{"id":34289,"date":"2019-04-07T19:55:26","date_gmt":"2019-04-07T23:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=34289"},"modified":"2019-06-27T10:20:55","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T14:20:55","slug":"nelson-algrens-strange-midnight-dignity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2019\/04\/nelson-algrens-strange-midnight-dignity.html","title":{"rendered":"Nelson Algren’s Strange Midnight Dignity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Q & A: Colin Asher Talks About His New Literary Biography<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In <\/span>his introduction to NEVER A LOVELY SO REAL: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren, <\/em>Colin Asher begins with \u201cthe first thing you should know.\u201d He doesn\u2019t offer some piquant biographical detail or some emblematic anecdote to grab our interest which, rest assured, he is thoroughly capable of doing. He informs us without making a fuss that Algren \u201cwrote like this\u201d:
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Photo of Nelson Algren
(\u00a9 Stephen Deutch<\/a>, early 1960s)
Click to enlarge.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
A biography by Colin Asher<\/a>
( W.W. Norton & Company, 2019)<\/em>
Pub. date: April 16, 2019<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The captain never drank. Yet, toward nightfall in that smoke-colored season between Indian summer and December\u2019s first true snow, he would sometimes feel half drunken. He would hang his coat neatly over the back of his chair in the leaden station-house twilight, say he was beat from lack of sleep and lay his head across his arms upon the query-room desk.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Yet it wasn\u2019t work that wearied him so and his sleep was harassed by more than a smoke-colored rain. The city had filled him with the guilt of others: he was numbed by his charge sheet\u2019s accusations. For twenty years, upon the same scarred desk, he had been recording larceny and arson, sodomy and simony, boosting, hijacking and shootings in sudden affray: blackmail and terrorism, incest and pauperism, embezzlement and horse theft, tampering and procuring, abduction and quackery, adultery and mackery. Till the finger of guilt, pointed so sternly for so long across the query-room blotter, had grown bored with it all at last and turned, capriciously, to touch the fibers of the dark gray muscle behind the captain\u2019s light gray eyes. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
First edition, 1947<\/em>
Click to see 2002 edition, o.p.<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
First edition, 1949<\/em>
Doubleday & Co., Inc.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
The Man With <\/em>
the Golden Arm
Seven Stories Press, 1999<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Those are the opening paragraphs of\u00a0The Man With the Golden Arm,<\/em> the 1949 novel that made Algren famous before he dwindled into cult status. The captain is the same one who appears earlier\u00a0in “The Captain Has Bad Dreams,” a short story in The Neon Wilderness; <\/em>he’s the same weary captain <\/span>who now eyes the same smalltime hustlers in the same Chicago police station\u2014only this time lined up in front of him is Frankie\u00a0Machine, a sharp-tongued “smashnosed vet” with “buffalo-colored eyes,” home from war with a Purple Heart and “shrapnel buried in his liver for keeps.” We learn soon enough that Frankie Machine is known as Dealer, a professional card dealer who deals the hands in a crooked poker game\u00a0run by the neighborhood crime boss. Machine is also an alcoholic junkie. Standing beside him is a “wayward 4-F” with\u00a0“tortoise-shelled glasses separating the outthrust ears”\u00a0and a “cockiness which association with Frankie had lent him.” His name is Sparrow. Both are central characters in Arm<\/em>. Neither are the kind of people you will meet in Bellow’s Chicago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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from Never a Lovely So Real.<\/a><\/em>
Click to read. <\/a><\/em>
<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I came to know Colin because of our mutual interest in Algren. Ever since he embarked on Never a Lovely So Real,<\/em> I believed it would be the definitive biography. When he began his research, I had such confidence in the project that I gave him all my Algren files, including transcripts of my recorded interviews of Algren\u2019s friends and associates, some going back to the 1930s, his two ex-wives, and others who connected with him. I had become a friend of Algren\u2019s myself, late in his life. I wrote about him<\/a>. I was there when he died, on May 9, 1981, in a little house on Long Island. Afterward, four of his most devoted friends\u2014Studs Terkel, Stephen Deutch, Candida Donadio, and Kay Boyle\u2014urged me to do a biography. But I never got beyond the research stage, and it makes me really happy that Colin Asher did. In straightforward yet graceful prose and with deep insight\u2014let alone an immense amount of meticulous research\u2014he has produced a major literary biography. Never a Lovely So Real<\/em> testifies to the richness of Algren’s genius as a writer and explains the misunderstood nature of the man. It reveals what made him tick, exposes the legends, and brings him to life in a way no previous biography has. It certainly changed my own perception of him. And if there’s any justice, it will put Algren’s books back at the heart of the 20th-century American canon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.H.: Let’s start with your title \u2014 ‘Never A Lovely So Real’ \u2014 it\u2019s unusual. Everybody I’ve mentioned it to loves it. How did you decide on it? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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First edition, 1951
Doubleday & Co., Inc<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
60th anniversary edition, 2011
University of Chicago Press<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

