"Because Murder is More Fun Away From Home"
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| (Nelson Algren Fountain base with part of inscription from Chicago: City on the Make) |
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| (The Nelson Algren Fountain) |
Labels: Chicago, Nelson Algren, what I did on my vacation
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 11:23 PM
This blog is a proud winner of the 2009 Spinetingler Award for special services to the industry and its blogkeeper a proud former guest on Wisconsin Public Radio's Here on Earth. In civilian life I'm a copy editor in Philadelphia. When not reading crime fiction, I like to read history. When doing neither, I like to travel. When doing none of the above, I like listening to music or playing it, the latter rarely and badly. Click here to find an independent bookstore near you.
13 Comments:
Oddly enough, my cousin just told me yesterday about the Nelson Algren Fiction Awards Contest for 2014, which any of you fiction writers can find HERE.
I probably shouldn't add to my competition, but I don't know if I will have anything to send by the deadline anyway, so good luck to anyone who decides to give it a go.
Thanks for the notice. Suddenly no one can stop talking about Nelson Algren. I wonder if he is more discussed or held in awe than he is read.
Well, I haven't read him, at any rate.
I wonder if he really is out of fashion, or whether I have just missed whatever discussion of him has happened in recent years.
His reception at home was certainly mixed. Considerable segments of Chicago's Polish community, among which he lived and wrote, thought he was making fun of them and so did not like his work. And a proposal to rename the entire Polish Triangle, site of the fountain, for Algren was scuttled by community opposition. The fountain itself was a sorry little affair, but it may have been boarded up only for the winter. And opposition to Chicago: City on the Make was apparently strong when the essay first appeared. I believe Studs Terkel wrote an introduction to a reprint that appeared in 2001.
My immediate ancestors on my dad's side were Illinois farmer's of a liberal bent who did not trust Chicago politics, but certainly kept up with it. Only a few cousins from that region have a comfortable relation with the city even now. But it is a great city, as one of them used to argue vociferously, and the whole immigrant mix is compelling. I hope they unboard the fountain. I will definitely put Algren on my TBR list.
I've just added a picture of the fountain. Not much action around it.
This country has a history of troubled relations between states and their biggest cities. Interesting that this persists even today. Interesting, too, that your father's family were liberals who did not trust the big city. The popular, unexamined belief, I think,, equates city with liberal, rural with conservative.
I looked for Chicago: CIty on the Make before I left and again in Chicago. By the time I'd moved on to Los Angeles, I buried myself in California history. Now I may conduct a more leisurely search for Algren's book. After all, I may stop in Chicago again on the way to Bouchercon in November.
Nice fountain. It's probably just winter or something.
I don't know exactly why they were all liberals. I suspect that it may have been because they weren't all that far from Chicago. I think that among their rural neighbors there was a split in the community politically. I think the south of the state tends to be more conservative, though I can't say that I've looked into it very thoroughly.
Algren is one of my favorite writers of all time--so glad you gave him some pub, Peter. I've often wondered why he isn't discussed more also. A truly brilliant writer, imo. I discovered him in my teens and usually reread him every year.
Seana, it occurred to me, too, that the fountain looked better in the picture than it did with a cold wind blowing leaves around it.
I sometimes suspect that everything I know about urban and rural, liberal and conservative, who's who, and what's what is wrong.
Les, I browsed a bit of The Man With the Golden Arm when I was looking for Chicago: City on the Make. Seems like it might be a touching take of friendship in addition to everything else.
Someone ought to talk about him at Bouchercon. Hmm. ...
We are helping to rescue Algren from the dustbin of history. Working with the Algren estate, and Art Shay, the famed 91 year old photographer, we have been working on a documentary on Algren, and are close to completion. Besides Shay, we have interviewed Algren's friends, like filmmakers William Friedkin and Philip Kaufman, the author Russell Banks and newsman Rick Kogan, to name a few. It will be released in 2014--stay tuned. Check us out a algrenthemovie.com.
Thanks. Looks like that documentary could well to the job. I hope it will get a decent release.
I still wonder, if it's worth wondering about, why Algren faded into that dustbin. An article from the Believer, to which I linked in yesterday's post, corrected some misconceptions that people are likely to have about Algren, but I'm not sure it accounts adequately for his fade.
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