41 Facts About Nelson Algren

Art Shay singled out a poem Nelson Algren wrote from the perspective of a "halfy," street slang for a legless man on wheels.

Shay said that Nelson Algren considered this poem to be a key to everything he had ever written.

Nelson Algren was called "a sort of bard of the down-and-outer" based on this book, but on his short stories in The Neon Wilderness and his novel A Walk on the Wild Side.

Nelson Algren was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Goldie and Gerson Abraham.

Nelson Algren's father was the son of a Swedish convert to Judaism and of a German Jewish woman, and his mother was of German Jewish descent.

Nelson Algren's father worked as an auto mechanic nearby on North Kedzie Avenue.

Nelson Algren wrote his first story, "So Help Me", in 1933, while he was in Texas working at a gas station.

Nelson Algren boarded a train for his getaway but was apprehended and returned to Alpine.

Nelson Algren was held in jail for nearly five months and faced a possible additional three years in prison.

Nelson Algren was released, but the incident made a deep impression on him.

Nelson Algren had met her at a party celebrating the publication of Somebody in Boots.

Not knowing that Nelson Algren was of partly Jewish descent, some incensed Polish-American Chicagoans said he was pro-Nazi Nordic.

Nelson Algren served as a private in the European Theater of World War II as a litter bearer.

Nelson Algren received a bad beating by some fellow black marketeers.

Mary Guggenheim, who had been Nelson Algren's lover, recommended De Beauvoir visit Nelson Algren in Chicago.

Nelson Algren is married to a woman whom he mistakenly believes became crippled in a car accident he caused.

Nelson Algren's next book, Chicago, City on the Make, was a scathing essay that outraged the city's boosters but portrayed the back alleys of the city, its dispossessed, its corrupt politicians and its swindlers.

Nelson Algren declared his love of the City as a "lovely so real".

Nelson Algren sued Preminger seeking an injunction to stop him from claiming ownership of the property as "An Otto Preminger film", but he soon withdrew his suit for financial reasons.

Nelson Algren became one of Southern's most enthusiastic early supporters and, when he taught creative writing in later years, he often used Southern as an example of a great short story writer.

Nelson Algren had another commercial success with the novel A Walk on the Wild Side.

Nelson Algren reworked some of the material from his first novel, Somebody in Boots, as well as picking up elements from several published short stories, such as his 1947 "The Face on the Barroom Floor".

Nelson Algren said it was superior to the earlier book.

Nelson Algren turned to teaching creative writing at the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop to supplement his income.

Nelson Algren played a small part in Philip Kaufman's underground comedy Fearless Frank as a mobster named Needles.

In 1975, Nelson Algren was commissioned to write a magazine article about the trial of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, the prize fighter who had been found guilty of double murder.

Nelson Algren was instantly fascinated by the city of Paterson and he immediately decided to move there.

In 1980, Nelson Algren moved to a house in Sag Harbor, Long Island.

Nelson Algren died of a heart attack at home on May 9,1981.

Nelson Algren is buried in Oakland Cemetery, Sag Harbor, Long Island.

Nonconformity presents the belief system behind Nelson Algren's writing and a call to writers everywhere to investigate the dark and represent the ignored.

Nelson Algren told McCarrell that he never joined the Communist Party, despite its appeal to artists and intellectuals during the Great Depression.

Nelson Algren described Ashland Avenue as figuratively connecting Chicago to Warsaw in Poland.

Polish bars that Nelson Algren frequented in his gambling, such as the Bit of Poland on Milwaukee Avenue, figured in such writings as Never Come Morning and The Man With the Golden Arm.

The renaming of Evergreen Street to Nelson Algren Street caused controversy and was almost immediately reversed.

In 1998, Nelson Algren enthusiasts instigated the renaming after Nelson Algren of the Polish Triangle in what had been the center of the Polish Downtown.

Nelson Algren won his first O Henry Award for his short story "The Brother's House" in 1935.

In 1947 Nelson Algren won an Arts and Letters Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the forerunner to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Algren was honored in 1998 with the Nelson Algren Fountain located in Chicago's Polish Triangle, in what had been the heart of Polish Downtown, the area that figured as the inspiration for much of his work.

In 2010, Nelson Algren was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.

All of Nelson Algren's words are now back in print.