Among Algren's other notable books were The Neon Wilderness, A Walk on The Wild Side and Never Come Morning.
Early Years
Author Nelson Algren was born in Detroit, Michigan on March 28, 1909. His parents soon moved to Chicago and settled in the Albany Park neighborhood, where his father worked as a mechanic.
Following high school, Algren received his journalism degree from the University of Illinois in 1931. The Great Depression not being the best time for a cub reporter to find work, Nelson took to the road to gather writing experiences. His sojourns would provide material for numerous short stories and for his novels Somebody in Boots (1935) and A Walk on the Wild Side (1956).
While in Texas, Algren was arrested for stealing a typewriter and spent a month in prison with a longer-term sentence looming. Although he was released, his jail time gave him firsthand contact with the prisoners around him, and he began to better comprehend the downtrodden of America—men and women who couldn’t seem to get a decent break and who often found themselves in a downward spiral of consequence. This heightened awareness would become an integral part of Nelson Algren’s writing throughout his career.
Chicago and The Neon Wilderness
After contributing to the WPA Illinois Writers' Project, Algren began his second novel called Never Come Morning, published in 1942. Algren had moved to what was then known as The Triangle, a Chicago neighborhood heavily populated by Poles and known for its hustlers and addicts, yet also for its devout, hard-working women in babushkas worshiping at Mass.
The Neon Wilderness, a collection of short stories, followed in 1947, and in 1949 Algren published The Man With The Golden Arm, the story of Chicago youth Frankie Machine’s struggle to overcome fate and heroin addiction. The Man With The Golden Arm received the first National Book Award, and while civic groups objected to the novel’s portrayal of Poles as they had with Never Come Morning, with all of his works Algren was forging a new view of urban realism—in Chicago and beyond.
Algren and Simone de Beauvoir
Though Algren claimed that bachelorhood was best for a male writer, he was married twice and had a celebrated affair with French icon Simone de Beauvoir. Their relationship was immortalized in her novel The Mandarins and more recently in A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren. The involvement ended primarily due to Algren’s resentment that de Beauvoir’s romantic and intellectual allegiance continued to belong to Jean-Paul Sartre, her longtime philosopher-lover.
Later Years and Legacy
Throughout the years following the publication of The Man With The Golden Arm, Algren focused on writing journalistic pieces and essays. The Man With The Golden Arm and A Walk on the Wild Side were made into films during this period, but Algren chronically experienced cash flow problems and felt that his work was under-appreciated. In 1974, he took a trip east and was reenergized by the blue-collar city of Paterson, New Jersey, where he had been researching the murder charges against fighter Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. Algren quickly moved to New Jersey and spent several years there working on The Devil’s Stocking, a novel based on the Carter case. He then moved to Sag Harbor, Long Island in 1980, where he enjoyed a brief time as Manhattan literati’s oldest new kid on the block.
On May 9, 1981, Algren died of a heart attack, just weeks before his induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Though he was buried in Sag Harbor, far from The Triangle which inspired so many of his works, a street in the Chicago neighborhood has been named in his honor and his writing remains an unquestionable part of the city’s literary heritage.
Sources
- Encyclopedia of World Biography: Nelson Algren
- Nelson Algren: A Life on the Wild Side, Bettina Drew (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1989)
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Simone de Beauvoir
