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Algren : a life / Mary Wisniewski.

by Wisniewski, Mary.

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Chicago Review Press, 2017.

Algren, Nelson, 1909-1981.

Algren, Nelson, 1909-1981 -- Criticism and interpretation.

Novelists, American -- 20th century -- Biography.

Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography.

9781613735329 (hc.)

362 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-345) and index.

Childhood days -- College and the crash -- Prison and somebody in boots -- Marriage and the WPA -- Polonia and never come morning -- Polonia's revenge and Private Abraham -- Beloved local youth -- Golden years -- The walls begin to close -- The nonconformist -- Return of the native -- Good-bye to fiction -- Good-bye to Chicago -- Knitted backwards.

"A tireless champion of the downtrodden, Nelson Algren, one of the most celebrated writers of the 20th century, lived an outsider's life himself. He spent a month in prison as a young man for the theft of a typewriter; his involvement in Marxist groups earned him a lengthy FBI dossier; and he spent much of his life palling around with the sorts of drug addicts, prostitutes, and poor laborers who inspired and populated his novels and short stories. Most today know Algren as the radical, womanizing writer of The Man with the Golden Arm, which won the first National Book Award, in 1950, but reporter Mary Wisniewski offers a deeper portrait. Starting with his childhood in the City of Big Shoulders, Algren sheds new light on the writer's most momentous periods, from his on-again-off-again work for the WPA to his stint as an uninspired soldier in World War II to his long-distance affair with his most famous lover, Simone de Beauvoir, to the sense of community and acceptance Algren found in the artist colony of Sag Harbor before his death in 1981. Wisniewski unearths new details about the writer's life, work, personality, and habits and reveals a funny, sensitive, and romantic but sometimes exasperating, insecure, and self-destructive artist."--Provided by publisher.

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