A true marvel. Not many writers come close. Nelson Algren is at the very top of the heap: original, compassionate, funny, insightful. You know, we read many books, and once we have finished with the book we toss it aside and forget about it. With Algren it's different. You read his stuff and can't help feeling cheated at not having known the man, not having ever had a chance to meet the guy. Wish there was a way to sit down and have a beer with the man, light up a stogie and have a good chat with the genius who created this masterful story collection. The writing is gritty and true, heartfelt. Brings to mind several other writers who had this knack of writing in this kind of honest, unflinching style: John O'Brien (Leaving Las Vegas), B. Traven (take your pick: Treasure of Sierra Madre, Cottonpickers, etc.) Knut Hamsun (Hunger), Eugene O'Neill (Long Day's Journey Into Night), Celine (Journey to the End of the Night), Kirk Alex (Working the Hard Side of the Street), Chester Himes (If He Hollers Let Him Go).
All of the above had their own style, of course, but the thing they had in common was in the balls they showed by not flinching away from the gritty, life lived by so many who weren't born with deep pockets, who didn't have it easy.

Writing from the gut. Algren lives. Read THE NEON WILDERNESS, and give some of the others a try as well.
This is writing for people who love books and love to read. Shut your TV sets off and pick up a good book--and you can start right here, with Algren's story collectiion.

Algren's writing in this collection of short stories has very lyrical and often nightmarish quality. It is both beautiful and brutally frank. Algren paints a unapologetic picture of Chicago and it's people with his wonderful sense of humor and irony. Read this book if you want an unblinking look at people at their best and worst.

One of the most beautiful collection of short stories I've ever read. I am a devoted Nelson Algren fan, and if you read this, you'll understand why. This was a man who understood Chicago, who had the balls to plunge the murky depths of her society and find astonishing beauty. The blue imagery of his work is evocative, breathtaking, and genuine; it makes me mourn and long for a Chicago that no longer exists. The masculinity, the authority, the depth of Algren's identification with the rejects, the drug addicts, the gamblers, the hookers make WILDERNESS a superb work of art. This man tells it like it was; no glamorizing, no condescension, only the most profound understanding and a multi-layered sense of humor that, to paraphrase Hemingway (a huge Algren fan), makes you feel as if you took a punch. I haven't read the NEON WILDERNESS in a long time, but the mere mention of it makes we want to re-read it, especially the first story, "The Captain Has Bad Dreams." I also recommend BOSS by Mike Royko and just about anything by Studs Terkel.

Bruno Bicek and Steffi R. have dreams beyond the reality of their Chicago existence and the nightmarish control of the Barber, Bonifacy Konstantine. Bruno Bicek is a boxing contender and Steffi R. is the girlfriend he let be gang-raped. The Barber knows this and that Bruno Bicek has murdered one of the gang. The Barber has Steffi R. in his grasp and has no intention of letting her go. Bruno Bicek feels sure of his chances and intends taking her from him. But the Barber holds all the cards and, for Bruno Bicek and Steffi R. there will be no bright morning.

Never Come Morning has its moments: the fight scenes at the start and end of the book; the scenes in which the characters consider their lives, in a style that will be made much use of in The Man with the Golden Arm. Everything else is dark and gritty, but is not especially effective within the story because of its apparent inclusion for the sake of something anecdotal in order to flesh out the characters' traits and thoughts. In addition, Nelson Algren makes reading this book a chore like he did with The Man with the Golden Arm, by having rapid changes of viewpoint in scenes with a multiplicity of characters. This would have been quite benign given a more omniscient writing style like Fritz Leiber's, but is very distracting here.

Nevertheless, Never Come Morning is engaging, and, taken in overview, is a very satisfactory read, which demonstrates the power in Nelson Algren's writing. A power that in subsequent works, grows and grows.

Algren narrates the fall of Bruno Lefty Bicek, small-time hood and prize-fighter. Bicek comes alive under Algren's pen - not a hero, not a villain, but all too human, capable of love and of cowardice. Not as well-known as _The Man With the Golden Arm_ nor _A Walk On the Wild Side_, but, in my opinion, the equal of the first and superior to the second.

