Algren

by Mary Wisniewski

  “entitled”: Algren, in Irwin Saltz, “Nelson Algren on the Make,” Chicagoland, May 1970.

  “lifting against the sky”: Morris Markey, quoted in Pierce, As Others See Chicago, 504.

  “Idle, depressed, hungry”: Ellis, Nation in Torment, 250.

  “the entire course”: Algren, appendix to Noncomformity: Writing on Writing, 116.

  “Oh, the old man”: Donohue and Algren, Conversations, 11.

  “the final solution”: Ellis, Nation in Torment, 230.

  “And what, may I ask”: A. A. Dornfeld, Hello Sweetheart, Get Me Rewrite! The Story of the City News Bureau of Chicago (Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1988), 93.

  “I’ll phone you”: Algren, Last Carousel, 328.

  “To other applicants”: Ibid.

  “Well, sit down”: Donohue and Algren, Conversations, 31.

  “I just wanted you”: Cox and Chatterton, Nelson Algren, 20.

  “I would have been very happy”: Algren, quoted in Nelson Algren: Der Mann mit dem goldenen Arm, directed by Wolf Wondratschek, in the documentary Nelson Algren: The End Is Nothing, the Road Is All. “Give me a ride”: Ellis, Nation in Torment, 288.

  “There were whole families”: Richard Wormser, Hoboes: Wandering in America, 1870–1940 (New York: Walker, 1994), 111.

  “We never use language”: Donohue and Algren, Conversations, 48.

  “Beware Beaumont”: Cox and Chatterton, Nelson Algren, 22.

  “Ah’m not no nigger”: Algren, Somebody in Boots, 122.

  “It is so cold”: Algren, “Lest the Trap Door Click,” in Bettina Drew, The Texas Stories of Nelson Algren, 7.

  “Heed the housewife’s woes”: Algren, Walk on the Wild Side, 121.

  “This is God’s country”: Hondo, Texas, website, www.hondo-tx.org; and “Hondo, Texas,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hondo,_Texas.

  “this lad here got”: Algren, preface to Somebody in Boots (1965), 6.

  “Se habla espanol”: Ibid., 5.

  “till I was nearly blind”: Algren, interview, in Cowley, Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, 218.

  “I felt that one of the carnies”: Cox and Chatterton, Nelson Algren, 23.

  “I wasn’t an editorial writer”: Ibid., 23.

  “I guess I did”: Algren, interview by Robert Perlongo, Chicago Review, 1957.

  “All these scenes”: Donohue and Algren, Conversations, 55.

  “bard of the stumblebum”: Leslie Fiedler, “The Noble Savages of Skid Row,” Reporter, July 12, 1956.

  “Like Christ, as we know”: Kurt Vonnegut, 1986 introduction to Algren, Never Come Morning (1996), xx.

  CHAPTER 3: PRISON AND SOMEBODY IN BOOTS

  “Jew kid”: Algren, “So Help Me,” in Texas Stories, 18.

  “We’re cut apart!”: Ibid., 28.

  “He didn’t want to operate”: David Peltz, interview by author, 2004.

  “Are you planning a novel”: And following dialogue were taken from an autobiographical fragment in Algren’s archive at the Ohio State University.

  “The son of a bitch”: Art Shay, interview by author, 2004.

  “You had to know”: Saltz, “Algren on the Make.”

  “The Mississippi”: Algren, notebook, OSU libraries.

  “the moonlight lay”: Ibid.

  “The miners came”: Old song, various sources, used at the start of Algren, Somebody in Boots.

  “Angel of the Americas”: Algren, autobiographical fragment, OSU libraries.

  “lovely, homesick sight”: Cox and Chatterton, Nelson Algren, 23.

  “a big bosomy”: Algren, autobiographical fragment, OSU libraries.

  “I began telling”: Ibid.

  “Yes, Nelson, slums”: “Milton” (no last name) to Algren, October 15, 1933, OSU libraries.

  “I believe I told them”: Algren to William Targ, October 8, year unknown, possibly 1964, OSU libraries.

  “keep making it longer”: Algren, interview, in Cowley, Writers at Work, 215.

  “I wanted a typewriter”: Statement to Brewster County sheriff, from the FBI file on Algren, National Archives.

  “Before a month”: Algren, Somebody in Boots, 205.

  “on account of ”: Ibid., 129.

  “Men found guilty”: Rules of court found in OSU libraries.

  “I didn’t particularly”: Donohue and Algren, Conversations, 42.

  “Dear Mr. Henle”: Algren, notebook, OSU libraries.

  “There was an Indian maid”: Ibid.

