Never A Lovely So Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren
February 18, 2025 8:31 AM - Subscribe
For a time, Nelson Algren was America's most famous author, lauded by the likes of Richard Wright and Ernest Hemingway. But at the height of his career, he abandoned fiction and fell into obscurity. Colin Asher's sublime biography of Algren unravels the enigma of his disappearance, explores the richness of his novels and nonfiction writing, and explains how a rash creative decision may have led his enemies to denounce him to the FBI during the Red Scare.
From Vol1Brooklyn.com:
"The other day at the coffee shop, a young woman asked me what I was reading. When I told her it was a new biography of Nelson Algren, she drew a blank. It wasn’t until I mentioned Algren’s long affair with Simone de Beauvoir that her face lit up with recognition. This woman is well-read and has lived in Chicago a few years, but she’d never heard of arguably the city’s greatest chronicler. And she’s not alone. Though Algren won the very first National Book Award in 1950, and was considered a top tier writer for a decade or so thereafter, he’s rarely mentioned in the same breath as Hemingway or Faulkner anymore. I’m hoping that Colin Asher’s definitive portrait of the man might change that. "
From the book itself:
' "..Nelson's legacy soon became warped by misunderstandings and inaccuracies. Though no one close to Nelson ever claimed he drank heavily, it became and accepted fact after his death that he had been an alcoholic-- and though it seems Nelson only gambled problematically during two distinct periods of his life, it has long been understood that he lost everything he earned playing cards. Nelson maintained many of his friendships for decades, but people now say he was a loner who burned every bridge he crossed. And though Nelson's work was praised and admired by all the literary greats of his day, it is now most associated with the verdicts of the Red Scare-era critics who dismissed his as the "bard of the stumblebum." '
From Vol1Brooklyn.com:
"The other day at the coffee shop, a young woman asked me what I was reading. When I told her it was a new biography of Nelson Algren, she drew a blank. It wasn’t until I mentioned Algren’s long affair with Simone de Beauvoir that her face lit up with recognition. This woman is well-read and has lived in Chicago a few years, but she’d never heard of arguably the city’s greatest chronicler. And she’s not alone. Though Algren won the very first National Book Award in 1950, and was considered a top tier writer for a decade or so thereafter, he’s rarely mentioned in the same breath as Hemingway or Faulkner anymore. I’m hoping that Colin Asher’s definitive portrait of the man might change that. "
From the book itself:
' "..Nelson's legacy soon became warped by misunderstandings and inaccuracies. Though no one close to Nelson ever claimed he drank heavily, it became and accepted fact after his death that he had been an alcoholic-- and though it seems Nelson only gambled problematically during two distinct periods of his life, it has long been understood that he lost everything he earned playing cards. Nelson maintained many of his friendships for decades, but people now say he was a loner who burned every bridge he crossed. And though Nelson's work was praised and admired by all the literary greats of his day, it is now most associated with the verdicts of the Red Scare-era critics who dismissed his as the "bard of the stumblebum." '
NYT review [from 2019]
The first biography of Algren was published in 1989 — too soon after his death for reconsideration of a novelist whose emphasis on the unfortunate was then deeply at odds with American culture. Another biography, published in October 2016, appeared in the run-up to Donald Trump’s election as president. The timing of Asher’s book, by contrast, is fortuitous, because many Americans are now preoccupied by economic and class disparities in ways not seen since the Depression. Asher also obtained access to a virtually unredacted copy of Algren’s lengthy F.B.I. file.
posted by chavenet at 6:07 AM on February 20 [1 favorite]
The first biography of Algren was published in 1989 — too soon after his death for reconsideration of a novelist whose emphasis on the unfortunate was then deeply at odds with American culture. Another biography, published in October 2016, appeared in the run-up to Donald Trump’s election as president. The timing of Asher’s book, by contrast, is fortuitous, because many Americans are now preoccupied by economic and class disparities in ways not seen since the Depression. Asher also obtained access to a virtually unredacted copy of Algren’s lengthy F.B.I. file.
posted by chavenet at 6:07 AM on February 20 [1 favorite]
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Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak star in a screen adaptation of Algren's The Man With the Golden Arm.
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 12:44 PM on February 18 [2 favorites]