Algren (46 page)

“At the end”
: Ibid., 159.

“Don't you care”
: Ibid.

“I want you to know”
: Simone de Beauvoir to Algren, July 19, 1948, in Beauvoir,
Transatlantic
, 202.

“No. Too much work”
: Quoted in Simone de Beauvoir to Algren, July 23, 1948, in Beauvoir,
Transatlantic
, 203.

“share and share alike”
: Buhle, Buhle, and Georgakas,
Encyclopedia of the American Left
, 323.

“a place of my own”
: Quoted in Beauvoir,
Force
, 166.

“foolish, because no arms are warm”
: Ibid., 167.

“cowboy-and-Indian”
: Algren, interview, in Cowley,
Writers at Work
, 214.

“Are you alright”
: Rowley,
Tête-à-Tête
, 198.

“golden Zazu”
: Bair,
Simone de Beauvoir
, 407

“send Algren to punch”
: Ibid., 409.

“curious strutting macho”
: Ibid., 472.

“
seemed an unassuming”
: Algren to Ken McCormick, May 20, 1949, OSU libraries.

“This was not a girl”
: Algren,
Algren at Sea
, 81.

“frigid, priapic, nymphomaniac”
: Bair,
Simone de Beauvoir
, 408.

“You do not care”
: Algren,
Algren at Sea
, 82.

“I'd be afraid”
: Drew,
Nelson Algren
, 206. Author's note: I rendered as dialogue something Algren remembered saying.

“his potentialities, along with”
: Algren,
Chicago
, 53.

“Tough it out, Jack”
: Ibid., 54.

“lives in sedate comfort”
: Algren to Amanda Algren, May 1949, OSU libraries.

“Tell him I have”
: Algren,
Last Carousel
, 141–142. Algren makes much of Beauvoir's humorlessness in this story, but hers is one of the funniest lines in it.

“tell him to keep”
: Algren to Goldie Abraham, July 2, 1949, OSU libraries.

“moron”
: Algren,
Golden Arm
, 7.

“It's all in the wrist”
: Ibid., 9.

“the great, secret”
: Ibid., 19.

“heart-shaped face”
: Ibid., 28.

“one of the most”
: Giles,
Confronting the Horror: The Novels of Nelson Algren
, 60.

“God has forgotten”
: Algren,
Golden Arm
, 99.

“There through the starless”
: Ibid., 94.

“It was made right”
: Ibid., 141.

“literal or symbolic prisons”
: Giles,
Confronting the Horror
, 60.

“into one big worry”
: Algren,
Golden Arm
, 260.

“He weighs thirty-five pounds”
: Ibid., 259.

“we are all members”
: Ibid., 196. From St. Paul's letters to the Romans, Romans 12:5: “For just as in one body we have many members, yet
all the members have not the same function, so we, the many, are one body in Christ, but severally members one of another.”

“an iron heart”
: Ibid., 290.

“I'd drive in the nails”
: Ibid., 66.

“triumph”
: “The Lower Depths,”
Time
, September 12, 1949.

“surely there is no writer”
: Kelsey Guilfoil, “Novel of the Damned Puts Chicagoan in First Rank,”
Chicago Tribune
, September 11, 1949.

“will be missing much”
: A. C. Spectorsky, “Saloon Street, Chicago,”
New York Times
, September 11, 1949.

“morbid, dirty”
:
Extension
, quoted in a letter from T. W. Tanaka to Jack Conroy, November 3, 1949, OSU libraries.

“I didn't know anybody”
: Mitchell Wisniewski, interview by author, 2013.

“Into a world”
: Ernest Hemingway to Algren, October 18, 1949, OSU libraries, reprinted in multiple places, including Drew,
Nelson Algren
, 210.

CHAPTER 9
: THE WALLS BEGIN TO CLOSE

A note on the contract negotiations: Details of these negotiations come from correspondence with Ken McCormick in the OSU libraries and a recently discovered letter by Madeleine Brennan in a private collection of Algren's papers belonging to Gloria Moroni. The November 11, 1949, letter tells of how Irving Lazar mistakenly thought he was authorized to sell the book if he could get no better offer, Roberts thought he had sold it, and Brennan had to get a lawyer on the phone to make clear to Roberts that his offer had not been accepted.