C.A.:<\/strong> As you know, the title comes from a line in Algren\u2019s prose poem, Chicago: City on the Make<\/em>. I first heard Algren\u2019s name when my mother quoted a bit of the book to me over the phone. It was 2009, and I was complaining about the state of American literature, how disinterested it seemed in reckoning with the Great Recession, and my mother said, in essence, You should read Algren. He had that great line about loving a woman with a broken nose.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She couldn\u2019t\nremember which book the line came from, so it took me a while to find it. I\nthink City on the Make<\/em>\nwas about the third Algren book I read, but when I came across the passage she\nhad referenced, I remembered her comment, flagged the relevant page, and\nunderlined the following: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet once you\u2019ve come to be part of this particular patch, you\u2019ll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Colin Asher (Photo \u00a9 Nora Carroll)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

At first, I loved those lines for the sentiment they express\u2014that our imperfections are often the well spring of our virtues. Then, as I got to know Algren\u2019s work better, I saw them as a beautiful encapsulation of his attitude toward his characters. That\u2019s why, when I penned an essay about Algren for The Believer<\/em>, way back in 2013, I called my piece: “But Never a Lovely so Real.” The more deeply I grew to know Algren, the more resonant the phrase seemed. Eventually, I realized that it both describes Algren\u2019s attitude toward his characters, and the tension that exists between his personal flaws and his immense talent. After I understood that, there was never any serious question of the book having a different title. Carl Sandburg once wrote a beautiful line about Algren\u2019s characters. He said that they all have a \u201cstrange midnight dignity.\u201d For a few months, I considered using that line as a title\u2014but it just wasn\u2019t as resonant as Never a Lovely so Real<\/em>.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.H.: Yours will be the third biography of Algren. Most writers are lucky (or unlucky) to get one. Why do you think there has been so much interest in his life? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

C.A.:<\/strong> The simplest answer is also the truest: Algren\u2019s life remains interesting because of his work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Algren\u2019s\nwriting has several things going against it. He uses vernacular extensively,\nwhich can be difficult to parse now that it is decades old. His books are\nlightly plotted, and his protagonists are deeply flawed. The environments he\nconjures are brutal. And yet, Algren\u2019s books have aged well. One reason for\nthat is the singularity of his prose. It\u2019s possible to orient Algren\u2019s work\nwithin the American tradition\u2014his stuff contains some of the naturalism in\nFarrell and early Steinbeck; he writes with a rhythm that\u2019s reminiscent of\nHemingway, occasionally; and he uses imagery that has echoes of Carl Sandburg\u2019s\npoems\u2014but he was not derivative; as a stylist, he stood alone. He consciously\ntried to appeal to the eye and the ear simultaneously, and as a result his work\nis complex, closely observed and precise, but also propulsive and pleasurable\nto read.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Because of the singularity of Algren\u2019s style, people still feel they\u2019ve discovered something new when they first encounter his work.’ <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A brief anecdote: I recently introduced an acquaintance to Algren. Trying not to say too much or sell too hard, I suggested she read The Man with the Golden Arm<\/em>. When I saw her the following week, she enthused: \u201cThe book reads like poetry. The sentences have a rhythm. I can hear the rhythm of the El tracks in everything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of the singularity of Algren\u2019s style, people still feel they\u2019ve discovered something new when they first encounter his work. I had that experience with his writing, and I have heard the same from many people since. Given that Algren wrote his best work more than sixty years ago, and millions of copies of his books have been purchased, this is a remarkable phenomenon, and goes a long way toward explaining why people remain interested in his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Algren\u2019s subject matter is also a factor in his enduring relevance. It\u2019s a clich\u00e9 to say that a writer whose career peaked and then faded suffered because he was ahead of his time, but in Algren\u2019s case it\u2019s true. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nelson Algren, ca. 1949
(Photo \u00a9 Art Shay,)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Algren focused almost exclusively on the lives of people who, he felt, had been marginalized or discarded by America\u2014prisoners, itinerant laborers, alcoholics, morphine addicts, petty criminals, prostitutes, and boxers. Other writers, of course, have done the same. But Algren\u2019s work is distinct because of the convictions that motivated it. He chose his characters advisedly, and saw their stories as an integral part of the American story. He focused on the portions of society that benefit least from America\u2019s wealth because he believed the quality of their lives was an accurate gauge of the country\u2019s moral health, that the struggles they faced foretold the challenges the remainder of society would soon face. This insight allowed him to produce insights that were decades ahead of their time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Algren served\nin World War II, and when he returned to the states, he discovered that the\ncountry was ascendant, empowered, and feeling self-satisfied. But he was\nunmoved by the allure of the country\u2019s new-found wealth. Observing America\nshortly after his return from Europe, Algren saw clearly the psychic damage the\ncountry\u2019s focus on material possessions would wreak. He wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Never has any people possessed such a superfluity of physical luxuries accompanied 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 toward such diverse goals, to derive so little satisfaction from attainment of any. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Algren also understood that the story America had begun telling about itself\u2014a fairy tale set in the white suburbs, featuring a nuclear family, empowered by the fact that they were residents of the world\u2019s most powerful country\u2014was an exclusive one, and that its stability depended on society\u2019s ability to marginalize or imprison nonconformists. Writing decades before mass incarceration was part of the public discourse, Algren saw it on the horizon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incarceration is no longer the burden it was intended to be, he wrote, because\u2014 \u201ctime off for good conduct means little to men with no place to go and nothing in particular to do when they get there.\u201d Prisons and jails, he reported, are not filled with dangerous people, they are packed with \u201cmen and youths who had never picked up any sort of craft\u2014though most of them could learn anything requiring a mechanical turn with ease. It wasn\u2019t so much a lack of aptitude as simply the feeling that no work had any point to it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Algren focused almost exclusively on the lives of people who, he felt, had been marginalized or discarded by America.’<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

