Never a Lovely So Real

by Colin Asher

  Jan Herman called a few minutes later. He had been trying to get through while Finer was upstairs, and when no one answered, he and his wife, Janet, and their daughter, Olivia, went to the store and bought a bottle of Chivas Regal. They left the store with their purchase, and Jan returned to the payphone he had used a few minutes earlier and called again.

  This time, Finer answered. “Don’t come,” he said. “He’s gone.”

  Nelson was buried in Sag Harbor’s Oakland Cemetery on Monday, May 11, before a crowd of about thirty people. Stephen Deutch and his daughter Katherine were there, and so were Peter Matthiessen, Pete Hammill, Gloria Jones, and Linda Ronstadt. A woman with bright red hair and blue-green eyes arrived wearing all black, and began sobbing. She told the other mourners that she had read every word Nelson wrote, and intended to forswear novels for the remainder of her life now that he was dead.

  When the ceremony began, Joe Pintauro stepped forward and read from one of Nelson’s poems. A cold wind was blowing, and he said:

  Again that hour when taxis start deadheading home

  Before the trolley buses start to run

  And snow dreams in a lace of mist drift down

  When from asylum, barrack, cell and cheap hotel

  All those whose lives were lived by someone else

  Come again with palms outstretched to claim

  What never rightly was their own.

  Nelson’s casket was lowered into the grave when Pintauro finished, and later, a headstone bearing an epitaph selected by Candida Donadio was installed at its head.

  It read:

  THE END IS NOTHING

  THE ROAD IS ALL.

  Afterword

  On June 29, 1981, a group of Nelson’s friends gathered at the Second City Theater in Chicago to remember him. Studs Terkel served as emcee, and began by saying, “This is in the nature of a celebration rather than a service.” He was on stage with a piano player when the program began, and he said, “Nelson just loved the blues, so Fred is playing the blues; it’s as simple as that.”

  The evening was dedicated to reminiscing, and over its course, friends from almost every period of Nelson’s life paid their respects. Jan Herman spoke about Nelson’s years in New Jersey and his work on The Devil’s Stocking, and Stephen Deutch said Nelson was “the warmest human being” he had ever known. Then Dave Peltz told everyone about the time he helped Nelson cash a check for twenty-five thousand dollars.

  Len Despres, a former Chicago alderman, walked on stage and said, “It was a great privilege to know Nelson Algren because you felt, when you were with him, that you were in the presence of an authentic genius.” And the poet Gwendolyn Brooks took the microphone and explained that Nelson often brought out-of-town guests to her house, “saying,” she recalled, that before his guests met “the devils,” he wanted them to “meet something human.” My husband and I “considered that a great compliment,” she said.

  The Second City memorial was an auspicious start to the creation of Nelson’s legacy, and other encouraging events soon followed. Kay Boyle and Jan Herman raised funds for, and created, a literary award named for Nelson. Arbor House released an American edition of The Devil’s Stocking in 1983, and around the same time, a young editor named Dan Simon read one of Nelson’s short stories, fell in love with Nelson’s writing, and released new editions of The Neon Wilderness and Never Come Morning through a publishing imprint called Four Walls Eight Windows.

  But despite those promising developments, Nelson’s legacy soon became warped by misunderstandings and inaccuracies. Though no one close to Nelson ever claimed he drank heavily, it became an accepted fact after his death that he had been an alcoholic—and though it seems Nelson only gambled problematically during two distinct periods of his life, it has long been understood that he lost everything he earned playing cards. Nelson maintained many of his friendships for decades, but people now say he was a loner who burned every bridge he crossed. And though Nelson’s work was praised and admired by all the literary greats of his day, it is now most associated with the verdicts of the Red Scare–era critics who dismissed him as the “bard of the stumblebum.”

  Nelson laid the groundwork for some of these misunderstandings by distorting his life story in Conversations with Nelson Algren, but others deserve blame as well. The FBI damaged Nelson’s legacy by failing to release his file in its entirety when first requested, therefore obscuring the cause of his career’s decline. Doubleday denied Algren the opportunity to frame his body of work and explain his convictions when it declined to publish Nonconformity. And many people who spoke on the record about Nelson after his death made intentionally misleading statements, or spoke beyond their competence—Dave Peltz, for instance, told several interviewers that Nelson had no political convictions, and stopped writing novels because he had writer’s block.

  But now, almost four decades after his death, it is finally possible to tell Nelson’s story in full—his complete FBI file has been released, his letters have been donated to more than fifty archives, and new interviews have been unearthed. His life and work can now be evaluated in their proper historical context for the first time, and it is my hope that his writing will find new readers as a result, his reputation will be repaired, and his ideas about literature will be debated anew.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  When my partner and I decided to have a child in 2011, I began wondering whether that child, when it grew old enough to ponder such things, would be proud to have me as a father. I was freelancing at the time, doing a little ghostwriting, and hiring out as a researcher, and I thought, If I were that kid, I wouldn’t be.

  So, I decided to change tacks. I found a day job, began writing primarily before dawn, and promised myself I would only take on projects I was passionate about—whether or not they paid.

  Soon afterward, I came up with the idea of writing a profile of Nelson Algren, an author whose work I had recently fallen in love with. I pitched my idea to The Believer, and they said I was welcome to write the article on spec. So I did. After my essay was accepted for publication, Karolina Waclawiak and Andi Winnette, The Believer’s editors at the time, gave it a tough and thoughtful edit, and made it the lead feature of the magazine’s January 2013 issue.

  Then things began happening quickly. I sent a copy of The Believer to Algren’s publisher, Dan Simon, and in return, he invited me out for a beer and introduced me to an agent named Ria Julien, who took me on as a client. Then Jan Herman emailed to say he had read my essay and liked it. He had spent a good chunk of the 1980s researching a biography of Algren that he never wrote, and he said I was welcome to all of the material he gathered during that time if I decided to write about Algren again.

  Tom Mayer, an editor at W. W. Norton, was the next stranger to reach out. He had also read the Believer essay, and wanted to know if I was interested in writing a biography. I was. Over the course of the next few months, I wrote a book proposal, Mayer ushered it past the board at Norton, and I signed a contract to write the book you’re holding.

  If your name appears in one of the preceding paragraphs, you should know that this book would not exist without you, and that I owe you much more than “Thanks.”

  I owe many other people gratitude as well, of course. Nora Carroll—my partner when I began writing this book, now my wife—read every page of my manuscript several times, and provided invaluable editorial advice. My son, Dante—yet to be born when I began writing about Nelson Algren, and now seven years old—suffered through so many stories about Algren that he began calling him “Uncle Nelson.”

  Makis Antzoulatos, Nora Fussner, Michael Wolraich, and Geoff Fuller all read early drafts of my manuscript and provided valuable feedback. My friends from the Neptun Polish beer garden (RIP) were always encouraging and supportive. Christine Guilfoyle, an Algren scholar from the UK, was generous with her insights and information. Aaron Shulman offered himself as a sounding board for ideas, and whenever I needed to focus solely on my writing, Richar
d Wechsler let me hide out in his house on the Maryland shore.

  Without the financial support of the Leon Levy Center for Biography, it’s likely I would not have completed this book, and without the insights provided by the center’s other 2015–16 fellows—Eric Washington, Gordana-Dana Grozdanic, Blake Gopnik, Jennifer Chancellor, and Daron Jabari Howard—this book wouldn’t be as good as it is. The center’s staff—Gary Giddins, Annalyn Swan, and Michael Gately—read a few of my early chapters as well, and provided a steadying presence in my life when I began rewriting my manuscript for the second time and started to wonder why I had ever wanted to write a book in the first place.

  Warren Leming from the Nelson Algren Committee welcomed me to Chicago when I visited, and so did Michael Caplan, Nicole Bernardi-Reis, and Gail Sonnenfeld—the team behind Algren, the feature-length documentary released in 2014. They were generous enough to share their research with me, and so were Denis Mueller, Mark Blottner, and Ilko Davidov—the team behind Nelson Algren: The End Is Nothing, the Road Is All.

  By the end of my research process, I had retrieved material from almost fifty archives, and in every instance I found the archivists and librarians I interacted with to be helpful and professional. If you are one of them, thank you. Among their number, Rebecca Jewett and her team at Ohio State University stand out. They were incredibly accommodating and responsive to requests during the three weeks I spent with them.

  I also owe a debt of gratitude to Bettina Drew, Algren’s first biographer. After Drew’s book was published in 1989, she deposited her research material at Ohio State University—including, most importantly, audio recordings of the interviews she conducted. After reviewing those interviews, I came to some very different conclusions about Algren’s character and career than Drew did—but that is primarily because I was able to check the information she gathered against a virtually unredacted copy of Algren’s FBI file, and material gathered from dozens of archives that did not exist when she wrote her book. Most of the people Drew spoke with are now long dead, and without access to her recordings, I would not have been able to tell Algren’s story with the level of detail and accuracy it demanded. There’s no way to write a responsible biography of Algren without reviewing Drew’s interviews, and for that reason, every Algren fan is in her debt.

  I am also indebted to the generations of Algren’s champions who kept interest in his work alive so I could discover it, Dan Simon especially. After Four Walls Eight Windows, Simon founded Seven Stories Press in 1995. He took Algren’s books with him, and since then he has, among other accomplishments, released a critical edition of The Man with the Golden Arm, edited and published Nonconformity, and released a collection of Algren’s work called Entrapment and Other Writings. Brooke Horvath, who coedited Entrapment with Simon, also wrote an insightful work of criticism called Understanding Nelson Algren, and James R. Giles wrote one of the first books focused on Algren’s writing: Confronting the Horror: The Novels of Nelson Algren. More recently, Carlo Rotella and Bill Savage (who coedited the critical edition of Arm) have been keeping Algren’s ideas in circulation, and for that I am deeply grateful.

  I owe thanks to everyone who granted me an interview as well, but Don DeLillo, Robert Gover, Roger Groening, Timothy Seldes, Chester Aaron, Fred Hogan, and Stephen and Helene Deutch’s daughters—Kat, Carole, and Annick—deserve special mention. Unfortunately, Gover, Groening, and Seldes all died before I completed this book, so they’ll never know how helpful they were. Neither will Art Shay, who died the day after he granted me permission to use his images in this book. RIP Robert, Roger, Timothy, and Art.

  And now for some regrets: Several of the most important people in Algren’s life appear in this book briefly, or have been written about with less feeling and depth than they deserve. Among their number are: Paula Bays, Jerome Hanock, Bud Fallon, Jesse Blue, Richard Majewski, Bill Hackett and his wife, James Blake, Stanley Kowalski, Joan Kerckhoff, and Studs Terkel. Each of these people should have played a larger role in this book, but didn’t, because there was not enough information available about their relationship to Algren.

  Bays, after marrying and changing her name to Larsen, virtually disappeared. She was interviewed by Bettina Drew briefly, but I was unable to find her, or her daughter, when I tried to track them down thirty years later. Hanock (one of Algren’s high school friends), Fallon, Blue, and James Blake were each close to Algren for decades, but died before he did and were never interviewed about their friendships with him. Richard Majewski and Stanley Kowalski left very thin paper trails during their lives, and proved impossible to track after their (presumed) deaths. So did Bill Hackett and his wife. Studs Terkel and Joan Kerckhoff were each friends with Algren for decades, but both declined to be interviewed by Drew (or gave her cursory interviews), and died before I began this project.

  NOTES

  A NOTE ON SOURCES

  Much of the material I used to compose this book can be accessed online, using print resources, or by querying university archives—but some cannot. Bettina Drew’s interviews are one such source. Drew, Algren’s first biographer, made audio recordings of the interviews she conducted, and later gave them to Ohio State University. When I reference her interviews in my notes, I am referring to her recorded interviews—not her book. Currently, though, those interviews can only be reviewed onsite at her archive at OSU. Jan Herman was another important source of interview material. He spent several years researching an Algren biography he never wrote, and when I began this book, he gave me all of his research—including letters, images, video recordings, and transcriptions of the interviews he conducted. Herman and I both possess copies of those materials, but they are not publicly available. Michael Caplan, the director behind the film Algren, also shared transcriptions of his interviews with me that are not publicly available. And finally, Christine Guilfoyle, an Algren scholar from the UK, shared several important documents with me, some of which are not publicly available.

  Algren’s FBI file was another important source. The FBI tracked Algren, on and off, from 1940 to 1969. After Algren’s death, at least three people requested copies of his FBI file and received a stack of documents—approximately four hundred pages’ worth—that are heavily redacted and nearly worthless. On September 23, 2013, I requested a new copy of Algren’s FBI file. It had been transferred to the National Archives by then, and in response to my request, I received a file containing 886 pages that are, essentially, unredacted. Every reference to Algren’s FBI file in this book is a reference to the more recent version.

  My use of Conversations with Nelson Algren also deserves an explanation. This book is often used as a primary source for writing about Algren, but shouldn’t be. I have discussed some of the distortions in its pages, but there are many I didn’t get to, and everyone who knew Algren well was aware of them. Robert Joffe (Algren’s nephew), Betty Algren, and H.E.F. Donohue all told Algren’s first biographer that the book was partly fictional: “I knew he was fibbing,” Donohue said. “I didn’t care.” Conversations “is crap,” Betty Algren said. And yet, I do refer to it because it is one of the only available sources of information for several periods of Algren’s life. I approach the book skeptically though. My rule is this: Material that added nuance to events I was able to verify through other means was included, and anything contradicted by the archival record was excluded. Material I was not able to corroborate in any way was also excluded. For instance, Algren’s story about visiting a brothel in college made the cut because reporting by the Daily Illini established that Algren’s story was plausible. I also use Conversations as a source for writing about Algren’s time with the Luthers because Benton Curtis verified much of it. However, I do not use Algren’s timeline because the archival record shows he distorted it by conflating his two trips south.

  Due to space constraints, I had to source this book lightly. Consequently, I have not provided citations for easily verifiable historical facts or easily searchable texts. For instance, no cita
tion is provided for the passage of legislation, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s infamous speech in West Virginia, the Paterson riots in 1964, or quotes from the Bible or Das Kapital. I did not have the space necessary to provide citations for the atmospheric details that give Algren’s story nuance, either—for instance, mentions of the weather, or the hermit who lived near the railroad tracks near Nelson’s childhood home. In general, details about Chicago come from the Tribune, and references to national and international events come from the New York Times. Additionally, when quoting from Algren’s published work, I have only provided citations when the source of the text is not clear from the narrative of this book.

  SOURCE NOTES

  Unless otherwise noted, all references to Algren’s books are to the following editions, which I refer to using the abbreviations that appear in bold:

  Boots—Somebody in Boots. Vanguard Press, 1935.

  Morning—Never Come Morning. Harper & Brothers, 1942.

  Wilderness—The Neon Wilderness. Doubleday, 1947.

  Arm—The Man with the Golden Arm. Doubleday, 1949.

  Chicago—Chicago: City on the Make. Doubleday, 1951.

  Wild Side—A Walk on the Wild Side. Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1956.

  Who Lost—Who Lost an American? Macmillan, 1963.

  Conversations—Donohue, H.E.F. Conversations with Nelson Algren. Hill & Wang, 1964.

  Sea Diary—Notes From a Sea Diary: Hemingway All the Way. Putnam, 1965.

  Carousel—The Last Carousel. Putnam, 1973.

  Stocking—The Devil’s Stocking. Arbor House, 1983.

  Nonconformity—Nonconformity: Writing on Writing. Seven Stories Press, 1996.