Algren (48 page)

“I would hide him”
: Ibid., 126–127.

“If you don't love”
: Ibid., 173.

“I had realized”
: Ibid., 200.

“the American businessman's”
: Ibid., 252.

“Hefner has sensed”
: Ibid., 254.

“Beyond the comic persona”
: Giles,
Confronting the Horror
, 87.

“All the rest of ”
: Algren,
Algren at Sea
, 429.

“to refuse alienated isolation”
: Brooke Horvath,
Understanding Nelson Algren
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005), 131.

“wheedling, folksy tone”
: “Intellectual as Ape Man,”
Time
, May 31, 1963.

“surrealist and grotesque”
: Robert Lowry, “Algren Stuffs a Book Like a Barrack's Bag,”
Chicago Sun-Times
, May 12, 1963.

“small but unique”
: Arlo Karlen, “Hard Shell, Soft Center,”
New York Times
, August 12, 1965.

“Freaks, finks and creeps”
: Lester Goran, “Nelson Algren—Promising Old Novelist,”
Chicago Tribune
, August 15, 1965.

“bitter, cruel and terrible”
: Bair,
Simone de Beauvoir
, 501.

“asphyxiating”
: Algren, “The Question of Simone de Beauvoir,”
Harper's
, May 1965.

CHAPTER 13
: GOOD-BYE TO CHICAGO

“handsome, savvy woman”
: Holmes, “Arm,” 359.

“His idea of marriage”
: McNear, interview by author.

“He had no schedule”
: Betty Algren to Jan Herman, “In at Last: Nelson Algren's Final Happy Days,”
Chicago Sun Times Book Week
, May 17, 1981.

“wheel on fire”
: Terkel, interview by author.

“campus gold”
: Holmes, “Arm,” 359.

“How little bullshit”
: Ibid.

“rough charm”
: T. M. Lindsey, “John Irving Immortalizes Iowa City in Upcoming Novel,”
Iowa Independent
, quoted at Writing University, January 3, 2012,
www.writinguniversity.org/writers/john-irving
.

“But the young people”
: Algren, “On Kreativ Writing,” in
Entrapment
, 245.

“former novelist”
: Letter from Paul Engle to the
Chicago Tribune
, April 7, 1974. The letter was in response to Algren, “At Play in the Fields of Hack-ademe,”
Chicago Tribune
, October 21, 1973.

“The only times he”
: Burns Ellison, “The First Annual Nelson Algren Memorial Poker Game,”
Iowa Review
18, no. 1 (1988): 71.

“They had enjoyed hearing”
: Ibid.

“There he was”
: Vonnegut,
Fates Worse than Death
, 58.

“cackling gleefully”
: Ellison, “First Annual Poker Game,” 70.

“compulsive loser
…
Deal, Nelson, deal”
: Ellison, “First Annual Poker Game,” 77–78.

“about as long as”
: Vonnegut,
Fates
, 56.

“Those are bits”
: McNear, interview by author.

“It was running out”
: Ibid.

“a quantity of marijuana”
: Chicago Police Department arrest report, January 12, 1967. The case was dismissed with leave to reinstate March 9, 1967.

“the crime of the century”
: “The Emblems and the Proofs of Power,”
Critic
, February–March 1967.

“punitive cats have the upper”
: Algren, 1961 afterword to
Chicago
, 83.

“The reason the American”
: Algren,
Last Carousel
, 209.

“irregal”
: Ibid., 169.

“gave him his props”
: Bruce Elliott, interview by author, 2015.

“adopted”
: DeClue, interview by author.

“I was being a jerk”
: Ibid.

“What do you think”
: Ibid.

“I knew one day”
: Ibid.

“Nelson never did that”
: Kogan, interview by author, 2012.

“I don't think you have”
: McNear, interview by author.

“I don't have any”
: Ibid.

“He was a troublemaker”
: Ibid.

“I had to ask him”
: John Blades, interview by author, 2011.