And for those\nAmericans who chose not to conform but managed to avoid being incarcerated,\nAlgren foresaw a different kind of escape. Much like today, there was an opioid\nepidemic after the war, and Algren interpreted the drug\u2019s rise as a symptom of\nsociety\u2019s moral decay, not a failing on the part of users. He referred to\nmorphine addiction as \u201cthe American disease,\u201d and suggested it was a reasonable\nresponse to a society so focused on conformity. He wrote: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The addict\u2019s revolt has a special grace. When he shoves a needle into his vein it is, in a sense, to spare others. Somebody had to be punished all right\u2014and he\u2019s the first who\u2019s got it coming. Things are going wrong in the world, so, in a suicidal sort of truculence, he impales himself. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

During Algren\u2019s heyday (1942-1956, roughly), these ideas placed him well outside the mainstream of popular discourse. But no longer. Now, his work seems prophetic.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.H.: How is your biography different from the other Algren biographies?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

C.A.:<\/strong> The first full-length Algren biography was written by Bettina Drew, and appeared in 1989. To be clear, I have never been in touch with Drew, but I respect her book and, especially, her research. She was a marvel at tracking people down and getting them to talk, and she created a wonderful archive of her work. However, her efforts were complicated, from inception to release, by factors beyond her control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Timing was the\nmost significant. Drew began working on her book after Algren\u2019s death, so she\ncould not interview him. But she was also writing before<\/em> most of Algren\u2019s contemporaries donated\ntheir correspondence to archives, and before good biographies of his friends\nbegan to appear. She was also working before the Internet made it possible to\neasily access government files, such as Census, birth, and death records, and\nbefore the federal government was ready to release the entirety of Algren\u2019s FBI\nfile. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inevitably, there were holes in Drew\u2019s research and therefore her book\u2014and everything that has been published since\u2014has, basically, followed the template she created. Being honest, I thought my book would as well. When I signed my contract with Norton and began my research, I imagined I would be writing a short book. I thought I would stick to Drew\u2019s outline, patching holes in it where necessary with ancillary research, and that my major contribution would be a reevaluation of Algren\u2019s written works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘I decided to undertake a complete review\u2014or the most complete review I could manage\u2014of Algren\u2019s correspondence and other archival material.’<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

But early on,\nI realized that I had to scrap that plan. Within months, I spotted several\nerrors in the previously established record of Algren\u2019s life that made me\nquestion whether the remainder could be trusted, and how far. Some of these\nerrors were minor and interesting, I suspect, only to Algren\u2019s fans. But others\nhad more serious implications, and suggested that Algren\u2019s character had, up\nuntil that point, been misrepresented. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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First edition, 1965<\/em>
G.P. Putnam Son’s, Inc.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Trade paperback, 2009<\/a><\/em>
Seven Stories Press<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

