Synopses & Reviews
Ernest Hemingway once said of Nelson Algren's writing that you should not read it if you cannot take a punch. The prose poem, Chicago: City on the Make, filled with language that swings and jabs and stuns, lives up to those words. This 50th anniversary edition is newly annotated with explanations for everything from slang to Chicagoans, famous and obscure, to what the Black Sox scandal was and why it mattered. More accessible than ever, this is, as Studs Terkel says, the best book about Chicago.
Algren's Chicago, a kind of American annex to Dante's inferno, is a nether world peopled by rat--faced hustlers and money--loving demons who crawl in the writer's brilliant, sordid, uncompromising and twisted imagination. . . . This book] searches a city's heart and mind rather than its avenues and public buildings.--New York Times Book Review
This short, crisp, fighting creed is both a social document and a love poem, a script in which a lover explains his city's recurring ruthlessness and latent power; in which an artist recognizes that these are portents not of death, but of life.--New York Herald Tribune
Nelson Algren (1909-1981) won the National Book Award in 1950 for The Man with the Golden Arm. His other works include Walk on the Wild Side, The Neon Wilderness, and Conversations with Nelson Algren, the last available from the University of Chicago Press. David Schmittgens teaches English at St. Ignatius College Prep in Chicago, Illinois. Bill Savage is a lecturer at Northwestern University and coeditor of the 50th Anniversary Critical Edition of The Man with the Golden Arm.
Synopsis
“Once youve become a part of this particular patch, youll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.”
Ernest Hemingway once said of Nelson Algrens writing that “you should not read it if you cannot take a punch.” The prose poem, Chicago: City on the Make, filled with language that swings and jabs and stuns, lives up to those words. In this sixtieth anniversary edition, Algren presents 120 years of Chicago history through the lens of its “nobodies nobody knows”: the tramps, hustlers, aging bar fighters, freed death-row inmates, and anonymous working stiffs who prowl its streets.
Upon its original publication in 1951, Algrens Chicago: City on the Make was scorned by the Chicago Chamber of Commerce and local journalists for its gritty portrayal of the city and its people, one that boldly defied City Halls business and tourism initiatives. Yet the book captures the essential dilemma of Chicago: the dynamic tension between the citys breathtaking beauty and its utter brutality, its boundless human energy and its stifling greed and violence.
The sixtieth anniversary edition features historic Chicago photos and annotations on everything from defunct slang to Chicagoans, famous and obscure, to what the Black Sox scandal was and why it mattered. More accessible than ever, this is, as Studs Terkel says, “the best book about Chicago.”
About the Author
Nelson Algren (1909–81) won the National Book Award in 1950 for The Man with the Golden Arm. His works include A Walk on the Wild Side, The Neon Wilderness, and Chicago: City on the Make, the last published by the University of Chicago Press. David Schmittgens teaches English at St. Ignatius College Prep in Chicago. Bill Savage is a senior lecturer at Northwestern University and coeditor of the fiftieth anniversary critical edition of The Man with the Golden Arm.
Table of Contents
Introduction by Studs Terkel
1. The hustlers
2. Are you a Christian?
3. The silver-colored yesterday
4. Love is for barflies
5. Bright faces of tomorrow
6. No more giants
7. Nobody knows where O'Connor went
Afterword
Notes
Acknowledgments
Publishing History
Bibliography