A Walk on the Wild Side

by Nelson Algren, Russell Banks (Foreword by)

Overview

With its depictions of the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers, and hustlers of Perdido Street in the old French Quarter of 1930s New Orleans, Nelson Algren's A Walk in the Wild Side has found a place in the imaginations of all generations since it first appeared.

As Algren admitted, the book "wasn't written until long after it had been walked . . . I found my way to the streets on the other side of the Southern Pacific station, where the big jukes were singing something called 'Walking the Wild Side of Life.' I've stayed pretty much on that side of the curb ever since."

Perhaps the author's own words describe this classic work 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."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374525323
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	06/24/1998
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.55(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.95(d)

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.

Editorial Reviews

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

From the Publisher

Alas, nowadays when people hear this book title, they think of the Lou Reed song—inspired by the Algren novel—or the movie with Laurence Harvey, a decimation of the book. That’s why it’s great to finally have a definitive audio version. Algren’s crazy pastiche of Texas Panhandle down-and-outers seems especially fresh today, more than five decades after its debut. His freewheeling style and use of vernacular are channeled by narrator Keith Szarabajka, who breathes life into colorful losers like Kitty Twist and the legless Achilles Schmidt. Those who enjoy the sparse regional styles of John Steinbeck and Anne Proulx will especially enjoy this production. Headphones listeners: The shouting sermons of Fitz Linkhorn, though mesmerizing, are a little too loud. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

JULY 2010 - AudioFile