  “One terror”: Algren, notebook, OSU libraries.

  “a formal and conventional”: Donohue and Algren, Conversations, 45.

  “ankle around”: Jack Conroy to Algren, March 16, 1934, OSU libraries.

  “The Chicago John Reed Club”: Description of the Chicago branch by Richard Wright in Richard Crossman, ed., The God That Failed (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1949), 116.

  “the Chicago Post Office school”: Wixson, Worker-Writer in America: Jack Conroy and the Tradition of Midwestern Literary Radicalism, 1898–1990, 361.

  “aid in the building”: Untitled clip, Left Front, OSU libraries.

  “She didn’t need”: Algren to Ann Esch, Chicago Tribune, June 18, 1972.

  “nude dancers, wind-tunnels”: Algren, Somebody in Boots, 235.

  “never heard an abler”: Rowley, Richard Wright: His Life and Times, 89.

  “an uneven novel”: Algren, 1963 preface to Somebody in Boots, 9.

  “schoolboy poetry”: Algren, autobiographical fragment, OSU libraries.

  “Final Descendant”: Algren, preface to Somebody in Boots, 8.

  “left his health”: Algren, Somebody in Boots, 15.

  “the damned feeling”: Ibid., 12.

  “Of the sweet purple clover”: Ibid., 15.

  “a common bush”: Ibid., 20–21.

  “she must have just slipped”: Ibid., 29.

  “There were only”: Ibid., 55.

  “Reckon the wrongest”: Ibid., 69.

  “hay-bag”: Ibid., 184.

  “so black he looks”: Ibid., 247.

  “as one upon whom”: Ibid., 70.

  “that awkward strength”: Mike Royko, quoted on the back of the Thunder’s Mouth Press edition of Somebody in Boots.

  CHAPTER 4: MARRIAGE AND THE WPA

  “We poke along”: Taylor, Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America, 12.

  “grim … terrible vividness”: Edith Walton, review of Somebody in Boots, New York Sun, April 6, 1935.

  The influential H. W. Boynton: H. W. Boynton, “Somebody in Boots and Other Recent Works,” New York Times Book Review, April 7, 1935.

  “parable of the down-and-outs”: Review of Somebody in Boots, London Daily Herald, September 19, 1935.

  “truly shattering”: Recommended books, Constable, August 1935.

  “It is a novel for sadists”: Review of Somebody in Boots, Guardian (Manchester), September 24, 1935.

  “kept me living”: Algren, interview by Joe Pollack, St. Louis Globe Democrat, July 22, 1959.

  “We write for”: Wixson, Worker-Writer, 395.

  “For which, he will”: James T. Farrell diary entry, November 14, 1937, quoted in Robert K. Landers, An Honest Writer: The Life and Times of James T. Farrell (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2004), 207.

  “barely conscious”: Drew, Nelson Algren: A Life on the Wild Side, 88.

  “fancied-up mediums”: Nelson to Amanda Algren, no date but probably 1942 because of Never Come Morning reference, OSU libraries.

  “fine lad”: Hoyte D. Kline to Algren, November 11, 1935, Jack Conroy Collection at Newberry Library.

  “finger by finger”: Algren to Amanda Algren, undated but sometime in 1955, OSU libraries.

  “She was just there”: Shay, interview by author.

  Author’s note: Some of the details of Amanda and Nelson’s courtship, including their conversations by the lake, were taken from Drew, Nelson Algren, 94. The detail of people sleeping on the l
akefront is from various Chicago historical sources. Amanda’s family background is from census records.

  “world had gotten”: Nelson to Amanda Algren, May 4, 1943, OSU libraries.

  “simply distracting”: Cox and Chatterton, Nelson Algren, 26.

  “beaming, gleaming”: Nelson to Amanda Algren, June 1946, OSU libraries.

  “Ain’t got no Pulitizare”: Bud Fallon, quoted in Wixson, Worker-Writer, 434.

  “lusty, smoky and virile”: Federal Writers’ Project, The WPA Guide to Illinois, 310. The section on East St. Louis could have been written by Algren or Conroy.

  “I feel I am of them”: Walt Whitman, “You Felons on Trial in Courts,” in Leaves of Grass (New York: New American Library, 1980), 306.

  “down my way”: Algren, Never Come Morning (1996), 196.

  “I believe he was”: Cox and Chatterton, Nelson Algren, 87.

  “hold up a mirror”: Taylor, Soul of a People, 5.

  “ugly duckling”: Neil Harris and Michael Conzen, introduction to Federal Writers’ Project, WPA Guide to Illinois, xvii.

