By popular demand, here’s another letter from Nelson Algren, this time a big fat gossipy one in reply to questions that Roger Groening must have posed.
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1958 evergreen
chicago 31 Oct.
Dear Rajah,
Yes, Clancy Segal really left. The first time I met him was in a Hollywood Studio, a decade and a half ago. He was billed as an agent, but his job was just to show visitors the grounds. He drove me around and got into a long, reverential polemic about the greatest writer in the world, Simone de Beauvoir. He didn't know that I'd knocked around with her, so I kept my mouth shut. Later, when he published "Going Away" he caught up with me in it. I reviewed the book favorably.
In 1960, in London, looking around for someone to give me a knockdown to someone in Dublin so I could meet Brendan Behan, somebody sent me to you know who. He showed me all over London and gave me an address in Dublin that would get me to meet Behan. Then I said I wanted to meet Doris Lessing. So he took me to meet her. It wasn't until after we'd talked a while that I realized she was his old lady.
When I got to Paris another coincidence developed: after de Beauvoir had moved out of the tenement flat we'd lived in in 1949, Clancy had moved in, with some other Frenchie, into the same flat!
The next time he came through here I spent an evening with him, and it was a long one. He's so abstract, so intellectualized, that he can't stand people. I brought him to meet an old-time Madam, thinking it might be interesting to him because she comes from his old Chicago neighborhood. He got so nervous in her presence that he finally excused himself and I haven't heard from him since. I guess he was hurt because I didn't introduced him to Saul Bellow.
If you're interested in his "Weekend in Dinlock," the book he wrote about miners in England, I'll send it on. It's a good book.
He once called somebody "an organization man for nihilism," which I thought was so neat that I used it about twenty times against Alan[sic] Ginsberg, Hugh Hefner, Timothy Leary, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Joe Garagiola.
No chance of making it to the Big Apple this fall. If you want to read Islands in the Stream I'll send it on as soon as I get it back from whoever I borrowed [it from] when they loan it back. Let me know.
Have you noticed how much Ron Ziegler and Rod Serling look alike?
Petrakis is a kind of family homebody who modeled his store after Saroyan's, but lacked Saroyan's flair. I don't know him, it's just an impression from a couple TV things of his I caught.
I'm very pleased to have the Welles interviews. I haven't played them yet because I don't know how to operate a recorder, though I have one — as yet unused. They're nice just to have. Thanks.
I stood in a two-block long queue for the privilege of paying two bucks in order to eat popcorn for an hour and a half while staring at a dark screen for another hour and a half in order to see Clay cut Quarry's eye. Not only that but I missed Laugh-In to make it. And not only that (though I shouldn't admit it) I put ten bucks on Quarry! Where I conceived that flash-notion I can't recall. It had something to do, I believe, with Clay having been out of work so long and Quarry being so stubborn, and the odds being so high on Clay. I'm not sure. Probably just that I wanted to have something going and nobody else would take Quarry. Let that be a lesson to you when Clay fights Frazier. I have to go with Muhammad now.
Lost half my ass in three nights at Cahokia Downs, lost another half at Hawthorne, got it all back in two days at Sportsman's Park — then blew all three halves on a Saturday when they ran a double bill — 9 afternoon races and 9 at night because the harness park here was dark. No extra charge for the night program The races ran from 2 PM until 1 am. I plan to have it all back — and a bunch more — by Nov. 21st, when they stop running here.
Nadine Gordimer is hereabouts. I'm going to go to a party for her Saturday evening. Caught her on TV being interviewed by that sexy beautiful thing with the lovely voice, Barbara Walters. Gordimer kept squirrel-eyeing her wondering how she'd gotten her job.
I'm also looking at Medic, the Bold Ones and half a dozen other absolutely boring afternoon and early-evening TV programs because an actress named Lois Nettleton is in all of them. And she really is beautiful. She charged in here Sunday, I whirled her around town and then she whirled away, leaving me breathing hard. I have a signed picture of her, too. But if you think you're getting her NY number — bear in mind you're no longer in circulation. Even if you were, you wouldn't get it. Those young studs she acts with are sufficient competition for the moment. I've forbidden her to date anyone in NY except Tiny Tim and Truman Capote.
If I review Blue Movie I'll have to use your comment that it makes a reader ashamed for having laughed at him in the past.
Best
Nelson
