Jordan do in theirs.

Several factors make this an exceptional work. Not the least is the beginning section`s description of the antecedents of the "white trash" phenomena, as exemptified by Dove, that as always been something of a hidden secret about the American experience.In short, what happens when the land runs out, or in Professor Frederick Jackson Turner's thesis-the frontier ends. Nobody has put this in literature better than Algren, even Steinbeck. Furthermore, he has moved the story line here back in timefrom his usual 1940's and 1950's to the 1930's when some cosmic shifts were occurring in American life.

Algren has also moved the geography from Chicago to New Orleans.and integrated some of his short story characters and story lines found in his collection Neon Wilderness into this project. Changes in time, place and characters there may be but that raw struggle for survival for those down almost below the base of society is still the same. The only objection that I have is that the portrait of Linkhorn, as described here by Algren,gives me an impression that old Dove could never ever make it in his `chosen' world unlike, say, Frankie Machine who has that urban grit almost genetically build into him in order to survive. Frankly, I do not believe that Dove could have survived in my old housing project. Frankie Machine would have been the `king of the hill'. Read this valuable book about an America that, then and now, is hidden in the shadows.

A flawed masterpiece
You are a good person, pay your taxes, honour your parents, do an honest's days work...so nothing in common with whores, drug addicts, boot-lickers, queers, hustlers, drunkards, jail fodder. You are a good honest citizen looking out for others.

Last week I was on a train that got stuck outside of Bristol by the floods for several hours, we moved up and down the tracks and stopped before moving up and down the tracks again. Eventually we returned to Taunton and were dumped at the station. Outside the promised coaches were absent, it was bucketing down rain and no one from the rail company in charge. When coaches did arrive in dribs and drabs 300+ people ran as if fleeing a doomed city. No thoughts given to parents with babes in arms, to elderly passengers struggling with heavy cases. I bet you that we were all good people, who pay our taxes...

In Walk on the Wild Side, Nelson Algren asks "why lost people sometimes develop into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives. Why men who have suffered at the hands of other men are the natural believers in humanity, while those whose part has been simply to acquire, to take all and give nothing, are the most contemptuous of mankind."

The book was written at the on set of the cold war in the 1950's but is set in the Deep south of the early 1930's. Algren himself went into popular and critical decline soon after in part due to the abuses of McCarthyism and in part to his own hard drinking, gambling and drug taking.

The story starts with Dove a Southern trailer trash illiterate 16 year old in the Mexican-Texas border. His grandfather is traveling preacher...described by Dove as the type that makes you want to throw your Bible away. He is barefoot, and in country yokel jeans. At the end he is in the height of fashion albeit bedraggled due to prison sentence for being drunk and disorderly. Along the way we see the ins and outs of hustling, working in a peepshow, making and selling rubbers etc. We meet the women he loves or has sex with and one who keeps her humanity enough perhaps to love him. This unfolds as he jumps trains to New Orleans and then tries to make a living.

The narrative can at time feel like a series of short stories threaded together but its both naturalistic and funny. See Dove as an innocent abroad who walks where others fear to tread and so sails through danger that passes over his head. It also has lots of little passages of songs scatters throughout the book.Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed is based on the book and was going to be part of a musical of the book- want to see that if it ever happens!

It has to be said it's a flawed masterpiece but still better then many other writers' best work so give it a try and get a sense if you could believe in humanity if crushed at the bottom of the pile.

Not exactly an uplifting read
I've read this book twice now.First in college for a literature class, and again 8 years later.Both times it depressed me.Granted, that is the book's purpose.To provide a realistic and tragic glimpse into the lives of some of America's least fortunate during the depression.Though it is interesting and well written, I can't say that I would tell my best friend to read it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

a rambling mess of forgettable stories
Sorry, but I have to completely disagree with the other reviewers.'The Neon Wilderness' contains several stories of down-and-outs living in Chicago in the 1940s.Although the author has the local language and the feel of the streets down pat, he forgot to write anything *interesting*.The characters are generally not likable or encourage sympathy, and oftentimes the prose is utterly incomprehensible.Nope, I really didn't like this book at all.


Bottom line: this book does not deliver a pleasant reading experience.

A Walk On The Wild Side-Hold On
Parts of this review were used in a review of Algren's classic Man With The Golden Arm. These short stories reflect the same milieu that Algren worked in that novel. Algren throughout his literary career was working that same small vein- but what a mother lode he produced.

