Nelson Algren wrote short stories and two great novels set in the 1930s and 1940s in the Chicago neighborhood that I live in. The Man With the Golden Arm is the most famous of the novels.
But how has it taken me so long to read Never Come Morning, which contains passages like this description of his young, poor 17-year-old protagonist, Bruno "Lefty" Bicek:
His life was a ceaseless series of lusts: for tobacco so good he could eat it like meat; for meat, for coffee, for bread, for sleep, for whisky, for women, for dice games and ball games and personal triumphs in public places. Day and night, one or all of these rode him, and was never fully satisfied even for a while; they could no more be satisfied than they could be evaded.
If you read anything better than that today pass it along.
I just read that book a couple of weeks ago. More accurately, I listened to it on a Books On Tape recording on my commute to and from work. It’s a powerful story made that way through powerful writing. The story was made even sharper for me because my daughter went to high school at the former St. John Cantius school building in that neighborhood. All the street and church references were places I recognized.
It’s gratifying to read good writing after seeing so much bad writing. Now I want to read Algren’s other stuff, which is what should happen after reading a good writer’s work.
Nice catch, David!
Thanks for your comment, Tom. In addition to Man With the Golden Arm, I recommend short story collection Neon Wilderness.
Hey, can you shoot me an e-mail at dmurrayil@earthlink.net?
I’ve misplaced your address and want to check on some of RCC’s doings.
I want to thank you as well, not just for leading me to this author, but for the quotation you had in your speechwriter’s newsletter from Studs Terkel. I am ashamed to confess that I know extremely little about Terkel, but reading his description of the Depression and hearing his own interpretation of those times was a treat, and I will read more of and about him.
I’m so glad that you wander in your blog and give us more to think about than the great wall of China that blocks corporate communications. I look forward to some tasty reading.
Thanks for follerin’ me so faithfully, Joan Hope.