Any writer can create a sympathetic character and maintain the reader's sympathy throughout a work. A good writer can create an unsympathetic character that gains our sympathy in the course of a story. But a truly great writer creates a very real character that has our sympathy at first, who then completely loses it, only to regain it at the end. This is what Nelson Algren excels at - the characters in Never Come Morning may not be like the people you know, but they exist in the real world as much as they live in Algren's Chicago. They are not perfect, in fact they are all too human--greedy, lustful, and stupid--products of an environment that does not forgive human nature. It is a compelling story that seems more powerful, more modern, more realistic than anything written in the last 20 years. Algren's prose combines the power of a heavyweight's best right hand with the meticulous detail of a fine tailored suit. Once you've read Algren, you will never read anything the same way again.

this book was beautiful. I am not sure what experiences it takes to be hit by this book--not everyone likes it as much as me. athletics, probably, and years of competition--this book resounded to my memories of these things. but of course I recommend it to anyone. and it is also, I have no doubt, the basis for the movie Rocky.

This novel precedes the "Grapes of Wrath" by four years, and if not for its relentless misery unleavened by the comic humanity of Steinbeck's masterpiece, it might have been the defining novel of the Depression. That a 24-year-old could have written it as a first novel I find astonishing.

To read it is to glimpse an America with one foot still in the nineteenth century and one placed in the maelstrom that brought the second world war and the welfare state.

Cass McCay, the hero, is one of the landless, unlettered, unloved, underfed, lonely drifters of the Depression, what Algren called a Final Descendant of the South, one of the "wild and hardy tribe that had given Jackson and Lincoln birth...slaveless yeomen who had never cared for slaves or land..." He explains in the Preface: "Nobody owned a man who owned a gun along the wild frontier. But now that the frontier was gone, where did the man go?"

Cass is the offspring of one of those who have nowhere to go. In the Rio Grande valley of West Texas Cass lives in a shack "like a casual box on the border; wooden and half-accidental" with his brother and sister and father. They live a life about a half step up from that of a family of coyotes, eating only oatmeal or rice for days on end, scrounging coal from halted boxcars, taking turns to go get what the "Relief Station" is giving that week. So one can see how his people spun out of the chaos of the Civil War, still bleeding after 60 years, and drifting toward Franklin Roosevelt's and Lyndon Johnson's way of poverty. His older brother is scarred from a war in France where he was gassed while fighting for something he hadn't the slightest understanding of: "...nobody told nothin' but Jesus-killin' lies. Told us it was dooty to fight fo' this pesthole--told me...Oh, ah didn't believe all they told, none of us did, but we laughed and went anyhow. Now look at me."

Cass spends a lot of time down by the railroad tracks listening to men and boys who ride the rails, dreaming: "Ah'd like to get out of this pesthole someday. Ah'd go to Laredo or Dallas or Tucson."

When his father bludgeons Bryan in the face over some trifle, Cass leaves home without saying goodbye, as one would flee a war or epidemic, and takes to the railroads.

And then he is what Algren called a "Final Descendant": a rootless anonymity, a "youth alienated from family and faith, illiterate and utterly displaced...a Southerner unable to bear scorn, who had yet born scorn all his days...who wandered through some great city's aimless din, past roar of cab and cabaret, belonging to nothing and nobody." He pilfers and begs and stares in incomprehension.

He is a gentle boy stumbling through a world of unspeakable brutality and cruelty. The "Boots" of the title is a symbol of the men most feared by Cass and his ilk: the railroad bull, the jailer, the cop...Boots are used as weapons and are the mark of authority. But as awful as the booted men are, they are not as bad as the ever-present hunger, the "wolf howling behind your navel".

Today's dispossessed in the US often as not struggle with obesity instead of hunger. "Somebody in Boots" is one of the last chronicles of the struggle with starvation that went on for hundreds of generations, and that is now clearly over. The authoritarianism and brutality and callousness toward pain that Cass endures is unfortunately still with us.

Well written though this is, ...City on the Make' does require a good knowledge of Chicago's history to keep going with it and to understand the connections.

I gave up after chapter two because of my lack of background knowledge and because I felt that this was a piece of writing that had been worked at till it was little more than an exercise in style.

It had a lot of energy but lacked the spontaneity to make it seem fresh. And it read like preaching to the converted, as opposed to being persuasive.

The city of big shoulders is my home, so perhaps I am too biased to write an objective review. In my opinion, however, I think this is one of the most gorgeous pieces of literature ever written.

I saw this performed live on the rooftop of a South Michigan Ave loft as the sun set over the west side and is started to rain. The little intertwined stories and metaphors and moments of beauty make the book a read that tastes tremendous on your tongue.