For instance, early in my research I came across a letter that Algren wrote to a close friend named Roger Groening. In that letter, Algren discusses spending some time with a writer named Robert Gover. Gover was, at the point described in the letter, a young writer who had just made a name for himself with a book called Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding<\/em>. This was in the mid-1960s, and Algren was already an elder statesman in the literary world. In his letter, Algren explains that he stayed with Gover for a few days while in New York to promote his book Notes From a Sea Diary: Hemingway All the Way<\/em>, and that his visit nearly ended in violence. Gover, by Algren\u2019s account, asked Algren to read an unpublished manuscript he had been working on. Algren did so, and, by his own account, savaged it in such brutal terms that Gover became livid, and told Algren to leave. Gover\u2019s eyes,\nAlgren wrote to Groening, \u201cwhen he took his [manuscript] back, were ice green.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his letter,\nAlgren seems to brag about treating Gover poorly. There\u2019s a bit of swagger in\nhis telling of the story, which makes it uncomfortable to read, but for some\nreason, the anecdote didn\u2019t sit well with me. It just didn\u2019t sound right, so I\ndecided to track Gover down and ask him for his side of the story. Drew\nmentioned the conflict with Gover in her book, briefly, but from the text it\nwas unclear whether she had spoken to Gover or relied on the letter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took a\nlittle doing, but I found Gover near the end of 2013, retired and writing\nlittle, but happy to talk. I expected our conversation to be tense because I\nwas planning to bring up a long-forgotten insult, but I was wrong. As it turned\nout, Gover had fond memories of Algren. He told me that Algren was a wonderful\nhouseguest, and that they enjoyed each other\u2019s company. I read Algren\u2019s letter\nto Gover while we were on the phone, and he was shocked. He said no such thing\nhad happened, and proceeded to tell me, in great detail, about his time with\nAlgren. He said they stayed up late together, drinking, and trading stories.\nAlgren, by Gover\u2019s account, was kind and encouraging, and advised Gover not to\nallow publishers to take advantage of him. In the following years, they crossed\npaths at a pair of writers\u2019 conferences, and chose to have dinner together\nseveral times. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nconversation left me feeling unsteady. I had assumed that I would discover,\nduring the course of my research, that Algren, like everyone, exaggerated or\nembellished occasionally. But I had, without realizing I had done so, also been\nassuming that those embellishments would be self-aggrandizing. It had never occurred\nto me that the man would lie to his friends to make himself seem petty and\nnasty. And once I had caught him doing so, I began to wonder how often he had\ndone it, and what the collective effect of those embellishments had been on his\npublic image. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I decided to undertake a complete review\u2014or the most complete review I could manage\u2014of Algren\u2019s correspondence and other archival material. I retrieved Algren\u2019s letters, transcripts of his speeches, and correspondence mentioning him, from more than fifty archives, most of which had not been created when Drew wrote her book. I also reviewed Drew\u2019s archive, which includes recordings of the interviews she conducted, as well as her notes, rough drafts, and official records, such as Algren\u2019s high school report card. Of that material, the recordings were the most important. Reviewing her interviews, a quarter century after she conducted them, with more material available for corroboration or refutation, I drew some very different conclusions about Algren\u2019s character than she did. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.H.: Tell me about the FBI’s Algren files that you got hold of. You found more than anyone did. After Nelson died, in 1981, I requested the files and I believe I was the first to get them, although it took years. The main file came from the FBI field office in Washington D.C. Others came from field offices in Chicago; New York; Los Angeles; Springfield, Ill.; Milwaukee, Wisc.; Indianapolis, Ind. \u2014 basically wherever information had been collected on him through surveillance, mail cover, questioning of neighbors and associates, through published reports of his activities and secret informants who denounced him as a Communist or a suspected Communist. But when the files arrived after all the waiting, it was a huge letdown. I received 375 pages, but they were so heavily redacted (notwithstanding exceptions<\/a> \/ like<\/a> \/ these<\/a>) that I couldn\u2019t do much with them. When I showed them to you, you saw how frustrating and useless they were. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Redacted pages of Algren’s FBI files obtained by JH. The three pages (above from left) are reports made in 1952 and 1953. <\/em>
The fourth page is dated 1958. Click to enlarge.<\/a><\/em>

<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Read an unredacted page.<\/a><\/em>
Asher on the context.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Read an unredacted page.<\/a><\/em>
Asher on the context.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