Growing up in a post World War II built housing project this reviewer knew first hand the so-called `romance' of drugs, the gun and the ne'er do well hustler. And also the mechanisms one needed to develop to survive at that place where the urban working poor meet and mix with the lumpen proletariat- the con men, dopesters, grifters drifters and gamblers who feed on the downtrodden. This is definitely not the mix that Damon Runyon celebrated in his Guys and Dolls-type stories. Far from it. Just read "A Bottle of Milk For Mother".

Nelson Algren has gotten, through hanging around Chicago police stations and the sheer ability to observe, that sense of foreboding, despair and of the abyss of America's mean streets down pat in a number of works, including this collection of his better stories. Along the way we meet an array of stoolies, cranks, crackpots and nasty brutish people who are more than willing to put obstacles in the way of anyone who gets in their way. Read "A Face On The Barroom Floor"- that will put you straight. But to what end. They lose in the end, and drag others down with them.

We, of late, have become rather inured to lumpen stories either of the death and destruction type or of the rehabilitative kind but at the time that these stories were put together in the late 1940's and early 1950's this was something of an eye-opener for those who were not familiar with the seamy side of urban life. The dead end jobs, the constant run-ins with the `authorities' in the person of the police, many times corrupt as well. The dread of going to work, the dread of not going to work, the fear of being victimized and the glee of victimizing. The whole jumbled mix of people with few prospects and fewer dreams.

Algren has put it down in writing for all that care to read. These are not pretty stories. And he has centered his stories on the trials and tribulations ofgimps, prostitutes and other hustlers. Damn, as much as I knew about the kind of things that Algren was describing these are still gripping stories. And, if the truth were told, you know as well as I do that unfortunately these stories could still be written today. Read Algren if you want to walk on the wild side.

"Under any old moon at all."
I haven't read any Algren before The Neon Wilderness & was moved to do so by my recent visit to Chicago. I've been told that his stories are the place to begin. I have to confess that before this I mostly knew Algren as de Beauvoir's Lewis Brogan in The Mandarins.

It took me a little while to warm up to the stories. That's at least a little bit because he led with the story which, in my opinion, is the weakest in the book: "the captain has bad dreams". The stories do get better from there, so persevere.

All of the stories are gritty. There is not a lot of hope in his world. Life is mean, and times are hard. It sounds like a cliche, but not the way Algren writes it. He is deservedly considered a master of the short story form. I particularly liked "poor man's pennies" and "the brothers' house". I was less enchanted with the boxing stories. But, honestly, that's probably me and not Algren-- still too much of a girl to be fascinated with fighting.

Recommended, particularly if you are interested in the short story.

The Definitive Algren Book
If you only have time to read one Algren book and want to know what he is all about, then 'Neon Wilderness' is the tome to get.
It acts as a template for all Algrens repartee; life on Division street, the pimps, the hustlers, the corruption, the prostitutes. Life for the people whom the American dream is pure illusion. They survive in a world of crime by crime, yet they're always the ones who get punished;always the games biggest losers.
Many of the stories in 'Neon Wilderness' have appeared either slightly altered or in elongated form in Algrens other works. The line ups in the jail feature everywhere in Algrens novels.'Face on the Barroom Floor' 'Bottle of milk for Mother' in 'Walk on the Wild Side' and 'Never come Morning'
Algren just basically wrote the same novels over and over with slightly different takes;sometimes humouress, sometimes bleak. He wrote about the people and life he knew in his Chicago.
Read this and you will have Algren in a nutshell. BUt its well worth catching his other works-despite the feeling of deja-vu they give you!

CLASSIC IS RIGHT!
A true marvel. Not many writers come close. Nelson Algren is at the very top of the heap: original, compassionate, funny, insightful. You know, we read many books, and once we have finished with the book we toss it aside and forget about it. With Algren it's different. You read his stuff and can't help feeling cheated at not having known the man, not having ever had a chance to meet the guy. Wish there was a way to sit down and have a beer with the man, light up a stogie and have a good chat with the genius who created this masterful story collection. The writing is gritty and true, heartfelt. Brings to mind several other writers who had this knack of writing in this kind of honest, unflinching style: John O'Brien (Leaving Las Vegas), B. Traven (take your pick: Treasure of Sierra Madre, Cottonpickers, etc.) Knut Hamsun (Hunger), Eugene O'Neill (Long Day's Journey Into Night), Celine (Journey to the End of the Night), Kirk Alex (Working the Hard Side of the Street), Chester Himes (If He Hollers Let Him Go).
All of the above had their own style, of course, but the thing they had in common was in the balls they showed by not flinching away from the gritty, life lived by so many who weren't born with deep pockets, who didn't have it easy.

