The Neon Wilderness

Description

As rock and roll novelist Tom Carson writes in his introduction, "The Neon Wilderness is the pivotal book of Nelson Algren's career--the one which bid a subdued but determined farewell to everything that had earlier made him no more than just another good writer, and inaugurated the idiosyncratic, bedevilled, cantankerously poetic sensibility that would see him ranked among the few literary originals of his times." Algren's classic 1947 short story collection is the pure vein Algren would mine for all his subsequent novels and stories. The stories in this collection are literary triumphs that "don't fade away." Among the stories included here are "A Bottle of Milk for Mother," about a Chicago youth being cornered for a murder, and "The Face on the Barrome Floor," in which a legless man pummels another man nearly to death--the seeds that would grow into the novel Never Come Morning. Algren's World War II stories whose final expression would be in the novel The Man with the Golden Arm are also part of this collection. "So Help Me," Algren's first published work, is here. Other stories include, "The Captain Has Bad Dreams," in which Algren first introduced the character of the blameless captain who feels such a heavy burden of guilt and wonders why the criminal offenders he sees seem to feel no guilt at all. And then there is "Design for Departure," in which a young woman drifting into hooking and addiction sees her own dreaminess outlasting her hopes.

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 the book's title. STUDS TERKEL was an American author, historian, and journalist best known for his oral histories, which vividly captured American life in the twentieth century. In 1985 he won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction for his book The Good War- An Oral History of World War II. MICHAEL IMPERIOLI is an American actor, director, and musician. He is best known for playing Christopher Moltisanti in The Sopranos, a role for which he received an Emmy in 2004.

"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