Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren (born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham; March 28, 1909 – May 9, 1981) was an American writer. His 1949 novel The Man with the Golden Arm won the National Book Award[2] and was adapted as the 1955 film of the same name.
Nelson Algren
Nelson Ahlgren Abraham
March 28, 1909
Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
May 9, 1981 (aged 72)
Long Island, New York, U.S.
Writer
National Book Award
1950
-
[1]Amanda Kontowicz(m. 1937; div. 1946)
-
Betty Ann Jones(m. 1965; div. 1967)
Simone de Beauvoir (1947–1964)
Algren articulated the world of "drunks, pimps, prostitutes, freaks, drug addicts, prize fighters, corrupt politicians, and hoodlums". Art Shay singled out a poem Algren wrote from the perspective of a "halfy," street slang for a legless man on wheels.[3] Shay said that Algren considered this poem to be a key to everything he had ever written.[3] The protagonist talks about "how forty wheels rolled over his legs and how he was ready to strap up and give death a wrestle."[3]
According to Harold Augenbraum, "in the late 1940s and early 1950s he was one of the best known literary writers in America."[4] The lover of French writer Simone de Beauvoir,[4] he is featured in her novel The Mandarins,[4] set in Paris and Chicago. He was called "a sort of bard of the down-and-outer"[4] based on this book, but also on his short stories in The Neon Wilderness (1947) and his novel A Walk on the Wild Side (1956). The latter was adapted as the 1962 film of the same name (directed by Edward Dmytryk, screenplay by John Fante).
Posthumously published works[edit]
After Algren died, it was discovered that the article about Hurricane Carter had grown into a novel, The Devil's Stocking, which was published posthumously in 1983.[15]
In September 1996, the book Nonconformity was published by Seven Stories Press, presenting Algren's view of the difficulties surrounding the 1956 film adaptation of The Man With the Golden Arm. Nonconformity also presents the belief system behind Algren's writing and a call to writers everywhere to investigate the dark and represent the ignored. The Neon Wilderness and The Last Carousel were also reprinted by Seven Stories Press and recognized as the Library Journal Editors' Best Reprints of 1997.
In 2009, Seven Stories then published Entrapment and Other Writings, a major collection of previously unpublished writings that included two early short stories, "Forgive Them, Lord," and "The Lightless Room," and the long unfinished novel fragment referenced in the book's title. In 2019, Blackstone Audio released the complete library of Algren's books as audiobooks. And in 2020 Olive Films released Nelson Algren Live, a performance film of Algren's life and work starring Willem Dafoe and Barry Gifford, among others, produced by the Seven Stories Institute.[20]
Political views and FBI surveillance[edit]
Algren's friend Stuart McCarrell described him as a "gut radical," who generally sided with the downtrodden but was uninterested in ideological debates and politically inactive for most of his life. McCarrell states that Algren's heroes were the "prairie radicals" Theodore Dreiser, John Peter Altgeld, Clarence Darrow and Eugene V. Debs.[21] Algren references all of these men – as well as Big Bill Haywood, the Haymarket defendants and the Memorial Day Massacre victims – in Chicago: City on the Make.
Algren told McCarrell that he never joined the Communist Party, despite its appeal to artists and intellectuals during the Great Depression. Among other reasons, he cited negative experiences both he and Richard Wright had with party members.[21] However, his involvement in groups deemed "subversive" during the McCarthy years drew the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Among his affiliations, he was a participant in the John Reed Club in the 1930s and later an honorary co-chair of the "Save Ethel and Julius Rosenberg Committee" in Chicago.[22][23] According to Herbert Mitgang, the FBI suspected Algren's political views and kept a dossier on him amounting to more than 500 pages but identified nothing concretely subversive.[24]
During the 1950s, Algren wished to travel to Paris with his romantic companion, Simone de Beauvoir, but due to government surveillance his passport applications were denied.[23] When he finally did get a passport in 1960, McCarrell concludes that "it was too late. By then the relationship [with de Beauvoir] had changed subtly but decisively."[21]
Algren and Chicago Polonia[edit]
Algren described Ashland Avenue as figuratively connecting Chicago to Warsaw in Poland.[3] His own life involved the Polish community of Chicago in many ways, including his first wife Amanda Kontowicz. His friend Art Shay wrote about Algren, who while gambling, listened to old Polish love songs sung by an elderly waitress.[25] The city's Polish Downtown, where he lived for years, played a significant part in his literary output. Polish bars that Algren frequented in his gambling, such as the Bit of Poland on Milwaukee Avenue, figured in such writings as Never Come Morning and The Man With the Golden Arm.[3]
His novel Never Come Morning was published several years after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, a period when Poles, like Jews, were labeled an inferior race by Nazi ideology.[8] Chicago's Polish-American leaders thought Never Come Morning played on these anti-Polish stereotypes, and launched a sustained campaign against the book through the Polish press, the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America, and other Polish-American institutions. Articles appeared in the local Polish newspapers and letters were sent to Mayor Ed Kelly, the Chicago Public Library, and Algren's publisher, Harper & Brothers. The general tone of the campaign is suggested by a Zgoda editorial that attacked his character and mental state, saw readers who got free copies as victims of a Nazi-financed plot, and said the novel proved a deep desire to harm ethnic Poles on Algren's part. The Polish American Council sent a copy of a resolution condemning the novel to the FBI. Algren and his publisher defended against these accusations, with the author telling a library meeting that the book was about the effects of poverty, regardless of national background. The mayor had the novel removed from the Chicago Public Library system, and it apparently remained absent for at least 20 years.[8] At least two later efforts to commemorate Algren in Polish Downtown echoed the attacks on the novels.
Shortly after his death in 1981, his last Chicago residence at 1958 West Evergreen Street was noted by Chicago journalist Mike Royko. The walk-up apartment just east of Damen Avenue in the former Polish Downtown neighborhood of West Town was in an area that had been dominated by Polish immigrants and was once one of Chicago's toughest and most crowded neighborhoods. The renaming of Evergreen Street to Algren Street caused controversy and was almost immediately reversed.[26]
In 1998, Algren enthusiasts instigated the renaming after Algren of the Polish Triangle in what had been the center of the Polish Downtown. Replacing the plaza's traditional name, the director of the Polish Museum of America predicted, would obliterate the history of Chicago ethnic Poles and insult ethnic Polish institutions and local businesses. In the end a compromise was reached where the Triangle kept its older name and a newly installed fountain was named after Algren and inscribed with a quotation about the city's working people protecting its essence, from Algren's essay "Chicago: City on the Make".[8]