The Neon Wilderness

One of the most neglected American writers and also one of the best loved, NELSON ALGREN wrote once that literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity. His writings always lived up to that definition. He was born on March 28, 1909, in Detroit and lived mostly in Chicago. His first short fiction was published in Story magazine in 1933. In 1935 he published his first novel, Somebody in Boots. In early 1942, Algren put the finishing touches on a second novel and joined the war as an enlisted man. By 1945, he still had not made the grade of Private first class, but the novel Never Come Morning was widely praised and eventually sold over a million copies. Jean-Paul Sartre translated the French-language edition. In 1947 came The Neon Wilderness, his famous short story collection which would permanently establish his place in American letters. The Man with the Golden Arm, generally considered Algren s most important novel, appeared in 1949 and became the first winner of the National Book Award for Fiction in March 1950. Then came Chicago: City on the Make (1951), a prose poem, and A Walk on the Wild Side (1956), a rewrite of Somebody in Boots. Algren also published two travel books, Who Lost an American? and Notes from a Sea Voyage. The Last Carousel, a collection of short fiction and nonfiction, appeared in 1973. He died on May 9, 1981, within days of his appointment as a fellow of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His last novel, The Devil s Stocking, based on the life of Hurricane Carter, and Nonconformity: Writing on Writing, a 1952 essay on the art of writing, were published posthumously in 1983 and 1996 respectively. In 2009 came Entrapment and Other Writings, a major collection of previously unpublished writings that included two early short story masterpieces, Forgive Them, Lord, and The Lightless Room, and the long unfinished novel fragment referenced in

Once more I have been impressed by Algren's talent, his probity, and his command of a tough language that he transforms into a raw and bleeding poetry.   The Nation

Mr. Algren, boy are you good one of the two best authors in America.   Ernest Hemingway

Since the publication of The Neon Wilderness  Nelson Algren has been acknowledged as a master of that American Realism touched with poetry, which attempts to give voice to the insulted and injured. He is a philosopher of deprivation, a moral force of considerable dimensions and a wonderful user of the language.   Donald Barthelme

When I first read The Neon Wilderness I was knocked out and the funny thing is, as I re-read it I was KO'd again. That's the thing: Nelson's stories are part of our lasting literature. They don't fade away.   Studs Terkel, from the Afterword

Algren's short stories are now generally acknowledged to be literary triumphs.   New York Times