The details about Amanda's attempts at self-improvement come from a letter among a cache of Nelson's papers belonging to Gloria Moroni.

“flying saucer”
: Algren,
Chicago
, 46.

“Land of Hollow Laughter”
: Algren, appendix to
Nonconformity
, 118.

“Everybody here is a millionaire”
: Algren to Jack Conroy, February 5, 1950, OSU libraries.

“Ten-Day-Hollywood-Hospitality”
: Algren, appendix to
Nonconformity
, 115.

“Just for a handful”
: David Dempsey, “In and Out of Books,”
New York Times
, March 26, 1950.

“pushy Jew”
: Shay, interview by author.

“it was a pretty good”
: Ibid.

“You don't want me”
: Shay,
Nelson Algren's Chicago
, xvii.

“night people”
: Ibid., xvi.

“Bad idea”
: Ibid., xx.

“How about ‘Chicago'”
: Shay, interview by author.

“Is this really
…
He goofed”
: Ibid.

“The only emotion”
: Algren, review of
An American Dream Girl
, by James Farrell,
Saturday Review of Literature
, December 9, 1950.

“the house that Doubleday built”
: Algren to Ken McCormick, 1950, OSU libraries.

“Algren's folly”
: Ibid.

“There's a difference”
: DeClue, interview by author.

“good count”
: The following quotations are from the unused screenplay of
The Man with the Golden Arm
by Nelson Algren and Paul Trivers, OSU libraries.

“your practicing a little”
: Simone de Beauvoir to Algren, December 7, 1949, in Beauvoir,
Transatlantic
, 309.

“bullshit”
: Bair,
Simone de Beauvoir
, 416.

“a bunch of silly women”
: Ibid.

“concealed Communist
”: from an office memorandum dated July 11, 1950, Algren FBI file, National Archives.

“greeted her casually”
: Bair,
Simone de Beauvoir
, 422.

“We'll have a nice”
: Beauvoir,
Force
, 226.

“it seemed to me”
: Beauvoir,
Mandarins
, 545.

“Why are you all”
: Beauvoir,
Force
, 226.

“You naughty man”
: Shay, interview by author.

“Help!”
: Beauvoir,
Force
, 226
.

“friendship flamed into life”
: Ibid., 227.

“I have lost”
: Simone de Beauvoir to Algren, September 30, 1950, in Beauvoir,
Transatlantic
, 370.

“Nelson was swept”
: David Peltz, interview by author.

“Don't worry about not”
: Algren to Amanda Algren, October 3, 1950, OSU libraries.

“to determine for ourselves”
:
New York Times
, January 15, 1951.

“just feeling around”
: Algren, quoted in “Headliners and Bestsellers,”
New York Times
, June 11, 1950.

“If you have any”
: Dalton Trumbo to Algren, June 15, 1951, OSU libraries.

“I've always thought”
: Shay,
Nelson Algren's Chicago
, xix.

“victory lap”
: Bill Savage, interview by author, 2012.

“more majesty”
: Algren,
Chicago
, 48.

“spreading itself all over”
: Ibid.

“rigged ball game”
: Ibid., 14.

“The Negro is not”
: Ibid., 45.

“on the rim of ”
: Ibid., 54.

“slipping out of used”
: Ibid., 10.

“an October sort”
: Ibid., 72.

“a drafty hustler's junction”
: Ibid., 46.

“sort of mottled”
: Ibid., 47.

“Giants lived here once”
: Ibid., 52.

“leaving you loving”
: Ibid., 49.

“loving a woman with”
: Ibid., 23.

“much too square”
: Ibid., 77.

“while we shall leave”
: Ibid.

“book unlikely”
: Quoted in John Blades, “‘Rotten Reviews' Bring Sweet Revenge to Writers,” Tribune Books,
Chicago Tribune
, November 23, 1986.

