Book Description
Ernest Hemingway once said of Nelson Algren's writing that "you should not read it if you cannot take a punch." The prose poem, Chicago: City on the Make, filled with language that swings and jabs and stuns, lives up to those words. This 50th anniversary edition is newly annotated with explanations for everything from slang to Chicagoans, famous and obscure, to what the Black Sox scandal was and why it mattered. More accessible than ever, this is, as Studs Terkel says, "the best book about Chicago."
"Algren's Chicago, a kind of American annex to Dante's inferno, is a nether world peopled by rat—faced hustlers and money—loving demons who crawl in the writer's brilliant, sordid, uncompromising and twisted imagination. . . . [This book] searches a city's heart and mind rather than its avenues and public buildings."—New York Times Book Review
"This short, crisp, fighting creed is both a social document and a love poem, a script in which a lover explains his city's recurring ruthlessness and latent power; in which an artist recognizes that these are portents not of death, but of life."—New York Herald Tribune
Nelson Algren (1909-1981) won the National Book Award in 1950 for The Man with the Golden Arm. His other works include Walk on the Wild Side, The Neon Wilderness, and Conversations with Nelson Algren, the last available from the University of Chicago Press. David Schmittgens teaches English at St. Ignatius College Prep in Chicago, Illinois. Bill Savage is a lecturer at Northwestern University and coeditor of the 50th Anniversary Critical Edition of The Man with the Golden Arm.
Customer Reviews:
Not Algren's Strongest Piece.......2007-01-19
For a great American writer like Algren and with his love of the city, one could expect more. Perhaps this sort of loose style (it has been called a prose poem) just wasn't his forte. The book starts off strong, but breaks into highly personal memories, and gets a little slow as he covers the same ground again and again. In short, it needed editing. Many of the references are so particular that they don't translate well and have aged poorly- Algren failed to find the universal like Whitman did.
Don't let this book turn you off to Algren's superb fiction writing. He remains a giant in American literature. This just wasn't his day.
Marvelous prose paean for the city by the lake.......2003-09-12
Although I have lived in Chicago for many years now, I am not a native Chicagoan, and I have to say that the attitudes and visions of Chicago that one finds in Nelson Algren's are not held by most of the people I have gotten to know well in Chicago. But, then, most of the people I know are also not native Chicagoans. The swagger, the love-hate, the cynicism, and the love and civic pride that manage to emerge despite the cynical pessimism are very definitely found in many of those I have come to know who were born and raised in the city.
Nelson Algren's Chicago was one that was more strictly American than it is today, less international, more Midwestern, more radical, less conventional. It is a Chicago that in many ways no longer exists. This can be felt in the book's narrative voice. Algren writes in a prose that sounds like Carl Sandburg drenched in Baudelaire, and the various sections of the book sound more than anything like the kind of stuff that Baudelaire would have written had he strolled the streets of Chicago rather than Paris. The prose is always unique, frequently beautiful, oftentimes stunning. There are definitely times that it will be all but impenetrable to someone not well schooled in Chicago's geography and its history. If one really wanted to get all the references and historical citations, one should consider reading Donald Miller's CITY OF THE CENTURY, which will clue one in on most of the 19th century and more obscure references.
But in a sense, being able to identify all the names and places isn't all that crucial. The heart of the book is intelligible regardless. An essential literary work about one of the world's great cities, by one of its great writers.
Youýdýve had to been there........2003-05-25
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.
Gorgeous - but WARNING: Prose Poem.......2003-03-18
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...
Algren saw it all..........2000-03-07
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.
Product Description
His fifth book. Homage to his adopted city.
Book Description
They met in 1949 when Art Shay was a reporter for
Life. Shay followed Nelson Algren around with a camera, gathering pictures for a photo-essay piece he was pitching to the magazine.
Life didn't pick up the article, but Shay and Algren became fast friends. Algren gave Shay's camera entrance into the back-alley world of Division Street, and Shay captured Algren's poetry on film. They were masters chronicling the same patch of ground with different tools.
Chicago's Nelson Algren is the compilation of hundreds of photos-many recently discovered and published here for the first time-of Nelson Algren over the course of a decade and a deeply moving homage to the writer and his city.
Read Algren and you'll see Shay's pictures; look at Shay's photos and you'll hear Algren's words.
After flying twenty-nine combat missions in World War II,
Art Shay joined
Life magazine as a staff reporter, before leaving to become one of America's leading photojournalists. His pictures regularly appeared in
TIME, Fortune, the
The Saturday Evening Post, Forbes, Business Week, PARADE, The New York Times Magazine, and more than three hundred books.
Customer Reviews:
Fabulous .......2007-09-24
Art Shay's latest work will certainly contribute to his status as an American Icon. Every time I look through the book I delight in finding something new. This book would make a great gift for Nelson Algren and Chicago fans alike.
Book Description
A reissue of a classic American novel, with an introduction by Kurt Vonnegut, Nelson Algren's second novel, originally published in 1942, tells the story of Bruno Bicek, a tough from Chicago's Northwest Side, and Steffi, the woman who shares his dream while living his nightmare. "An unusual book and a brilliant book." -- The New York Times
Customer Reviews:
Frank and Brutal with a sense of Deja-Vu.......2007-08-15
Bruno 'Lefty' Bicek is a Polak on the Polak side of Division Street. He has day dreams of being admired; a hero in baseball or boxing. He daydreams of beating cheating opponents by playing clean; winning through skill alone. And he has his girl, Steffi R.
But with corruption everywhere,the police able to pick up and put away on a whim, and the need to be 'regular' with the gang members sees Lefty end up as all Division Street hoods do. Life beat out of them,dreams staying daydreams. Lefty loses his soul when he does nothing to stop Steffi being gang raped by the guys.He needed to keep 'regular'.
As ever, Algren never sanatises or justifies or explains. Its just written how it is, and 'Never Come Morning' is perhaps his most frank portrayal. It has few-if any-of the humour that creeps in his other novels.
Having read 'The Man With The Golden Arm', 'Walk on the Wild Side' 'Neon Wilderness' and now 'Never Come Morning' I know two things. First, Algren is a remarkable and socially observent writter. Second, he basically just writes the same story over and over with slightly different takes; from slightly different angles.
All the same things were present in 'Never Come..' as in the other Algrens I've read. The line up;Lefty's reasoning to the Captain as to why his gang had shaved heads came from a short story in 'Neon Wilderness' the heists are slight variations, the boxing accounts are the same etc etc.
This doesn't make Algren anything other than what he is-a great (Thomas Wolfe just wrote 'Look Homeward Angel' over and over again with slight variations and nobody disputes his greatness) it just means that his scope is limited, and 'Neon Wilderness' would perhaps be all you ever need to read to get the whole Algren repartee.
But for all that-and even though Algrens Chicago is long since dead-this is great reading
Gritty americana from a forgotten master.......2006-12-02
Never come morning is a exquisite novel of pain and dark urban reality. What makes Algren a better writer than so many others who work in this mileiu is that he doesn't moralize or create one-dimensional heroes. His characters pull you in because they have the complexity and tragic failings of real people. The imagery walks the line between the surreal and the actual, dreams interwoven with the brutal waking reality of inner-city poverty. This book alone puts Algren, who never got much fame and certainly not fortune for his work, on the map of great American writers.
Gritty, but hollow novel about a thug and his life.........2004-08-31
From previous reviews, I got the idea that "Never come Morning" would be gritty, and a masterpiece. Well, that's not the case. It is quite gritty, with EVERYONE a crook, from a Polish barber who is also a pimp, from the one-eyed police detective. The story follows Bruno, a thug who dreams of well..being the Great White Hope. Of course, we know he's a thug, and will always be nothing but a thug. Bruno and his thuggish friends talk in a Chicago dialect that grates on your nerves. Algren is not Mark Twain, so it further alienates the reader when you want to hear English you can recognize. I felt zero sypathy for Bruno's predicament, and I felt sick that Steffi would see anything in this character.
Catcher In The Rye for the rest of us.......2003-10-12
I noticed in another customer review of this book that two key pieces of plot information are provided in the review itself. That is something no reviewer should ever do. Don't let that blemish keep you from buying this remarkable book. Never Come Morning is one of the finest novels you will ever read. This is Catcher In The Rye for the rest of us, for everyone who grew up more worldy than Holden Caufield.
Algren opens a window on Chicago's ethnic, inner city streets. The sights, sounds, smells, words and music of Chicago in the late 1940's are right there in front of you. He then points his highly accurate lens on his character's hearts, minds, concerns, fears, worries, struggles, hopes & dreams.
Never Come Morning is a lyrical, poetic work of fiction that's nonetheless so realistic it could have been yanked straight from the headlines of any city's newspapers, in any era, from the 1940's straight through to 2004. The novel describes the lives of several teenagers living on Chicago's Near Northwest side, in the late 1940's. It is realistic yet never exploitive, heart-wrenching yet never heavy handed.
Those familar with Chicago neighborhoods will delight in seeing The Triangle, Riverview, Humboldt Park, Division Street, Chicago Avenue, Western Avenue, Milwaukee Avenue, Oak Street Beach and Logan Square referenced in print. As El trains fly overhead - some down tracks still with us and some down tracks long-gone - you will be astounded at how well this writer has captured the Chicago of your youth.
Those familar with Chicago characters like the ones in this novel (Bruno Bicek, Steffi Rostenkowski, Catfoot Nowagrodski, Fingers Idzikowski, Fireball Kodadek, Bibleback Watrobinski, Casey Benkowski, Momma Tomek and The Barber) will have to put the book down and take a walk outside. The memories that come flooding back will be too STRONG, and too REAL.
Anyone who's lived in a neighborhood where kids run the nighttime streets, anyone who's ever hung out on a corner, tossed dice against a warehouse wall, walked a freight yard, played ball for a Park District League, been to Riverview, swam at Oak Street or dated a girl from the neighborhood will be shocked from the sheer force of recognition this amazing novel provides.
Yet even those who've never set foot in Chicago will be spellbound by this remarkable, poetic novel about tough kids growing up under tough conditions in a tough town. A must read for anyone interested in American Realism, and/or fiction carved from real life.
Dark and gritty. A work of transition........2000-10-07
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.
Book Description
The stories in The Neon Wilderness established Algren in the pantheon of American writers and formed the vein that he mined for all his subsequent novels and stories. Included are "A Bottle of Milk for Mother," about a youth being cornered for a murder, "The Face on the Barroom Floor," in which a legless man nearly pummels someone to death, and "So Help Me," Algren's first published story. "Algren's short stories are now generally acknowledged to be literary triumphs." — The New York Times
Customer Reviews:
"Under any old moon at all.".......2007-09-16
I haven't read any Algren before The Neon Wilderness & was moved to do so by my recent visit to Chicago. I've been told that his stories are the place to begin. I have to confess that before this I mostly knew Algren as de Beauvoir's Lewis Brogan in The Mandarins.
It took me a little while to warm up to the stories. That's at least a little bit because he led with the story which, in my opinion, is the weakest in the book: "the captain has bad dreams". The stories do get better from there, so persevere.
All of the stories are gritty. There is not a lot of hope in his world. Life is mean, and times are hard. It sounds like a cliche, but not the way Algren writes it. He is deservedly considered a master of the short story form. I particularly liked "poor man's pennies" and "the brothers' house". I was less enchanted with the boxing stories. But, honestly, that's probably me and not Algren-- still too much of a girl to be fascinated with fighting.
Recommended, particularly if you are interested in the short story.
The Definitive Algren Book.......2007-08-18
If you only have time to read one Algren book and want to know what he is all about, then 'Neon Wilderness' is the tome to get.
It acts as a template for all Algrens repartee; life on Division street, the pimps, the hustlers, the corruption, the prostitutes. Life for the people whom the American dream is pure illusion. They survive in a world of crime by crime, yet they're always the ones who get punished;always the games biggest losers.
Many of the stories in 'Neon Wilderness' have appeared either slightly altered or in elongated form in Algrens other works. The line ups in the jail feature everywhere in Algrens novels.'Face on the Barroom Floor' 'Bottle of milk for Mother' in 'Walk on the Wild Side' and 'Never come Morning'
Algren just basically wrote the same novels over and over with slightly different takes;sometimes humouress, sometimes bleak. He wrote about the people and life he knew in his Chicago.
Read this and you will have Algren in a nutshell. BUt its well worth catching his other works-despite the feeling of deja-vu they give you!
Great stories from a great writer........2007-07-09
Most people do not know who Nelson Algren is. Until a few months ago I didn't either. This is a shame. He is possibly the best writer from the 20th century. These stories are mainly about fictional boxers from chicago,world war 2 stories, or of people in jail. There are a few exceptions as well. Some of these stories come almost directly out of his novels, but even if you have read the novels they are still worth the read.
CLASSIC IS RIGHT!.......2002-10-30
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.
The Neon Wilderness.......2001-01-24
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.
Average customer rating:
- Exactly the same as "Transatlantic Love Affair"
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Beloved Chicago Man: Letters to Nelson Algren, 1947-1964
Simone de Beauvoir
Manufacturer: Trafalgar Square
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
20th Century
| British
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
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Beauvoir, Simone de
| ( B )
| Authors, A-Z
| Literature & Fiction
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ASIN: 0575065907 |
Customer Reviews:
Exactly the same as "Transatlantic Love Affair".......2002-01-23
This a great book, which really shows the true character of Simone de Beauvoir. See the many positive reviews of "A Transatlantic Love Affair"- it is the same book. "Beloved Chicago Man" is merely the title by this British publisher. Don't get both!
Average customer rating:
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NELSON ALGREN'S CHICAGO (Visions of Illinois)
Arthur Shay
Manufacturer: University of Illinois Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Architecture
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Reference
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General
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General
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Midwest
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ASIN: 025201586X |
Customer Reviews:
Extracts from this book at MyCounsel.Com.......2001-03-03
At MyCounsel.com there is a lot of information on patents, much of which came from this book. It's a good place to review the book before buying.
Product Description
This handy reference is a complete, easy-to-understand and up-to-date source of answers to the questions all businesses and individuals have about copyrights. Coverage includes what can and cannot be protected, duration and scope of protection, notice and registration, how to avoid and evaluate infringement, and how copyrights are used and exploited in the marketplace. This is the definitive handbook for all photographers looking to understand and benefit from copyrighting their work.
Average customer rating:
- The reader friendly guide to protecting copyrights
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The Copyright Guide: A Friendly Guide to Protecting and Profiting from Copyrights, revised edition
Lee Wilson
Manufacturer: Watson-Guptill Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Reference
| Music
| Entertainment
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General
| Business & Investing
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General
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General
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General
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General
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Patent, Trademark & Copyright
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Practical Guides
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General
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ASIN: 1581150679 |
Book Description
This prized legal companion is the definitive handbook for artists, writers, musicians, software designers, photographers, and anyone else who creates, acquires, or exploits copyrights in their business or personal creative activities. Updated to reflect recent changes in U.S. copyright law, this revised edition states fully: what can and cannot be protected under current laws; duration and scope of protection; infringement and how to avoid it; and other pertinent issues. The author, an experienced attorney, takes readers through the ins and outs of copyrights in a logical, progressive fashion, making a complex subject easy to understand. Another valuable feature is the inclusion of several standard form agreements that alone are worth more than the price of the book.
Customer Reviews:
The reader friendly guide to protecting copyrights.......2001-03-18
This reader friendly guide to protecting and profiting from copyrights includes legal ramifications of infringement charges, how to obtain permissions, and other topics commonly left out from copyright guides. The focus on law applications and case history examples makes it easy for a range of users to gain the basic insights they need.
Average customer rating:
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The Trademark Guide: A Friendly Handbook for Protecting and Profiting from Trademarks
Lee Wilson
Manufacturer: Allworth Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Marketing & Sales
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General
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ASIN: 1880559595 |
Books:
- Clickart Christian Publishing Suite III
- Collecting Picture Postcards
- Compute's Quick & Easy Guide to Harvard Graphics (Quick start and easy reference)
- Creative Solutions for Unusual Projects: Includes Templates, Formats, Guidelines
- Dance in Cambodia (Images of Asia)
- Decorative Arts 1900s & 1910s (Varia)
- Deep Dimensions
- DesignSense For Presentations
- Diseno de Periodicos. Sistema y Metodo
- Documenta 12 Magazine No. 2 2007: Life!
Books Index
Books Home
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- Spanish All Talk Basic Language Course
Chicago Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)
The Man With the Golden Arm
The Neon Wilderness
A Walk on the Wild Side: A Novel
Never a City So Real: A Walk in Chicago (Crown Journeys)