C.A.: <\/strong>The FBI\u2019s files turned out to be important. The fact that the FBI was interested in Algren was first reported by Herbert Mitgang in Dangerous Dossiers<\/em> (Dutton, 1988). In that book, he reports that he requested Algren\u2019s FBI file, and that the FBI sent him \u201c461 censored pages.\u201d An appeal resulted in an additional 30 pages of material. Drew also requested Algren\u2019s FBI file, and received an identical (I believe) version. Everything written about the FBI\u2019s interest in Algren since then has relied on an FBI file of approximately the same length. The file in question is not quite useless, but it\u2019s so redacted that it nearly is. As a result, there has always been some question about whether Algren\u2019s decline should be attributed to his personal failings or the government\u2019s involvement in his life. When asked, Algren\u2019s friends tended to say that Algren stopped writing because he had writer\u2019s block. Others said Algren wasted his talent drinking, or gambling.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Read an unredacted page.<\/a><\/em>
Asher on the context.<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Read an unredacted page.<\/a><\/em>
Asher on the context..<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

When I began my book, I decided to see if a fresh request for Algren\u2019s FBI file would turn up a more complete version, one that would offer a more satisfying explanation for the premature end of Algren\u2019s career. So, I contacted the National Archives, made the request, learned that securing a copy would set me back about a thousand dollars, and decided to roll the dice. I\u2019m glad I did. The file I received in response was 886 pages long and very lightly redacted. Using it, as well as some ancillary material about the government\u2019s interest in Algren, I was able to make a persuasive case that Algren\u2019s career ended as a result of the FBI\u2019s scrutiny of his life, and the Congress\u2019s interest in his political affiliations. Others have suggested as much in the past, but I\u2019m hoping that my book will settle the question for good and, consequently, reframe the story of Algren\u2019s career. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.H: In a recent edition of the New York Times Book Review, Kevin Powers writes about \u201cVonnegut\u2019s unmatched moral clarity.” He says that Kurt Vonnegut, “more than any other writer I can think of, could cut through cant and sophistry and dissembling to expose our collective self-deceptions for what they are.” It makes me wonder whether Powers ever read Algren. Vonnegut himself admired Algren’s work so much that he once called him the better writer. What would you say about Algren’s “moral clarity”?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

C.A.:<\/strong> I don\u2019t want to take anything away from Powers or Vonnegut (whose moral clarity I also admire), but I\u2019m happy to discuss the ideas that guided Algren\u2019s work.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Algren had unique beliefs about the role literature should play in society, and about an author\u2019s obligations to their craft. And he wrote about them at length. He believed that the purpose of literature is to challenge authority, and he looked down on any authors who used their writing primarily for self-promotion or declined to write honestly and critically about the times they were living through. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mass market paperback, 1960<\/em>
First published in 1942<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Mass market paperback<\/em>
Avon, 1950<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Trade paperback, 2002<\/a><\/em>
<\/a>Seven Stories Press<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As I mentioned\nearlier, his decision to write primarily about people who existed on the\nmargins of mainstream society grew out of this conviction, a fact he made clear\nrepeatedly in his writings and speeches. For instance, he once explained that\nhe wrote his second novel, Never Come Morning<\/em>, because he believed: We can\u2019t\nunderstand what\u2019s \u201chappening to ourselves\u201d unless we understand what is\nhappening to the people who share \u201call the horrors but none of the privileges\nof our civilization.\u201d      <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While writing Never a Lovely so Real<\/em>, I regularly revisited some of Algren\u2019s statements about the purpose of his work as a way of grounding my thinking about his writing. Of course, I made my own judgments about whether or not a particular piece was successful, but I wanted to be sure that I kept his intentions at the front of my mind, that I dwelled, as he did, on the purpose of his work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The line above was one that I kept at hand while I wrote, and so was a selection from The Man with the Golden Arm<\/em>. One of that novel\u2019s most famous bits of dialog is spoken by a defrocked priest who proclaims: \u201cWe are all members of one another.\u201d That line is repeated several times, and informs the narrative throughout because it plagues the conscience of a character who understands he has fallen short of the priest\u2019s injunction. The line is an allusion to Paul the Apostle\u2019s instruction that \u201cwe, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others,\u201d and I have come to think of it as the most concise, and maybe the clearest, articulation of Algren\u2019s ethos. I believe that Algren intended his work to play the same role as the priest\u2019s statement serves in his novel\u2014he wanted his books to deliver the message that we are all bound by our common humanity, and he wanted them to plague the conscience of anyone who tried to exclude some group from the \u201cone body\u201d because of their class, their race, their gender, or a failure to conform.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.H.: Bettina Drew\u2019s biography was titled “A Life on the Wild Side.” It\u2019s a witty title, but was it more mythification than clarification? How wild was Algren\u2019s life, really? <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Algren wasn\u2019t a\ntame character and he didn\u2019t lead a cosseted life so, in that sense, you could\nsay he was wild. He graduated from college in 1931, the depths of the Great\nDepression, and shortly afterward, his parents lost their business (a tire\nshop), their savings, and their home. The family needed money, but Algren was unable\nto find work in Chicago, so he went on the road to search for a job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Algren kept a notebook while ‘riding the rails’ (1931-’32). <\/em>
Click to read.<\/a>

