Algren, Nelson (1909–81), born in Detroit and reared in Chicago slums, grew up in poverty and insecurity in a Jewish family, with the name William Algren Abraham. His literary career as a writer of realistic novels of social protest began with
Somebody in Boots (1935), about a poor‐white Texas boy's vagabondage and criminality during the Depression, and was continued in
Never Come Morning (1942), about a Polish hoodlum in Chicago who dreams of a better life as a prizefighter.
The Man with the Golden Arm (1949) depicts the life of Frankie Machine (the Americanized version of his Polish name, Majcinek), a stud‐poker dealer in a Chicago gambling club who becomes a dope addict and commits suicide, and places him in a panorama of the corrupt and violent lives of Chicago's underdogs who, like Frankie, are frustrated by their slum environment.
A Walk on the Wild Side (1956) presents a somewhat similar underworld in New Orleans during the Depression, emphasizing the erotic and bohemian. The stories of
The Neon Wilderness (1947) are less violent treatments of lower‐class life.
Who Lost an American? (1963) collects sketches of a lighter sort about life in New York and Chicago and on his travels abroad.
Conversations (1964) issues tape‐recorded recollections,
Notes from a Sea Diary (1965) collects stories and a commentary on Hemingway, and
The Last Carousel (1973) gathers short prose and poetry. His romance with Simone de Beauvoir is treated in her autobiography,
Force of Circumstance, and to a degree in her novel
The Mandarins.
