''The Neon Wilderness'' (1947) is the first short-story collection by American writer
Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren (born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham; March 28, 1909 – May 9, 1981) was an American writer. His 1949 novel '' The Man with the Golden Arm'' won the National Book Award and was adapted as the 1955 film of the same name.
Algren articulate ...
. Two of its stories
[ had received an O. Henry Award. Algren received an award from the ]American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...
[ the same year.
]
Overview
The book collects 24 stories: 8 previously published (from 1933 to 1947)[ and 16 new. Most of them are set in then-contemporary ]Chicago
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
(1930s and 1940s), in the so-called "Polish-American ghetto". They revolve around the lower classes: workers and unemployed, drunkards and gamblers, prostitutes and hustlers, small-businessmen and policemen. Unlike Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the great ...
or Zola, their general tone is tragi-comedy
Tragicomedy is a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragic and comic forms. Most often seen in dramatic literature, the term can describe either a tragic play which contains enough comic elements to lighten the overall mood or a serious ...
or sympathetic satire
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposin ...
.
Two stories had received an O. Henry Award (and been reprinted in the related annual volume): Algren's second-published story "The Brothers' House"[ (1935 award) and "A Bottle of Milk for Mother (Biceps)"][ (1941 award). Two had been selected for '']The Best American Short Stories
''The Best American Short Stories'' is a yearly anthology that's part of ''The Best American Series'' published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since 1915, the ''BASS'' has anthologized more than 2,000 short stories, including works by some of the ...
'': "A Bottle of Milk for Mother"[ (as "Biceps",][ 1942 volume) and "How the Devil Came Down Division Street"][ (1945 volume). The year the collection was released, Algren received an award from the ]American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...
and a grant from Chicago's Newberry Library
The Newberry Library is an independent research library, specializing in the humanities. It is located in Chicago, Illinois, and has been free and open to the public since 1887. The Newberry's mission is to foster a deeper understanding of our wo ...
.[
]
Contents
The collection contains the following 24 stories (with first appearance for the 8 previously published).
# "The Captain Has Bad Dreams"
# "How the Devil Came Down Division Street" (1944, ''Harper's Bazaar
''Harper's Bazaar'' (stylized as ''Harper's BAZAAR'') is an American monthly women's fashion magazine. Bazaar has been published in New York City since November 2, 1867, originally as a weekly publication entitled ''Harper's Bazar''."Corporat ...
'')[
# "Is Your Name Joe?"
# "Depend on Aunt Elly"
# "Stickman's Laughter" (1942, '']The Southern Review
''The Southern Review'' is a quarterly literary magazine that was established by Robert Penn Warren in 1935 at the behest of Charles W. Pipkin and funded by Huey Long as a part of his investment in Louisiana State University. It publishes ficti ...
'')[
# "A Bottle of Milk for Mother" (1941, as "Biceps",][ '']The Southern Review
''The Southern Review'' is a quarterly literary magazine that was established by Robert Penn Warren in 1935 at the behest of Charles W. Pipkin and funded by Huey Long as a part of his investment in Louisiana State University. It publishes ficti ...
'')[
# "He Couldn't Boogie-Woogie Worth a Damn"
# "A Lot You Got to Holler"
# "Poor Man's Pennies"
# "The Face on the Barroom Floor" (1947,][ '']The American Mercury
''The American Mercury'' was an American magazine published from 1924Staff (Dec. 31, 1923)"Bichloride of Mercury."''Time''. to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured w ...
'')[
# "The Brothers' House" (1934, '']Story
Story or stories may refer to:
Common uses
* Narrative, an account of imaginary or real people and events
** Short story, a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting
** News story, an event or topic reported by a news orga ...
'' magazine)[
# "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone"
# "He Swung and He Missed" (1942, '']The American Mercury
''The American Mercury'' was an American magazine published from 1924Staff (Dec. 31, 1923)"Bichloride of Mercury."''Time''. to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured w ...
'')[
# "El Presidente de Méjico"
# "Kingdom City to Cairo"
# "That's the Way It's Always Been"
# "The Children" (1943, '']The American Mercury
''The American Mercury'' was an American magazine published from 1924Staff (Dec. 31, 1923)"Bichloride of Mercury."''Time''. to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured w ...
'')[
# "Million-Dollar Brainstorm"
# "Pero Vencermos"
# "No Man's Laughter"
# "Katz"
# "Design for Departure"
# "The Heroes"
# "So Help Me" (1933, '']Story
Story or stories may refer to:
Common uses
* Narrative, an account of imaginary or real people and events
** Short story, a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting
** News story, an event or topic reported by a news orga ...
'' magazine)[
]
Notes
[That first appearance was as "The Face on the Barroom Floor, or Too Much Salt on the Pretzels". (See Contento reference.)]
References
[William G. Contento]
"Stories: Algren, Nelson"
in "Miscellaneous Anthologies Index" ("updated March 17, 2015"), ''Homeville: Bibliographic Resources'' (at Phil Stephensen-Payne's ''Galactic Central'')
Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical charac ...
''The Neon Wilderness''
"Algren received a 1947 Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a grant from Chicago's Newberry Library."[Brooke Horvath, ''Understanding Nelson Algren'', ]University of South Carolina Press
The University of South Carolina Press is an Academic publishing, academic publisher associated with the University of South Carolina. It was founded in 1944.
According to Casey Clabough, the quality of its list of authors and book design became s ...
, 2005, , p
167
Chicago Public Library
The Chicago Public Library (CPL) is the public library system that serves the Chicago, City of Chicago in the U.S. state of Illinois. It consists of 81 locations, including a central library, three regional libraries, and branches distributed thr ...
"The Nelson Algren Collection"
(1933–1999), Special Collections, 2005 — Partial bibliography with editions and printings, first appearances and reprintings, reviews and notices, etc.Random House
Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the foll ...
"O. Henry Award Winners 1919–1999"
''Bold Type'' (via Archive.org
The Internet Archive is an American non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including websites, software applic ...
)WorldCat
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...
"A bottle of milk for mother" (1941)
"From the ''Southern Review'' under the title of 'Biceps'. In O. Henry memorial award prize stories of 1941."
External links
*
The Neon Wilderness
' at Seven Stories Press
Seven Stories Press is an independent American publishing company. Based in New York City, the company was founded by Dan Simon in 1995, after establishing Four Walls Eight Windows in 1984 as an imprint at Writers and Readers, and then incorpor ...
(current edition, 1997)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Neon Wilderness, The
1947 short story collections
American short story collections
Works originally published in Story (magazine)
Doubleday (publisher) books
Seven Stories Press books
Works set in Chicago
Fictional portrayals of the Chicago Police Department