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I am not immune. Scrolling through some old emails, I came across this one called “from NELSON ALGREN’S LETTERS TO RAJAH.”<\/em> Rajah was Roger Groening<\/a>, a friend of Nelson’s and later of mine. Roger died in 2015. I think of him often. He and Nelson became friends, initially by mail, when Roger wrote him a fan letter. They remained friends for roughly 20 years until Nelson’s death, in 1981. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Books, movies, and boxing were the three main subjects that cemented their friendship. Nelson often unloaded his sharpest opinions on Roger, knowing that he had a discerning audience who read as many books as he did (possibly more), who followed the fights, and who knew as well as anyone, especially when it came to movies, what he was talking about. In the spirit of “Auld Lang Syne,” here are excerpts from the email, copied from Nelson’s letter. Nelson wrote it from Chicago on the stationery of the Hotel Chelsea<\/a>, where he sometimes stayed when he came to New York. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Terry Southern simply died. It seems that, the same week he got into the establishment by the backdoor, he put up an electrified barbed-wire fence and unleashed half a dozen Dobermann-pinschers to police his grounds. What it took John Dos Passos a lifetime to complete\u2014the circle from left to right\u2014Southern achieved in days. I haven’t been able to read him since Blue Movie.<\/em> [Algren had been a strong supporter of Southern’s fiction.]<\/em><\/p> . . . I like those early Simenons because they’re so crude compared to his later stuff. You can see him learning as he goes.<\/p> I don’t really have any beef against Graham Greene because I haven’t read enough of him. I did pick up a book of his once, which was placed in Saigon and was utterly false. Then I read Travels With My Aunt,<\/em> which was just facile. If I’d read his better stuff I’d be more respectful I suppose. . . .<\/p> [Rubin] Carter is the sanest man I\u2019ve ever met. When I commented on his civilian dress he answered flatly, \u201cI don\u2019t wear prison dress. Why should I? I\u2019m not supposed to be here.\u201d When they put him on a prison detail, he turned it down just as flat: \u201cI love work. But for 80 cents a day? Not on your life.\u201d<\/p> So they just let him alone. He sleeps during the day and does his own work at night. He doesn\u2019t fuck with anybody, black or white, in the joint, and they\u2019re contented to stay out of his way. If he doesn\u2019t like somebody\u2019s approach he tells him to fuck off, that\u2019s all.<\/p> \u201cSomebody sent two elite black dudes down to see me from Harvard,\u201d he told me, \u201csociologists, anthropologists, psychologists \u2013 whatever. I seen them coming. I knew they\u2019d give me that Flip Wilson soul-slap handshake-roll-the-hips, all ofthat, <\/em>and one did. By the time he did, my hands were behind my back. \u201cGet the fuck out,\u201d I told them. \u201cThey got out.\u201d<\/p> The transcripts of his trial support his story.<\/p> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n31 March ’74<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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