THE WARNING: yes, here is is. This is a prose poem. It's not a collection of short stories or a novel. It reads quite easily, but if you are turned off by that sort of thing, skip this book. There are moments of slightly inaccessible, albeit wonderful, language and it helps to know your history..

That said, if you love Chicago as I do, you will love Algren's City on the Make...

Nelson Algren expresses a vision of a city in Chicago: City on the Make like no other New York or Los Angeles had been envisioned. Chicago is shown as a city of two natures. Algren magnifies this duality of his town through the imagery and diction of his description of Chicago's physical appearance, historical figures and the divisions of the hustler and the square which show how this twofold nature creates Algren's ambiguous admiration for his city: Chicago.

I don't know how I missed Algren, but I had never heard of him before I picked this book up. I only bought it because of the title. The darker days of my own youth have made me skeptical of books dealing with alcoholism and addiction. They never seem to get it right. This one nails it, seemingly without effort. Unlike other books of the genre, this one does not romanticize the ugliness it deals with. Frankie Machine's life is a tour through poverty, loveless marriages, addictions and hopelessness. It is not exaggerated. This is what it's really like. Algren's realism and intelligence make this one of the finest novels I've ever read. The details are so vivid and accurate that one has to wonder how many demons Algren shares with his characters. The Man With The Golden Arm is simply fiction mirroring life. It presents a side of life that many of its readers will never experience first-hand. Of that, you will be grateful. A combination of poor choices, bad luck, and lack of opportunity has overwhelmed the characters so completely that most of them don't know that they are already dead. I am a writer...this is one of those books that will always keep me humble. For most, their greatest achievement of words will never come close to to Algren's harrowing tome. Do not read this while distracted. It requires your full attention. It's that rich, that brilliant. This is not just a book about morphine, booze & the ghetto....it is a book of suffering, pain, betrayal, neglect & spite. Mr. Algren has been graceful enough to supply the compassion that most of characters seem to lack.

The Man with the Golden Arm is a beautifully complex tale that explores the experiences of the poor and powerless in mid-century Chicago. Frankie Machine returns to his old neighborhood after a stint in prison, having kicked a heroin habit and dreaming of becoming a drummer in a nightclub band. But all the old opportunities and constraints that worked on him before -- pressing need for cash, his skill as a card dealer, guilt over his wife's disability, temptations of drugs and petty crime -- kick in again, and he is inexorably pulled back into old habits and behaviors he had hoped to resist. Some call this a 'dark' tale, but it isn't really: yes, Frankie and friends are stuck in precarious, marginalized circumstances without real power to change, yet their lives unfold in ways that entertain contradictions that people of all circumstances face, between hope and despair, struggle and defeat, trust and betrayal, compulsion and choice. Algren is a uniquely gifted writer; he takes you inside characters' heads to see their thoughts and dreams (often off-kilter), and their humanity feels real and immediate. This is the edition of the book to buy -- it has wonderful essays about Algren and his work.

The great Nelson Algren's powerful tale. A work of art. Chicago, down-and-outers struggling with their various demons. One of the finest of all novelists. Algren, as a human being, had heart, wit, intelligence...and it shows. Not many writers today can touch him, although I can think of one or two covering the same turf: trying to make sense out of this insanity called life: Charles Bukowski, George Orwell, Henry Miller, B. Traven (The Cottonpickers), Kirk Alex (Working the Hard Side of the Street), Dan Fante (Chump Change, Spitting Off Tall Buildings) et al. You might want to give N.A's Neon Wilderness a try as well, a terriric short story collection. Algren's books last because his words have meaning to us--and always will.

Written with furious urgency, sharp economy, and timeless resonance, Nelson Algren's Nonconformity: Writing on Writing is an often bleak, yet always sentient book-length essay on the role of artists, particularly writers, who work from, about, and for an American culture that doesn't value the significance of artistic contribution, and that actually rejects and fears artistic expression when it moves against the forces of pious consumerism, blind nationalism, and disconnected apathy. Back in Algren's day, those forces were personified by names like McCarthy and McCarran, Sheen and Oursler; today they're Rumsfeld and Ashcroft, Limbaugh and Savage. And the Red Scare of Algren's world had turned into today's "Arabic threat" that fosters needless suspicion and faith in puppet leaders who call for roundups of the innocent. Algren Bolsters his insights with a barrage of memorable quotes from the Masters: Dostoevsky, Twain, and most importantly, Fitzgerald--none of whom, it seems, ever worked in the comfort of societal/institutional trust and acceptance, no matter how well known they were. Will there ever be comfort for the writer? "A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is for armed robbery," Algren explains. There are many, many more forces working against the writer today, especially against the young and unknown: fewer venues to reach the respect of an audience, and a culture that would much rather spend its time in front of the television, at the movies, or on the internet--but rarely on moving works of complex, serious literature. No writers have ever had it easy, and if you're in for the long haul of lonely obscurity, this book is good company to keep. Algren is empowering. His thesis is louder, clearer, and more important than ever.