“fine poetry”
: Emmett Dedmon, review of
Chicago: City on the Make, Chicago Sun-Times
, undated clipping, OSU libraries.

“degree of distortion”
: Budd Schulberg, review of
Chicago: City on the Make
,
New York Times
, October 21, 1951.

“Nelson's use of language”
: Rick Kogan, interview by author, 2013.

“love-hate poem”
: Studs Terkel, interview by author, 2005.

“kings of the world”
: Simone de Beauvoir to Algren, July 13, 1951, in Beauvoir,
Transatlantic
, 428.

“the fanciest all-around”
: Algren,
Chicago
, 48.

“He doesn't speak”
: Beauvoir,
Force
, 250.

“nark-squad hero”
: Algren,
Last Carousel
, 275.

“part of the natural environment”
: Mike Royko,
Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago
(New York. E. P. Dutton, 1971) 108.

“his face crumpled”
: Bair,
Simone de Beauvoir
, 430. This version of the story, told to Bair in interviews in the 1980s, differs from the version Beauvoir tells in
Force of Circumstance
, when Algren confesses his love just as she is about to leave.

“It's not friendship”
: Beauvoir,
Force
, 250.

“I am just a poor”
: Simone de Beauvoir to Algren, October 30, 1951, in Beauvoir,
Transatlantic
, 436.

“To love a woman”
: Beauvoir,
Force
, 251.

“Well, that's that”
: Ibid., 254.

“He was gentle”
: Doris Peltz, interview by author, 2005.

“housekeepers”
: Dave Witter, interview by author, 2015.

“Why don't you marry”
: Simone de Beauvoir to Algren, April 2, 1952, in Beauvoir,
Transatlantic
, 464.

“raggedy, a stray cat”
: Drew,
A Life on the Wild Side
, 284.

“That poor son-of-a-bitch”
: Shay, interview by author.

“Bubu came out”
: Algren, autobiographical fragment, OSU libraries.

“It was himself ”
: David Peltz, interview by author.

“He defended his streetboy's”
: William Pechter, “Abraham Polonsky and ‘Force of Evil,'”
Film Quarterly
15, no. 3 (Spring 1962): 53.

CHAPTER 10
: THE NONCONFORMIST

“Hollywood! It's like”
: “Sylvia Sidney,” IMDB,
www.imdb.com/name/nm0796662/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
.

“bag of dead bones”
: Algren, autobiographical fragment, OSU libraries.

“the whole business is”
:
Daily Worker
, March 3, 1952, in Algren FBI file, National Archives.

“a very good guy”
: Terkel, quoted in FBI memorandum, May 21, 1951, Algren FBI file, National Archives.

“All I'm saying”
: H. E. F. Donohue and Algren, “Algren's Innocence,” afterword to Algren,
Never Come Morning
(1996), 286.

“Every serious writer”
: Van Allen Bradley, “Author Nelson Algren—He Sits and Broods,”
Chicago Daily News
, September 6, 1952.

“It was a strong”
: Bradley, quoted in afterword to Algren,
Nonconformity
, 99.

“identified with”
: F. Scott Fitzgerald, quoted in Algren,
Nonconformity
, 18.

“it would seem”
: Algren,
Nonconformity
, 18.

“No book was”
: Ibid., 20–21.

“If you feel you”
: Ibid., 34.

“to persist in”
: Dan Simon, quoted in afterword to Algren,
Nonconformity
, 95.

“From the coolest”
: Algren,
Nonconformity
, 47.

“special American guilt”
: Algren,
Golden Arm
, 19.

“odd fish”
: Ibid., 66.

“between the H Bomb”
: Ibid., 14.

“Between the idea”
: T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men,” in The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909 to 1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1971), 58.

“deeply reactionary ham”
: Algren, quoted in a letter from Beauvoir to Algren, February 1952, in Beauvoir,
Transatlantic
, 458.

“This will be one”
: Maxwell Geismar to Algren, June 3, 1953, quoted in afterword to
Nonconformity
, 101.