Customer Reviews

The Neon Wilderness

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One of the most beautiful collection of short stories I've ever read. I am a devoted Nelson Algren fan, and if you read this, you'll understand why. This was a man who understood Chicago, who had the balls to plunge the murky depths of her society and find astonishing beauty. The blue imagery of his work is evocative, breathtaking, and genuine; it makes me mourn and long for a Chicago that no longer exists. The masculinity, the authority, the depth of Algren's identification with the rejects, the drug addicts, the gamblers, the hookers make WILDERNESS a superb work of art. This man tells it like it was; no glamorizing, no condescension, only the most profound understanding and a multi-layered sense of humor that, to paraphrase Hemingway (a huge Algren fan), makes you feel as if you took a punch. I haven't read the NEON WILDERNESS in a long time, but the mere mention of it makes we want to re-read it, especially the first story, "The Captain Has Bad Dreams." I also recommend BOSS by Mike Royko and just about anything by Studs Terkel.

A true marvel. Not many writers come close. Nelson Algren is at the very top of the heap: original, compassionate, funny, insightful. You know, we read many books, and once we have finished with the book we toss it aside and forget about it. With Algren it's different. You read his stuff and can't help feeling cheated at not having known the man, not having ever had a chance to meet the guy. Wish there was a way to sit down and have a beer with the man, light up a stogie and have a good chat with the genius who created this masterful story collection. The writing is gritty and true, heartfelt. Brings to mind several other writers who had this knack of writing in this kind of honest, unflinching style: John O'Brien (Leaving Las Vegas), B. Traven (take your pick: Treasure of Sierra Madre, Cottonpickers, etc.) Knut Hamsun (Hunger), Eugene O'Neill (Long Day's Journey Into Night), Celine (Journey to the End of the Night), Kirk Alex (Working the Hard Side of the Street), Chester Himes (If He Hollers Let Him Go).
All of the above had their own style, of course, but the thing they had in common was in the balls they showed by not flinching away from the gritty, life lived by so many who weren't born with deep pockets, who didn't have it easy.

Writing from the gut. Algren lives. Read THE NEON WILDERNESS, and give some of the others a try as well.
This is writing for people who love books and love to read. Shut your TV sets off and pick up a good book--and you can start right here, with Algren's story collectiion.

Algren's writing in this collection of short stories has very lyrical and often nightmarish quality. It is both beautiful and brutally frank. Algren paints a unapologetic picture of Chicago and it's people with his wonderful sense of humor and irony. Read this book if you want an unblinking look at people at their best and worst.

If you only have time to read one Algren book and want to know what he is all about, then 'Neon Wilderness' is the tome to get.

It acts as a template for all Algrens repartee; life on Division street, the pimps, the hustlers, the corruption, the prostitutes. Life for the people whom the American dream is pure illusion. They survive in a world of crime by crime, yet they're always the ones who get punished;always the games biggest losers.

Many of the stories in 'Neon Wilderness' have appeared either slightly altered or in elongated form in Algrens other works. The line ups in the jail feature everywhere in Algrens novels.'Face on the Barroom Floor' 'Bottle of milk for Mother' in 'Walk on the Wild Side' and 'Never come Morning'

Algren just basically wrote the same novels over and over with slightly different takes;sometimes humouress, sometimes bleak. He wrote about the people and life he knew in his Chicago.

Read this and you will have Algren in a nutshell. BUt its well worth catching his other works-despite the feeling of deja-vu they give you!

Parts of this review were used in a review of Algren's classic Man With The Golden Arm. These short stories reflect the same milieu that Algren worked in that novel. Algren throughout his literary career was working that same small vein- but what a mother lode he produced.

Growing up in a post World War II built housing project this reviewer knew first hand the so-called `romance' of drugs, the gun and the ne'er do well hustler. And also the mechanisms one needed to develop to survive at that place where the urban working poor meet and mix with the lumpen proletariat- the con men, dopesters, grifters drifters and gamblers who feed on the downtrodden. This is definitely not the mix that Damon Runyon celebrated in his Guys and Dolls-type stories. Far from it. Just read "A Bottle of Milk For Mother".

Nelson Algren has gotten, through hanging around Chicago police stations and the sheer ability to observe, that sense of foreboding, despair and of the abyss of America's mean streets down pat in a number of works, including this collection of his better stories. Along the way we meet an array of stoolies, cranks, crackpots and nasty brutish people who are more than willing to put obstacles in the way of anyone who gets in their way. Read "A Face On The Barroom Floor"- that will put you straight. But to what end. They lose in the end, and drag others down with them.

We, of late, have become rather inured to lumpen stories either of the death and destruction type or of the rehabilitative kind but at the time that these stories were put together in the late 1940's and early 1950's this was something of an eye-opener for those who were not familiar with the seamy side of urban life. The dead end jobs, the constant run-ins with the `authorities' in the person of the police, many times corrupt as well. The dread of going to work, the dread of not going to work, the fear of being victimized and the glee of victimizing. The whole jumbled mix of people with few prospects and fewer dreams.

Algren has put it down in writing for all that care to read. These are not pretty stories. And he has centered his stories on the trials and tribulations of gimps, prostitutes and other hustlers. Damn, as much as I knew about the kind of things that Algren was describing these are still gripping stories. And, if the truth were told, you know as well as I do that unfortunately these stories could still be written today. Read Algren if you want to walk on the wild side.

I haven't read any Algren before The Neon Wilderness & was moved to do so by my recent visit to Chicago. I've been told that his stories are the place to begin. I have to confess that before this I mostly knew Algren as de Beauvoir's Lewis Brogan in The Mandarins.

It took me a little while to warm up to the stories. That's at least a little bit because he led with the story which, in my opinion, is the weakest in the book: "the captain has bad dreams". The stories do get better from there, so persevere.

All of the stories are gritty. There is not a lot of hope in his world. Life is mean, and times are hard. It sounds like a cliche, but not the way Algren writes it. He is deservedly considered a master of the short story form. I particularly liked "poor man's pennies" and "the brothers' house". I was less enchanted with the boxing stories. But, honestly, that's probably me and not Algren-- still too much of a girl to be fascinated with fighting.

Recommended, particularly if you are interested in the short story.

"The Captain Has Bad Dreams," a story of a captain overseeing sentencings of criminals, is still one of my favorite stories of all time. This book, and Algren's others, really sort of blew me away, in that, rather than sentimentalizing the poor -- and I think Algren said this in an interview once -- a lot of them are simply "mean and stupid." But Algren shows them being mean and stupid and somehow still makes you care about them. That's some good writing. Algren also said the hardest thing to do was write about what actually went on in one city block during one day and get it right. I think of George Higgins and Richard Price as being the modern writers who followed in Algren's footsteps, and the TV show The Wire as serving the same kind of purpose that Algren's books served in his day.

Algren is a fabulous, talented writer. His descriptive way of writing about the gritty world will draw you in...hard to put this book down.

Sorry, but I have to completely disagree with the other reviewers. 'The Neon Wilderness' contains several stories of down-and-outs living in Chicago in the 1940s. Although the author has the local language and the feel of the streets down pat, he forgot to write anything *interesting*. The characters are generally not likable or encourage sympathy, and oftentimes the prose is utterly incomprehensible. Nope, I really didn't like this book at all.

Bottom line: this book does not deliver a pleasant reading experience.