The Neon Wilderness by Nelson Algren

The Neon Wilderness by Nelson Algren

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, bedeviled, 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 I 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. In 2019, Blackstone Audio released the complete library of Algren's books as audiobooks. And in 2020 Olive Films released Nelson Algren Live, a performance film of Algren's life and work starring Willem Dafoe and Barry Gifford, among others, produced by the Seven Stories Institute.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9781644212165
ISBN 10	1644212161
Titel	The Neon Wilderness
Autor	Nelson Algren
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Paperback
Verlag	Seven Stories Press,U.S.
Erscheinungsjahr	2023-10-10
Seitenanzahl	320
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar