A Walk on the Wild Side. [Hardcover]

Nelson Algren (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 28, 1978

With its depictions of the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers, and hustlers of Perdido Street in the old French Quarter of 1930s New Orleans, A Walk on the Wild Side found a place in the imaginations of all the generations that have followed since. Perhaps his own words describe the book best: "The book asks why lost people sometimes develop into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives. Why men who have suffered at the hands of other men are the natural believers in humanity, while those whose part has been simply to acquire, to take all and give nothing, are the most contemptuous of mankind."

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The intensity of his feeling, the accuracy of his thought, make me wonder if any other writer of our time has shown us more exactly the human basis of our democracy. Though Algren often defines his positive values by showing us what happens in their absence, his hell burns with passion for heaven."—The New York Times Book Review

"A Walk on the Wild Side . . . deserves to read by every Catch-22 and Cuckoo's Nest freak just so they can find out what opened the door for [these] two novels . . . It's not only that before Heller and Kesey there was Algren. It's that Algren is where they came from."—Rolling Stone

"Mr. Algren, boy, you are good."—Ernest Hemingway

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Nelson Algren, now considered one of America's finest novelists, was born in Detroit in 1909, and lived most of his life in Chicago. His jobs included migrant worker, journalist, and medical worker. He is the author of five novels, including The Man with the Golden Arm, which was the winner of the first National Book Award. Algren died in 1981.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 346 pages
• Publisher: Greenwood Press Reprint (June 28, 1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031320294X
• ISBN-13: 978-0313202940
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,356,216 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Neglected Classic, January 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Walk on the Wild Side (Classic Reprint Series) (Paperback)

In a perfect world, _A Walk on the Wild Side_ would be remembered as Algren's best book, and would be read in American literature classes.

Algren is a much-needed antidote to both romantics who idealize the poor and to conservatives who feel smugly superior to the lower classes but have no real sense of the difficulties they face.

Its social significance aside, _Walk_ should be read by anyone interested in literary style. Algren's narrative voice--pugnacious, amused, and quietly outraged--explains why Algren has always been read by writers, even if a larger general audience continues to escape him.

(While it is true this novel reworks material from _The Neon Wilderness_, it is put to much better use here--read _Walk_ first!)

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant poetry in prose, April 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Walk on the Wild Side: A Novel (Paperback)

Having read the book a long time ago I can't describe particulars, but it remains years later my #1 favorite book of all time. If you enjoy beautifully written stories about not-so-beautiful people, this novel is a must-read. The characters are from society's underbelly, and, while Algren does not glorify them, he makes you feel great empathy for them. Besides presenting you with powerful characters, his use of words is astonishing. I can only describe Algren's language as "raw poetry." His words are poetic while the content is not (as opposed to, say, Henry Miller's language, which is powerful and raw but can't exactly be described as poetic [in my opinion, anyway]). This is simply a beautiful book most people would call you crazy for describing as beautiful.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A flawed masterpiece, January 23, 2008

By 

John "Notes of a bookdreamer" (Bristol, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Walk on the Wild Side: A Novel (Paperback)

You are a good person, pay your taxes, honour your parents, do an honest's days work...so nothing in common with whores, drug addicts, boot-lickers, queers, hustlers, drunkards, jail fodder. You are a good honest citizen looking out for others.

Last week I was on a train that got stuck outside of Bristol by the floods for several hours, we moved up and down the tracks and stopped before moving up and down the tracks again. Eventually we returned to Taunton and were dumped at the station. Outside the promised coaches were absent, it was bucketing down rain and no one from the rail company in charge. When coaches did arrive in dribs and drabs 300+ people ran as if fleeing a doomed city. No thoughts given to parents with babes in arms, to elderly passengers struggling with heavy cases. I bet you that we were all good people, who pay our taxes...

In Walk on the Wild Side, Nelson Algren asks "why lost people sometimes develop into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives. Why men who have suffered at the hands of other men are the natural believers in humanity, while those whose part has been simply to acquire, to take all and give nothing, are the most contemptuous of mankind."

The book was written at the on set of the cold war in the 1950's but is set in the Deep south of the early 1930's. Algren himself went into popular and critical decline soon after in part due to the abuses of McCarthyism and in part to his own hard drinking, gambling and drug taking.

The story starts with Dove a Southern trailer trash illiterate 16 year old in the Mexican-Texas border. His grandfather is traveling preacher...described by Dove as the type that makes you want to throw your Bible away. He is barefoot, and in country yokel jeans. At the end he is in the height of fashion albeit bedraggled due to prison sentence for being drunk and disorderly. Along the way we see the ins and outs of hustling, working in a peepshow, making and selling rubbers etc. We meet the women he loves or has sex with and one who keeps her humanity enough perhaps to love him. This unfolds as he jumps trains to New Orleans and then tries to make a living.

The narrative can at time feel like a series of short stories threaded together but its both naturalistic and funny. See Dove as an innocent abroad who walks where others fear to tread and so sails through danger that passes over his head. It also has lots of little passages of songs scatters throughout the book. Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed is based on the book and was going to be part of a musical of the book- want to see that if it ever happens!

It has to be said it's a flawed masterpiece but still better then many other writers' best work so give it a try and get a sense if you could believe in humanity if crushed at the bottom of the pile.