Writing from the gut. Algren lives. Read THE NEON WILDERNESS, and give some of the others a try as well.
This is writing for people who love books and love to read. Shut your TV sets off and pick up a good book--and you can start right here, with Algren's story collectiion. ... Read more

Product Description
A reissue of a classic American novel, with an introduction by Kurt Vonnegut, Nelson Algren's second novel, originally published in 1942, tells the story of Bruno Bicek, a tough from Chicago's Northwest Side, and Steffi, the woman who shares his dream while living his nightmare. "An unusual book and a brilliant book." -- The New York Times ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

haunting, expert novel about shattered dreams
I wish someone, anyone in my many years of reading literature had introduced me to Algren. Why did it take 60 years to discover him? Especially give my proximity to Chicago, that industrial behemoth? And I'm a voracious reader! Perhaps because few people knew ofhis works. They were out of print for decades. Censorship? Algren's total uncomprosing intellectual honesty frightened many...

Seldom have any characters affected me as did Bruno and Steffi. Never Come Morning is both a poetic mediation and a heartbreaking tragedy.The poverty, misery, degradation of these characters is terrible. They are trapped in harsh, destitute conditions and every nornmal human desire to live, succeed. find peace and break free of their surroundings is smashed in their faces. They are crushed by circumstance and are doomed.

I was totally engrossed by this novel, even as I realized the utter hopelessness of redemption of Bruno and Steffi. I won't forget them. Anyone who can not commiserate with these characters, must have lost some of their humanity. Their situation is heartbreaking.

Nelson Algren was a survivor of these streets... he knew them intimately, and his experience can not be denied. He was one of the very first writers to violate the "niceness" standards of the 50s.
As one of the first writers to dissect urban poverty in a realistic manner, he paid the price. His work was out of print for decades.

Right now, "urban grittiness" is commonplace in books and movies and music. But this was not possible in the 50s. Victorian standards were preached and enforced everywhere (and Victorian hypocrisy flourished). Algren was one of the first to venture into this territory. And he was widely criticized for his depictions.

Algren is one of the greatest writers I've read. And this after only one book: Never Come Morning.

Dead Before the Age of Twenty
This is a grim and authentic depiction of the slum dwelling residents of the Polish Triangle, a downtrodden district only minutes removed the Chicago Loop and a lifetime removed from the hotels, restaurants and stores which catered to the city's elite. It is a place where children scavenge for discarded bottles in hope of collecting a two cent deposit refund for each empty that they can return.

Nelson Algren lived amongst the characters that he described in his novels. He provides a solid description of life along Ashland and Milwaukee Avenues and Division Street when the region was inhabited by Poles who struggling to earn enough to be described as blue collar or working poor. Drunkeness, gambling and prostitution once flourished in these environs. Rapists and thieves functioned in the alleyways with little interference from the police.

Frequently, books feature blurbs from other writers, celebrities and notables. Sometimes, after tossing aside a book in disgust after a dull read, I wondered whether or not the persons who contributed the praise brimming blurbs ever bothered to actually read the books that they were trumpeting? Were those people simply reciprocating favors from their friends? "Never Come Morning" contained one blurb that I could not dismiss so lightly: novelist Ernest Hemingway, who knew something about Chicago and something about writing, commended Nelson Algren's book.

Hemingway was right on the money. This book is a worthy companion to those of Farrell, Motley and Dreiser.

Frank and Brutal with a sense of Deja-Vu

Bruno 'Lefty' Bicek is a Polak on the Polak side of Division Street. He has day dreams of being admired; a hero in baseball or boxing. He daydreams of beating cheating opponents by playing clean; winning through skill alone. And he has his girl, Steffi R.
But with corruption everywhere,the police able to pick up and put away on a whim, and the need to be 'regular' with the gang members sees Lefty end up as all Division Street hoods do. Life beat out of them,dreams staying daydreams. Lefty loses his soul when he does nothing to stop Steffi being gang raped by the guys.He needed to keep 'regular'.