<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

For the next several years\u2014the summer of 1931 to the spring of 1934, roughly\u2014Algren wandered. He travelled north, into Minnesota, then south to New Orleans. He had to flee that city after an acquaintance he was living with was severely beaten, and he ended up in Texas. Eventually, he made his way home and began writing, then he went back on the road\u2014traveling to New York, and then south again. Some accounts romanticize this period of Algren\u2019s life, suggesting that it was a grand adventure. He was guilty of this himself. Later in his life, he penned accounts of these years that are sarcastic and whimsical\u2014absurdist, even. But the truth is, this was a bleak and desperate time for Algren. He traveled by hopping freight trains, hitchhiking, or walking for long distances. He slept outside, or in Rescue Missions, and he ate little. He witnessed violence on the part of the police and his fellow vagabonds, and he was arrested several times, for vagrancy, and theft. He feared for his life regularly, with good reason, and eventually he lost faith in both his ability to support himself, and the American Dream. At the end of this period, he decided that America was \u201cuncivilized.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘All day that day we lay in the Jungle … We were cold, we were hungry. We had no rest.’ \u2014 Algren’s notebook<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Later in his\nlife, Algren had other experiences that could be called wild. He fought in\nWorld War II, traveled throughout Europe and into Africa with Simone de\nBeauvoir, and went to Vietnam to report on the war when he was nearly\nsixty-years-old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when people say Algren led a \u201cwild\u201d life, I don\u2019t think they\u2019re referring to the events I\u2019ve just mentioned. I have noticed a tendency to conflate Algren with his characters, and a presumption that he wrote from experience\u2014that, because he once wrote a novel about teenage petty criminals, he must have been one himself; that, because he knew so much about morphine addiction, he must have been a user himself; that, because so many of his characters drink heavily and party, he must have been a partier and a drinker himself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Algren and Simone de Beauvoir, 1950.
Photo \u00a9 by Art Shay<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I understand\nthis conflation\u2014after all, much of American literary fiction is\nautobiographical, and Algren often spoke about the need to write from\nexperience. But in Algren\u2019s case it is a mistake. He did write from experience,\nbut not his own. He researched his novels the way creative nonfiction writers\nresearch their works today, by immersing himself in an environment, taking\nnotes, and asking questions. He spent much time in chaotic and disorganized\nenvironments, but his personal habits were abstentious, even Stoic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to both of Algren\u2019s wives, he refused all medications\u2014even aspirin\u2014and liked to claim he had never been ill (this is false). He worked out regularly, and for years, he refused to allow alcohol into his house, unless he was entertaining. During Algren\u2019s most productive period, his personal restraint was even more pronounced. Ken McCormick, Algren\u2019s editor at Doubleday, recalled, in an oral history, that Algren kept his telephone in a drawer while he was writing The Man with the Golden Arm<\/em>, wrapped in a blanket so he couldn\u2019t hear it ring. And in his letters from those years, Algren often mentions going out of his way to avoid friends so that he can write. People who knew him then uniformly describe him as quiet, diffident, serious, and disciplined. He did drink to excess a few times during this period, but they were the exception. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
A<\/em>lgren and Amanda Kontowica, ca. 1952.
They married and divorced twice.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In truth, on a day-to-day basis, Algren\u2019s life was very tame. He read constantly, and he read everything. He maintained an active correspondence with writers, critics, and friends, created art, and thought of his home as a sanctuary. He referred to one of his apartments as a \u201cnest,\u201d and he said that the only way he could write a good book was to dig in and hide from the world, like a \u201cmole.\u201d Later in his life, Algren did get a bit wilder. As he wrote less, he partied more. In his twenties, he associated with a group of petty criminals, primarily as a means of gathering material. They scorned him at the time, sometimes mocking him publicly because they saw him as a pretender. But as he aged and became embittered by the way the publishing industry and the government had treated him, he drew closer to these folks and adopted some of their habits\u2014drinking more, playing poker more often, and engaging in petty graft. But even during this period he wasn\u2019t a truly wild character. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One fact that always reinforces this for me: When Algren left Chicago in the early 1970s, he sold most of his belongings, but not his books, collages, or pictures. He packed those and paid to have them shipped to New Jersey. It took 75 boxes to do so. That was Algren, a man whose life was defined by literature and art, and who preferred to spend his days reading, discussing what he had been reading, or writing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.H.: When I asked Nelson what he thought his best book was, he said it was “A Walk on the Wild Side.” I know he said different things at different times to different people. But that\u2019s what he told me without hesitation, even as he  remarked that maybe you do your best work by accident and don’t know it’s your best when you do it. He didn’t always feel so good about “Walk.” I believe, as you do, that “Arm” is his masterpiece. But “Walk” is such an entertaining read, and such a meaningful one, that IMHO it’s another masterpiece\u2014just a different kind. Yet its reception by the poobah crickets when it came out in ’56 was so nasty that it helped put the kabosh on Algren’s career. The novelist Russell Banks, an Algren fan who knew him, has chalked that reception up to “the ‘kill the messenger’ syndrome\u201d for bringing bad news. Or as another formidable novelist, Richard Flanagan, has said, it \u201cmade a mockery of the American dream\u201d as \u201can expos\u00e9 of the nation\u2019s contempt for its own people.\u201d What\u2019s your take?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
First edition, 1956<\/em>
Farrar Strauss<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Mass market paperback, 1962<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Second edition, 1998
Farrar Strauss<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
British edition, 2010
Cannongate<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