“odes to fried rice”
: Algren, “At Play in the Fields of Hack-ademe,”
Chicago Tribune
, October 21, 1973.

“It was just this”
: Blades, interview by author.

“He spent a lot”
: McNear, interview by author.

“all but unprintable”
: Clarus Backes, “Do We Really Need a New Book?,”
Denver Post
, February 2, 1983.

“a bunch of captions”
: Blades, interview by author.

“old lumber”
: Terkel, interview by author.

“Algren is one of those”
:
Chicago Daily News
, article not found, quotation taken from Algren,
Last Carousel
, back cover.

“at the top of his form”
: James Frakes, “Something of Algren for Everyone:
The Last Carousel
,”
New York Times Book Review
, November 11, 1973.

“unspeakable manuscript”
: Bill Targ to Algren. This letter and the exchange between Targ and Algren comes from Henry Kisor, “The ‘Inept Blob' vs. the ‘Inhuman Turd,'”
The Reluctant Blogger
(blog), March 6, 2009,
http://henrykisor.blogspot.com/2009/03/inept-blob-vs-inhumanturd.html
. Kisor, the former
Chicago Daily News
and
Chicago Sun-Times
book editor, recalled that Algren used to keep the letter in his wallet and show it to people.

“I didn't really know”
: Fred Hogan, interview by author, 2015.

“The only way”
: W. J. Weatherby, “The Last Interview,” in Algren,
The Devil's Stocking
, 9.

“I am only”
: Algren to Stephen Deutch, read by Deutch at a 1981 memorial to Algren, recording from the Chicago Historical Society.

“So say sayonara”
: Algren, “Requiem,”
Chicago
, September 1975.

“I'm out of touch”
: Saltz, “Algren on the Make.”

“for dull writers”
: Royko, “Algren's Golden Pen.”

“He wasn't making”
: Shay, interview by author.

“He even wanted”
: Algren to Suzanne McNear, undated, supplied by McNear.

CHAPTER 14
: KNITTED BACKWARD

“Calhoun prolonged”
: Algren,
Devil's Stocking
, 241.

“homeless and tempest-tossed”
: Ibid., 67.

“example of man”
: Giles,
Confronting the Horror
, 103.

“get away from the niggers”
: Algren,
Devil's Stocking
, 306.

“all is changed”
: Ibid., 308.

“there are touches”
: Herbert Mitgang, introduction to Algren,
Devil's Stocking
, 5.

“tied to a typewriter”
: Jan Herman, “Nelson Algren, the Angry Author,”
Chicago Sun-Times
, January 21, 1979.

“He didn't feel driven”
: Jan Herman, interview by author, 2010.

“Just imagine Nelson”
: Joe Pintauro, interview by author, 2015.

“from my guts”
: Weatherby, “The Last Interview,” 12.

“Why did we ever”
: Herman, “In at Last.”

“I'll call the fire marshall”
: Joe Pintauro, “Nelson Algren's Last Year: Algren in Exile,”
Chicago
, February 1988.

“He seemed so grateful”
: Greg Therriault, interview by author, 2015.

“You call this a bookstore”
: Canio Pavone, interview by author, 2015.

“He was like a big”
: Ibid.

“This is the turnaround”
: Pintauro, “Algren's Last Year.”

“Let's go to Capuccino's”
: Pavone, interview by author.

“I've been in whorehouses”
: Weatherby, “Last Interview,” 10.

“a fine and private place”
: Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress,” in
The Norton Anthology of English Literature
, 5th ed., vol. 1 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1962), 1388.

“People picked branches”
: Pintauro, interview by author.

“Tricks out of Time”
: Algren,
Last Carousel
, 536.

“My name is Regina”
: Pintauro, “Algren's Last Year.”

“Why should I?”
: Bair,
Simone de Beauvoir
, 503.

“American society is”
: Dan Simon, interview by author, 2012.

“Frankly, they didn't need”
: Savage, interview by author.

