When we got up from lunch, I went to the phone and dialled Algren’s number. A man
\nanswered and said, “Sag Harbor Police Department.” <\/P>
\n
“Sorry,” I said. “Wrong number.” <\/P>
\n
“Who were you calling?” he said. <\/P>
\n
“Nelson Algren,” I said. <\/P>
\n
“This is his house,” he said, “but Mr Algren is dead.” A heart attack that morning had killed
\nAlgren at the age of 72. <\/P>
\n
He is buried in Sag Harbor — without a widow or descendants, hundreds and hundreds of
\nmiles from Chicago, Illinois, which had given him to the world and with whose underbelly he had
\nbeen so long identified.<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
A curious fact: When the phone rang that day — May 9, 1981 — I was standing in Nelson’s
\nrented saltbox house in Sag Harbor, L.I., commiserating with “Big Blue,” a hulking New York
\nCity homicide detective by the name of Roy Finer, who had found Nelson dead on the bathroom
\nfloor. Nelson had asked Roy and me, both friends of his, to come before the party was to begin.
\nIt’s almost unimaginable to see a massive, 6-foot-6-inch NYC homicide cop shed tears. But Roy’s
\neyes that day were red rimmed, and this time not from a hangover.<\/P>
\n
Of all Nelson’s friends, it’s Studs Terkel who probably understood Nelson best. He knew him
\nlongest, shared his Chicago sensibility, and lent him money whenever he needed it. Studs recounts
\nhow way back in 1956 he took Nelson along with him to an interview with Billie Holiday in a
\ncellar jazz club on Chicago’s South Side:<\/P>
\n
And when the conversation ended, as casually as it had begun, and the waiter
\nhad brought her a tumbler of gin — “Lemon peel, baby” — she indicated the man in the shadows,
\nNelson Algren. She had been aware of his presence from the beginning; there had been mumbled
\nintroductions. Now she murmured inquiringly, “Who’s that man?” Algren explained that she and
\nhe had the same publisher. The Man with the Golden Arm<\/I> and Lady Sings the
\nBlues<\/I> had both been put out by Doubleday.
\n<\/P>
\n
“You’re all right,” she said to him.<\/P>
\n
“How do you know?” he asked.<\/P>
\n
“You’re wearin’ glasses.”<\/P>
\n
He laughed softly. “I know some people with glasses who got dollar signs for
\neyes.”<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
Another curious fact: When Nelson died, Studs held his I.O.U. for $3,000. The heirs to the
\nestate, relatives whom Nelson had long ago disowned, put on their glasses to examine the I.O.U.
\nfor a notary’s stamp, then refused to pay. That they’d inherited Nelson’s estate only because he’d
\nfailed to leave a will, much less notarize an I.O.U., was the final Algrenian irony of Nelson’s sad,
\nfunny, glorious, tragicomic life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two essays — one by Kurt Vonnegut, the other by Studs Terkel — appeared on New Year’s day in The Guardian in London. They’re both about Nelson Algren, who was, it is no exaggeration to say, one of the great American authors of the 20th century, and among the most neglected. “Like James Joyce,” Vonnegut […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-981","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-fP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"British](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/archives\/manwithgoldenarm.jpg\")
<\/a>Vonnegut tells how he intended to bring Salman Rushdie, who was visiting him in Sagaponack, Long Island, to a cocktail party that Algren had decided to throw. Rushdie was eager to meet Algren because, of all the American reviews of his debut novel, “Midnight’s Children,” Algren’s had struck him as the most insightful.<\/P>