C.A.:<\/strong> I feel much divided about A Walk on the Wild Side<\/em>. This may be a problem particular to my situation, but I have a hard time separating the text from my knowledge of the events leading up to and surrounding its creation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Algren never wanted to write A Walk on the Wild Side<\/em>, and in many ways, it is, first and foremost, a product of the Red Scare. Algren sold his first four books before he wrote them\u2014the fourth being The Man with the Golden Arm<\/em>, a huge commercial and critical success. He believed that his artist freedom was guaranteed after that book\u2019s rapturous reception, and his receipt of the National Book Award. He was wrong. Arm<\/em>\u2019s release coincided with an increase in the intensity of the Red Scare, and Algren\u2019s new fame brought scrutiny that damaged his career, not freedom. He and the photographer Art Shay signed a contract to release a book of photos and text shortly after Arm<\/em> was released, but its publication was cancelled for reasons that have never been clear. Algren\u2019s next book, Chicago: City on the Make<\/em>, began as a magazine article, and his publisher didn\u2019t offer him a contract until the text was finalized\u2014a first for Algren. Next, Algren signed a contract to write a book about the politics of authorship, but after receiving the book\u2019s manuscript, his publisher backed out. The book was eventually released as Nonconformity<\/em>, but not until long after Algren\u2019s death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Nonconformity, 1997<\/em>
Seven Stories Press<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Algren slipped\ninto a depressive fugue around this time, and began acting irresponsibly. He\nhad been saving money for years so that he would not be beholden to his\npublisher, but after Nonconformity<\/em>\nwas suppressed, he gambled his savings away\u2014one of the only times he acted so\nirresponsibly. Afterward, he approached his publisher and asked for an advance\nto write a fourth novel, but they turned him down\u2014a remarkable event, given\nthat he was one of the country\u2019s most famous authors. Instead, they offered him\na small stipend to revise his first novel, Somebody in Boots, <\/em>for release as a pulp paperback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is the\ngenesis of A Walk on the Wild Side<\/em>.\nAlgren accepted the contract because he was broke, but after he did so, he\ndecided Somebody in Boots<\/em>\nwas not worth revisiting, and decided to use its framework to write a new\nnovel. It was a decision that almost destroyed his creative drive. For a\nmoment, just after he began writing Wild Side<\/em>, Algren considered running away from his\ncreative life altogether, and becoming a professional card dealer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
First edition, 1935
Vanguard Press<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
New edition, 2017
Lg Publishing<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