This book stalks sure footed through the dense thicket of modern American literature, with The Novel and Nelson Algren firmly at its center. It is at once entirely personal and, sonehow, universal at the same time. What it has to say about about writing evokes the kindred spirit shared by all great writiers, vastlty differing though thier style and temperments might be. Each exquisitely realized chapter is peppered with excerpts of their prose in such a way that it fairly leaps off the page, providing a critical mass of context and vibrancy to the very difficult subject of what it is that writers do and do best. Get it. Read it. Love it. I certainly did.

I've been writing for ten years and this book has become a bible for me. I planned on reading one chapter one night before going to bed, and instead stayed up until dawn reading it and thinking about what the author's compelling essays. It's the best book I've ever read about the art of writing and the responsibility of writers.

It used to be much easier to submit reviews. These days every company pretends like its website is the only one people will ever visit on the web. Gack.

I've read this book twice now. First in college for a literature class, and again 8 years later. Both times it depressed me. Granted, that is the book's purpose. To provide a realistic and tragic glimpse into the lives of some of America's least fortunate during the depression. Though it is interesting and well written, I can't say that I would tell my best friend to read it.

This book is about people who have nothing to lose, so they can afford to take chances.

It's funny, sad and provocative. Yes, I know that some parts have been lifted from "Neon Wilderness" but it works for me.

My advice to anyone who's read the book but not seen the movie that's "supposedly" based on this book: DON'T.

You will be disappointed. The story is not the same. It's so different from Algren's book that Algren himself didn't even attend the premiere.

If you haven't read this book and are a fan of stories about marganalized people, then by all means, read it.

It shows the "downtrodden" as complex and real people.

Don't be misled by the title. A walk on the wild side? Sounds like fun, hey? Well, you can walk the walk, but you can't go home again, or if you do, you may be a little the worse for wear. Algren is a poet of pain. Highly recommended.

Having read all of De Beauvoir's autobiographies, this book was disappointing. The content can only be described as a mere extension of 'Beloved Chicago Man' (again relating to her relationship with Nelson Algren). In the latter, the letters to Algren are immediatly captivating, but quickly become repetitive rather than developed and by the end seem embarrassingly girlish and naive leaving a strong feeling of voyeuristic intrusion. This latest publication is an unnecessary extension of Beloved Chicago Man.

To correct the reader from Brookline, this book is exactly the same as "Beloved Chicago Man"- it's the same book with different titles in the US and the UK. As the reviewers below state, this is a great window into the relationship between Algren & de Beauvoir, and shows the truth feelings of de Beauvoir.

This tome unites fascinating, ethereal elements of time and place with the more mundane features of long-distance love.

First, the unique bits of which only Simone de Beauvoir can honestly write: The intellectual scene of post-WWII Paris, firsthand knowledge of Camus and Sartre, a complex network of friendships mixing the communities of European intelligentsia, fascists, existentialists, writers, and actors. Then, of course, there is the head-over-heels love in which she found herself with Nelson Algren, noted American author, immediately upon making his acquaintance. All of these interesting facets add spice to this book.

Surprisingly, what truly makes this book unforgettable, impossible to put down, at times embarrassing in its candor and recognizable to the reader are its themes of commonality to everyone else on the planet. Anyone who has ever fallen in love, suffered instant infatuation for another, missed the touch of a far-away lover, or slogged through a long-distance relationship will relate/commiserate/understand/anticipate both the words and the feelings behind them.

Simone de Beauvoir wrote all of these letters to Nelson Algren in English (not her native French); happily, the misspellings and grammatical errors are preserved without correction. The reader will note progressive improvement in her English abilities as the correspondence lengthens and her relationship matures.

I believe all readers will find these pages touching, satisfying, and intriguing. Those of you who have experienced long-distance passion will enjoy the letters as well, but with the distinct pain of knowing the inevitable conclusion in advance.

In essence, this glorious book will convert you into a boxing enthusiast even though you're not.