The Neon Wilderness by Nelson Algren
Nelson 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 Barroom Floor," in which a legless man pummels another man nearly to death--the seeds that would grow into the novel Never Come Morning.
Also collected are the World War II stories that found their final expression in the novel The Man with the Golden Arm, as well as "So Help Me," Algren's first published work, and "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 outlast her hopes.
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."
NELSON ALGREN (1909-1981), one of the most underappreciated and well-liked modern American authors, believed that literature is created whenever the legal apparatus is challenged by conscience in touch with humanity. Such belief is supported by his extensive amount of work. Algren's powerful voice sprang from the postwar urban wilderness of Chicago, and he returned again and again to that city of hustlers, junkies, and scamps, eventually bringing Chicago's deeper depths onto a stage for the entire world to see. Algren is one of our most stubborn and enduring novels, having won the inaugural National Book Award for fiction and being praised by Hemingway as one of America's two best authors. Five major novels, two collections of short fiction, a book-length poetry, and several collections of reportage are among his works. Algren died on May 9, 1981, just days after being named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was an inspiration to artists such as Kurt Vonnegut and Donald Barthelme, Studs Terkel and Lou Reed.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781644212165 |
| ISBN 10 | 1644212161 |
| Title | The Neon Wilderness |
| Author | Nelson Algren |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Seven Stories Press,U.S. |
| Year published | 2023-10-10 |
| Number of pages | 320 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |