-thumb-200x248-19552.jpg "Nelson Algren: 'I submit that literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by a conscience in touch with humanity.'")
“The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man.” — Nelson Algren
He would have been 102 today. Algren was the author of more than a dozen books. Born on March 28, 1909, in Detroit, he lived in Chicago for most of his life. In 1975, he left Chicago for New Jersey, then moved to Sag Harbor, N.Y., where he died on May 9, 1981, and where he is buried. I’m betting his two best-known novels — The Man With the Golden Arm and A Walk on the Wild Side — will last longer than any of the novels by Mailer, Vidal, Updike, Cheever, Kerouac, Vonnegut, Pynchon, DeLillo, Roth, Bellow, Doctorow, or Bukowski.
Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude
This blog published under a Creative Commons license
an ArtsJournal blog
OK, OK, I just ordered both books, expediting the shipping in advance of a long plane trip I’m taking. I can only resist for so long.