  “We Poke Along”: Taylor, Soul of a People, 12.

  “Whistle, Piss and Argue:” Ibid.

  “pencil leaners”: Ibid.

  “written by some incredibly lazy”: John Cheever, quoted in Douglas Brinkley, “Unmasking Writers of the W.P.A.,” New York Times, August 2, 2003.

  “Had it not been”: Taylor, Soul, 9.

  “one of the noblest”: W. H. Auden, quoted in Brinkley, “Unmasking Writers.”

  “We were as ill-assorted”: Taylor, Soul, 29.

  “any kind of articulation”: David Peltz, interview by author.

  “I still had”: Ellis, Nation in Torment, 512.

  “totally lost control”: David Peltz, interview by author.

  “He never knew”: Ibid.

  “Sometimes if you let them”: Bessie Jaffey, Federal Writers’ Project staff conference notes, July 13, 1939, Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/resource/wpalh0.07020105/?sp=5.

  “What do you want”: Taylor, Soul, 62.

  “I rather looked up to them”: Atlas, Bellow: A Biography, 64.

  “It gave me leisure”: The New Deal for Artists, directed by Schulz-Keil, 1976, included in End Is Nothing.

  “a well educated young fellow”: Federal Writers’ Project (Illinois), Galena Guide, 20.

  “acres of prairie”: Ibid., 33.

  “Fever river”: Ibid., 38.

  “Galena knew the meaning”: Ibid., 40.

  “you could knock”: Algren, America Eats, 10.

  “a closely guarded secret”: Ibid., 35.

  “Whiskey by the barrel”: Ibid., 20.

  “Hello boys”: Ibid., 46.

  “those who”: Wixson, Worker-Writer, 442.

  “Politically, speaking”: Algren to Howard Rushmore, July 30 (no year), Rushmore told the FBI it was in 1937, OSU libraries.

  “very distressing rumors”: Franklin Folsom to Algren, May 24, 1938, OSU libraries.

  “cleared on the ground”: Algren FBI file, National Archives.

  “In those days”: David Peltz, interview by author.

  “conniving, bigoted”: Wallie Wharton to Jack Conroy, December 22, 1939, Wixson, Worker-Writer, 444.

  “delivered a stern lecture”: Wixson, Worker-Writer, 443.

  “The books were certainly”: Stuart McCarrell, interview by Denis Muellen, End Is Nothing.

  “Russian stoolpigeons”: Truth, May–June 1940, from a scrapbook in the OSU libraries.

  “My old Friend”: Rowley, Richard Wright, 201.

  “You’ve done a very”: Algren to Richard Wright, quoted in David A. Taylor, “Literary Cubs, Canceling Out Each Other’s Reticence,” American Scholar (Spring 2009).

  “big buildup … If they take”: Richard Wright to Algren, May 21, 1940, OSU libraries.

  “Trouble and tribulation”: Algren to Wright, quoted in Taylor, “Literary Cubs.”

  CHAPTER 5: POLONIA AND NEVER COME MORNING

  “had a tremendous”: David Peltz, interview by author.

  “one-man campaign”: This is Algren’s description at the beginning of his notes on the Syph Patrol, from the OSU libraries. The quotes from his research come from these notes.

  “poor, trembling”: Wixson, Worker-Writer, 448.

  “But so many people”: Algren, interview, Fling, January 1963.

  Quotes from Algren’s Syph Patrol notes come from the OSU libraries.

  “were nearly the only ones”: William G. Hundley obituary, Washington Post, June 14, 2006.

  “It is requested”: John Edgar Hoover to the special agent in charge in New York, October 26, 1940, Algren FBI file, National Archives.

  “Scandinavian … blonde”: H. E. Sackett to J. Edgar Hoover, December 10, 1940, Algren FBI file, National Archives.

  “It’s hard to die”: Algren, autobiographical fragment, OSU libraries.

  “They saw his right”: Algren, Last Carousel, 317.

  “so the son knew that”: Ibid.

  “I think some plot”: Richard Wright to Algren, September 7, 1940, OSU libraries.

  “great integrity”: Edward Aswell to Algren, November 26, 1941, OSU libraries.

  “night would be”: Algren, Never Come Morning (1996), 223.

  “I got it coming”: “Killer of Four Put to Death in Electric Chair,” Chicago

  Tribune, January 17, 1942.

  “Snapping his bubble gum”: “Crime: Tough Guy,” Time, July 14, 1941.

  “Of course the second”: William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (Champaign: University of Illinois Press 1996), 259.

  “If they had stayed”: Algren, Never Come Morning (1996), 16.