He gave that idea up, eventually, and went on the road to work on his novel. He retraced a portion of the path he travelled while writing Somebody in Boots<\/em>\u2014to New Orleans and Texas, then into Mexico\u2014and returned home even more dispirited. He was (justifiably) angry about the way his publisher and the government had treated him, and enraged by the conformity, shallowness, viciousness, and false piety of 1950s America\u2014and that anger informs every word of the text he eventually composed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You mention Flanagan and Banks. Both are astute readers, and I think it\u2019s telling that they used similar language to describe A Walk on the Wild Side<\/em>\u2014Banks say the book delivers \u201cnews,\u201d Flanagan calls it an \u201cexpos\u00e9.\u201d They\u2019re both right. Algren\u2019s purpose in writing that book was to broadcast an account of the country\u2019s failings\u2014a goal that is in sharp contrast to that of the books that preceded it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Algren in Sag Harbor, Long Island, 1980<\/em>
Photo \u00a9 Roswitha Hecke<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Man with\nthe Golden Arm<\/em> is a hopeful\nlament, a plea for the country to begin paying attention to the health of its\nsoul, and for people to heal themselves by recognizing the humanity of their\nfellows. The book\u2019s purpose is most evident in its characters\u2019 voices, their\nexistential preoccupations. As I mentioned earlier, a defrocked priest\nproclaims \u201cwe are all members of one another,\u201d and the implications of his\npronouncement plague a police Captain who knows he has not lived up to the\ninjunction. Frankie Machine is troubled by the feeling that he\u2019s adrift in the\nworld, rootless and wasting away. \u201cYou know who I am?\u201d He asks. \u201cYou know who\nyou are? You know who anybody<\/em>\nis anymore? And Sparrow, Frankie\u2019s sidekick, laments society\u2019s atomization, and\nindividualism. \u201cAin\u2019t nobody on anybody\u2019s side no more,\u201d he says. \u201cYou\u2019re the\noney one on your side \u2018n I\u2019m the oney one on mine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Wild Side<\/em>, published seven years later, is a\ndifferent creature entirely\u2014it is an announcement that we have gone so far down\nthe road to perdition that we can\u2019t turn back. This too is most evident in the\nwords Algren gifts his characters. The novel\u2019s protagonist, Dove Linkhorn, has\nlittle inner life, and stumbles about, being taken advantage of and abused.\nHe\u2019s an innocent, and because he is, everyone he encounters tries to explain\nthe world to him. They dispense advice and warnings freely, and their\npronouncements are uniformly dark, and sociopathic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dove\u2019s father, a\nstreet preacher, leaves an impression early in the book\u2019s narrative when he\nmounts the steps of a courthouse, drunk on something he calls \u201cKill-Devil,\u201d and\nproclaims the end of days. \u201cUn-utter<\/em>-uble sorrows is in store for all,\u201d he screams. \u201cInvasion by\na army! A army of lepers! Two hundred million of flame-throwen cavalry! A river\nof blood and burnen flesh a hundred mile long!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverybody got\nto eat,\u201d a character later declares solemnly, \u201cEverybody got to die.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know what\nthe best kick of all is?\u201d another asks. \u201cIt\u2019s when you put a gun on grownups\nand watch them go all to pieces and blubber right before your eyes. That\u2019s the\nbest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Algren loved music nearly as much as he loved literature, and I sometimes think of his work in musical terms. To my eye and ear, his best books\u2014Never Come Morning<\/em>, The Neon Wilderness<\/em>, The Man with the Golden Arm<\/em>, Chicago: City on the Make<\/em>, and Nonconformity<\/em>, are all blues\u2014but A Walk on the Wild Side<\/em> is punk. The first are all ruminations on the human condition, rhythmic, meditative works that can speak volumes with their absences and elisions, and impart messages so subtly they linger in the mind and change lives. The second, like the best punk albums, is of its moment\u2014a report on injustices and slights, angry art with a message. To my mind, both forms have their place. Both should inform our culture. Both may well be masterpieces, though of a different sort. But one looks inward, tries to reckon with the quality of the human soul, and the other looks outward, announces our collective failings, passes judgment, and demands retribution\u2014and as a reader and a listener, I privilege the former over the latter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In straightforward yet graceful prose and with deep insight\u2014let alone an immense amount of meticulous research\u2014Colin Asher has produced a major literary biography. “Never A Lovely So Real’ testifies to the richness of Algren’s genius as a writer and explains the misunderstood nature of the man. It reveals what made him tick, exposes the legends, and brings him to life in a way no previous biography has. It certainly changed my perception of him. And if there’s any justice, it will put Algren’s books back into the heart of the 20th-century American canon. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":34302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26,18,4,23,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-34289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"category-literature","9":"category-main","10":"category-news","11":"category-political-culture","12":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/LOVELY-frontcover-240x366.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-8V3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34289"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35645,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34289\/revisions\/35645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}