As ever, Algren never sanatises or justifies or explains. Its just written how it is, and 'Never Come Morning' is perhaps his most frank portrayal. It has few-if any-of the humour that creeps in his other novels.

Having read 'The Man With The Golden Arm', 'Walk on the Wild Side' 'Neon Wilderness' and now 'Never Come Morning' I know two things. First, Algren is a remarkable and socially observent writter. Second, he basically just writes the same story over and over with slightly different takes; from slightly different angles.
All the same things were present in 'Never Come..' as in the other Algrens I've read. The line up;Lefty's reasoning to the Captain as to why his gang had shaved heads came from a short story in 'Neon Wilderness' the heists are slight variations, the boxing accounts are the same etc etc.
This doesn't make Algren anything other than what he is-a great (Thomas Wolfe just wrote 'Look Homeward Angel' over and over again with slight variations and nobody disputes his greatness) it just means that his scope is limited, and 'Neon Wilderness' would perhaps be all you ever need to read to get the whole Algren repartee.
But for all that-and even though Algrens Chicago is long since dead-this is great reading

Gritty americana from a forgotten master
Never come morning is a exquisite novel of pain and dark urban reality.What makes Algren a better writer than so many others who work in this mileiu is that he doesn't moralize or create one-dimensional heroes.His characters pull you in because they have the complexity and tragic failings of real people.The imagery walks the line between the surreal and the actual, dreams interwoven with the brutal waking reality of inner-city poverty.This book alone puts Algren, who never got much fame and certainly not fortune for his work, on the map of great American writers.

Gritty, but hollow novel about a thug and his life..
From previous reviews, I got the idea that "Never come Morning" would be gritty, and a masterpiece.Well, that's not the case.It is quite gritty, with EVERYONE a crook, from a Polish barber who is also a pimp, from the one-eyed police detective.The story follows Bruno, a thug who dreams of well..being the Great White Hope.Of course, we know he's a thug, and will always be nothing but a thug.Bruno and his thuggish friends talk in a Chicago dialect that grates on your nerves.Algren is not Mark Twain, so it further alienates the reader when you want to hear English you can recognize.I felt zero sypathy for Bruno's predicament, and I felt sick that Steffi would see anything in this character. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Not what promised to be And also not very good
I do not know why this collection is called a collection of 'Black Humor'. The stories are by and large not very humorous at all. What is worse the book opens with Algren's very political and wrong-minded introduction equating all kinds of different crimes , making the CIA evil as the Nazis. There were a few nice pieces in this book, but even they were not as promised the authors' best. Bellow's short piece substitutes an Irish intellectual for the usual Jewish one. And the insights are there but the tone and flavor is not. Bruce Jay Friedman has a totally non- understandable piece which is unlike his best work, and not funny at all. I have never been a big fan of Thomas Pyncheon and his story here 'Entropy' is more interesting to my mind for its scientific ideas than for its human connections. Mostly however it is a mess and mishmash. I read all kinds of books and occasionally I wonder if the reading isa wise way of wasting my time. Here the answer was largely 'no'. ... Read more

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Wonderful insight for Algren fans
A fascinating transcript of conversations, circa 1962-64, with my literary hero. Algren discusses his life, his books, the literary establishment and the world at large with his usual combination of humor, swagger and keen insight. ... Read more

Product Description
Understanding Nelson Algren traces the career of a writer best known for his novels The Man with the Golden Arm and A Walk on the Wild Side. From Algren’s first short stories through his final fiction, the posthumously published The Devil’s Stocking, Brooke Horvath surveys the literary contributions of a writer known as the voice of America’s dispossessed.

Horvath offers an introduction to the life and work of the Chicagoan who wrote about the underclass in the Windy City and beyond, bringing to the fore their humanity and aspirations. He proposes that while it is appropriate to view Algren’s work through the lenses of literary naturalism, disenchanted social critique, and in his later works, postmodernism, Algren’s ideological concerns should not eclipse his considerable stylistic achievements, including his lyricism and humor.

Examining Algren’s eleven major works in the contexts of the writer’s life and society’s changing literary tastes, Horvath sets Algren’s evolution as a writer against the backdrop of America’s shifting social, political, and economic landscape. Throughout his analysis, Horvath considers the questions that plagued Algren and that reappear in his work: Why do so many Americas fail? How do they view their own failure? How do the "successful" view those at the bottom of the economic order? And to what extent do the middle and upper classes experience failure or require salvific intervention? ... Read more