  “Life is just that way”: Clifford R. Shaw, The Jackroller: A Delinquent Boy’s Own Story (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 161.

  “It is a game”: Quoted in Century, Barney Ross: The Life of a Jewish Fighter, 20.

  “I felt that”: Algren, preface to Never Come Morning (1996), xv.

  “too old to understand”: Algren, Never Come Morning (1996), 3.

  “a ceaseless series”: Ibid., 31.

  “Knew I’d never get”: Ibid., 284.

  “forever in some degrading posture”: Ibid., 223.

  “no guts”: Ibid., 246.

  “It’s just like”: Ibid., 181.

  “reluctant to admit”: Richard Wright, introduction to Algren, Never Come Morning, 1st ed., x.

  “Algren has his own”: John Chamberlain, review of Never Come Morning, New York Times, undated clip, OSU libraries.

  “knockout”: Benjamin Appel, review of Never Come Morning, Saturday Review of Literature, April 18, 1942.

  “powerful and important”: James T. Farrell to Edward Aswell, quoted by Aswell in a letter to Algren, May 12, 1942, OSU libraries.

  “as fine and good”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, July 8, 1942, quoted in Drew, Nelson Algren, 143.

  “hasn’t a dull or useless”: Martha Gellhorn Hemingway to Algren, July 11, 1942, OSU libraries.

  CHAPTER 6: POLONIA’S REVENGE, AND ALGREN IN THE ARMY

  “For some weeks”: Polish Roman Catholic Union of America to Mayor Edward J. Kelly, May 12, 1942, Chicago Public Library archives.

  “most vicious attack”: Resolution dated May 29, 1942, by the Polish American Council, signed by President Leon T. Walkowicz, Secretary Joseph F. Manka, and Treasurer Frank J. Tomczak, from Algren FBI file, National Archives.

  “filthy book”: Bernice Eichler to Carl B. Roden, July 22, 1942, Chicago Public Library archives.

  “the book has solely”: Ibid.

  “misjudged the intention”: Edward Aswell to John Olejniczak, June 3, 1942, OSU libraries.

  “On that score”: Edward Aswell to Algren, June 4, 1942, OSU libraries.

  “There was the sense”: Dominic Pacyga, interview by author, 2015.

  “preferred that he write”: Mike Royko, “Algren’s Golden Pen,” Chicago Sun-
Times, May 13, 1981, reprinted in Royko, The Best of Mike Royko: One More Time, 148.

  “[Algren] depicted an entire”: Thomas Napierkowski, professor of English literature at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, interview by author, 2015.

  “Roden’s philosophy”: Morag Walsh, senior archival specialist, Special Collections and Preservation Division, Chicago Public Library, e-mail message to author. Information about the library’s purchasing policy comes from Walsh and from an exhibit about the library from 1995, which included an informational label that the library received at least twenty requests to withhold the book from circulation. The label said that the library did not buy the book immediately since it was not judged to be of sufficient interest or significance. The fact that the library bought Never Come Morning in 1943, as well as subsequent Algren books in the years in which they were published, is recorded in the library’s Book Bulletin periodical.

  “He smote the sledded”: William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 1, scene 1, quoted in Algren, preface to Never Come Morning (1962), xiii.

  “If you’ve got”: Algren, preface to Never Come Morning (1962), xiv.

  “It is necessary only”: The following quotations are from Algren, “Do It the Hard Way,” in Entrapment and Other Writings, 69–72.

  “How did you get”: Algren, Nonconformity, 55–56.

  “in your free time”: History of the 125th Evacuation Unit, pamphlet, OSU libraries.

  “sullen”: First Sgt. Henry F. Tadday, undated report but apparently connected with following Langdon report, National Archives at St. Louis, National Personnel Records Center.

  “This soldier”: Capt. Frank M. Langdon, report dated February 17, 1944, National Archives at St. Louis, National Personnel Records Center.

  “I wanted to kill”: Donohue and Algren, Conversations, 116.

  “I lost a good outfit”: Algren to Jack Conroy, September 29, 1944, Newberry Library archives.

  “Of course”: Donohue and Algren, Conversations, 69.

  “bottle of grape juice”: Algren to Jack Conroy, February 27, 1945, OSU libraries.

  “Our war was with”: Algren, “The Heroes,” in The Neon Wilderness, 267.

  “a workers’ city”: Algren, “He Couldn’t Boogie-Woogie Worth a Damn,” in Neon Wilderness, 97.

  “Pick it up, Joe”: Algren, interview, in Cowley, Writers at Work, 210.