The information for this biography was drawn from a variety of sources, including interviews with Jon Anderson, John Blades, Chris Chandler, Andy Austin Cohen, Denise DeClue, Bruce Elliott, James Giles, Jan Herman, Fred Hogan, Henry Kisor, Rick Kogan, Warren Leming, Suzanne McNear, Gloria Moroni, Thomas Napierkowski, Dominic Pacyga, Canio Pavone, Doris and Dave Peltz, Joe Pintauro, Irwin Saltz, Bill Savage, Art Shay, Studs Terkel, and Morag Walsh.

The following books served as sources:

Algren, Nelson.
Algren at Sea: Notes from a Sea Diary and Who Lost an American?
Centennial Edition 1909–2009. New York: Seven Stories, 2008.

———.
America Eats
. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992.

———.
Chicago: City on the Make
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

———.
The Devil's Stocking
. New York: Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana, 1983.

———.
Entrapment and Other Writings.
Edited by Brooke Horvath and Dan Simon. New York: Seven Stories, 2009.

———.
The Last Carousel
. New York: Warner Books, 1975.

———.
The Man with the Golden Arm
. 50th anniversary critical ed. New York: Seven Stories, 1999.

———.
The Neon Wilderness
. New York: Seven Stories, 1986.

———.
Never Come Morning
. 1st ed. With an introduction by Richard Wright. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942.

———.
Never Come Morning
. With 1986 introduction by Kurt Vonnegut. New York: Seven Stories, 1996.

———.
Nonconformity: Writing on Writing
. New York: Seven Stories, 1998.

———.
Somebody in Boots
. New York: Thunder's Mouth, 1987.

———.
The Texas Stories of Nelson Algren
. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.

———.
A Walk on the Wild Side
. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.

Atlas, James.
Bellow: A Biography
. New York: Random House, 2002.

Bair, Deirdre.
Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990.

Beauvoir, Simone de.
After the War: Force of Circumstance
. Vol. 1,
1944–1952
. Translated from the French by Richard Howard. New York: Paragon House, 1992.

———.
America Day by Day
. Translated by Carol Cosman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

———.
The Mandarins
. Translated by Leonard M. Friedman. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.

———.
A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren
. Translated and annotated by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, Sara Halloway, Vanessa Kling, Kate LeBlanc, and Ellen Gordon Reeves. New York: New Press, 1998.

Bird, Caroline.
The Invisible Scar
. New York: David McKay, 1966.

Brent, Stuart.
The Seven Stairs
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.

Bruccoli, Matthew.
Nelson Algren: A Descriptive Bibliography
. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985.

Buhle, Mari Jo, Paul Buhle, and Dan Georgakas, eds.
Encyclopedia of the American Left
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Century, Douglas.
Barney Ross: The Life of a Jewish Fighter
. New York: Schocken Books, 2006.

Cowley, Malcolm, ed.
Writers at Work: The
Paris Review
Interviews
. London: Mercury Books, 1962.

Cox, Martha Heasley, and Wayne Chatterton.
Nelson Algren
. Boston: Twayne, 1975.

Cutler, Irving.
Jewish Chicago: A Pictorial History
. Chicago: Arcadia, 2000.

Donohue, H. E. F., and Nelson Algren.
Conversations with Nelson Algren
. New York: Hill and Wang, 1964.

Drew, Bettina.
Nelson Algren: A Life on the Wild Side.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1989.

Duis, Perry R.
Challenging Chicago
. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1998.

Dyja, Thomas.
The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream.
New York: Penguin Books, 2013.

Ellis, Edward Robb.
A Nation in Torment: The Great American Depression, 1929–1939
. New York: Kodansha America, 1995.

Erdmans, Mary Patrice.
Opposite Poles: Immigrants and Ethnics in Polish Chicago, 1976–1990.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990.

Fabre, Michael.
The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright.
Translated from the French by Isabel Barzun. New York: William Morrow, 1973.