Product Description

With its depictions of the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers, and hustlers of Perdido Street in the old French Quarter of 1930s New Orleans, A Walk in the Wild Side has found a place in the imaginations of all generations since it first appeared. As Algren admitted, the book "wasn't written until long after it had been walked . . . I found my way to the streets on the other side of the Southern Pacific station, where the big jukes were singing something called 'Walking the Wild Side of Life.' I've stayed pretty much on that side of the curb ever since."

Perhaps the author's own words describe this classic work best: "The book asks why lost people sometimes develop into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives. Why men who have suffered at the hands of other men are the natural believers in humanity, while those whose part has been simply to acquire, to take all and give nothing, are the most contemptuous of mankind."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #348184 in Books
• Published on: 1998-06-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Review
"The intensity of his feeling, the accuracy of his thought, make me wonder if any other writer of our time has shown us more exactly the human basis of our democracy. Though Algren often defines his positive values by showing us what happens in their absence, his hell burns with passion for heaven."—The New York Times Book Review

"A Walk on the Wild Side . . . deserves to read by every Catch-22 and Cuckoo's Nest freak just so they can find out what opened the door for [these] two novels . . . It's not only that before Heller and Kesey there was Algren. It's that Algren is where they came from."—Rolling Stone

"Mr. Algren, boy, you are good."—Ernest Hemingway
-- Review

Review

About the Author
Nelson Algren, now considered one of America's finest novelists, was born in Detroit in 1909, and lived most of his life in Chicago. His jobs included migrant worker, journalist, and medical worker. He is the author of five novels, including The Man with the Golden Arm, which was the winner of the first National Book Award. Algren died in 1981.

Customer Reviews

A Neglected Classic
In a perfect world, _A Walk on the Wild Side_ would be remembered as Algren's best book, and would be read in American literature classes.

Algren is a much-needed antidote to both romantics who idealize the poor and to conservatives who feel smugly superior to the lower classes but have no real sense of the difficulties they face.

Its social significance aside, _Walk_ should be read by anyone interested in literary style. Algren's narrative voice--pugnacious, amused, and quietly outraged--explains why Algren has always been read by writers, even if a larger general audience continues to escape him.

(While it is true this novel reworks material from _The Neon Wilderness_, it is put to much better use here--read _Walk_ first!)

Algren's most polished work.
Country boy Dove Linkhorn, son of Fitz ( hell-fire preacher and cesspool cleaner ),defiler of women, smarter than he looks bum, leaves Texas for New Orleans where he fits right in for a while, with the depression-era cripples, prostitutes, pimps, flimflam artists,and prison-life.

Much of this book is a re-run of Somebody in Boots and Never Come Morning, with modifications. Unlike those books, the prose style is Algren at his most polished. Even so he overdoes it on many occasions where a simple statement would have sufficed. But redeems himself by pretty much avoiding the annoying switch in viewpoint within multiple character scenes that mar his other, otherwise excellent work.

Nelson Algren didn't write all that many books in his long career, a state of affairs that could be condensed into two titles: A Walk on the Wild Side and The Man with the Golden Arm.

Brilliant poetry in prose
Having read the book a long time ago I can't describe particulars, but it remains years later my #1 favorite book of all time. If you enjoy beautifully written stories about not-so-beautiful people, this novel is a must-read. The characters are from society's underbelly, and, while Algren does not glorify them, he makes you feel great empathy for them. Besides presenting you with powerful characters, his use of words is astonishing. I can only describe Algren's language as "raw poetry." His words are poetic while the content is not (as opposed to, say, Henry Miller's language, which is powerful and raw but can't exactly be described as poetic [in my opinion, anyway]). This is simply a beautiful book most people would call you crazy for describing as beautiful.