Understanding Nelson Algren

"Understanding Nelson Algren traces the career of a writer best known for his novels The Man with the Golden Arm and A Walk on the Wild Side. From Algren's first short stories through his final fiction, the posthumously published The Devil's Stocking, Brooke Horvath surveys the literary contributions of a writer known as the voice of America's dispossessed." "Horvath offers on introduction to the life and work of the Chicagoan who wrote about the underclass in the Windy City and beyond, bringing to the fore their humanity and aspirations. He proposes that while it is appropriate to view Algren's work through the lenses of literary naturalism, disenchanted social critique, and (in his later works) postmodernism, Algren's ideological concerns should not eclipse his considerable stylistic achievements, including his lyricism and humor." "Examining Algren's eleven major works in the contexts of the writer's life and America's changing literary tastes, Horvath sets Algren's evolution as a writer against the backdrop of the nation's shifting social, political, and economic landscape. Throughout his analysis, Horvath considers the questions that plagued Algren and that reappear in his wor