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Notes from a sea diary: Hemingway all the way
mass market paperback book
- GenresTravel
188 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1965
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About the author
Nelson Algren
64 books286 followersPeople note American writer Nelson Algren for his novels, including
The Man with the Golden Arm
(1949), about the pride and longings of impoverished people.
Born of Swedish-immigrant parents, Nelson Ahlgren Abraham moved at an early age to Chicago. At University of Illinois, he studied journalism. His experiences as a migrant worker during the Depression provided the material for his first Somebody in Boots (1935). Throughout life, Algren identified with the underdog. From 1936 to 1940, the high-point of left-wing ideas on the literary scene of the United States, he served as editor of the project in Illinois. After putting the finishing touches to his second, he in 1942 joined and enlisted for the war. Never Come Morning received universal acclaim and eventually sold more than a million copies.
A dark naturalist style of Algren passionately records the details of trapped urban existence with flashes of melancholy poetry. He characterizes the lowlife drifters, whores, junkies, and barflies of row. He records the bravado of their colloquial language and lays their predicament bare.
Born of Swedish-immigrant parents, Nelson Ahlgren Abraham moved at an early age to Chicago. At University of Illinois, he studied journalism. His experiences as a migrant worker during the Depression provided the material for his first Somebody in Boots (1935). Throughout life, Algren identified with the underdog. From 1936 to 1940, the high-point of left-wing ideas on the literary scene of the United States, he served as editor of the project in Illinois. After putting the finishing touches to his second, he in 1942 joined and enlisted for the war. Never Come Morning received universal acclaim and eventually sold more than a million copies.
A dark naturalist style of Algren passionately records the details of trapped urban existence with flashes of melancholy poetry. He characterizes the lowlife drifters, whores, junkies, and barflies of row. He records the bravado of their colloquial language and lays their predicament bare.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 16, 2019
This book really blew me away- and it's the first time in a long time, that I've been able to say that.
This is not a book I thought I would really enjoy- sure, I bought it because of the premise- author Nelson Algren is a passenger on a merchant freighter making regular stops in South and Southeast Asia, intermittently making observations about Ernest Hemingway.
I like Hemingway, and I like sea stories, so I figured I'd give it a whirl. My other motivation for reading this book is because I'm interested in what those parts of the world were like in the 1950's.
What I was not prepared for, was how good a writer Algren is. He's a great observer, could tell a fantastic story, and had a brilliant, cutting, acerbic wit. ...and he was funny...extremely funny- that I didn't expect at all. (He could also laugh at himself and take a joke in a way that was not self-denigrating.)
Nelson's accessible intellectualism further bolstered the content of the book. Between the stories about the seedy low-life of all the ports of The East, he dissects and assails the critics of Hemingway (with whom a brief personal meeting in Cuba is related at the beginning of the book) and then lambastes them soundly with his aforementioned acid wit, and ability as a real writer of living, breathing, flesh-and-blood literature.
Don't be misled that this book is a yuk-fest. Algren takes on topics that plague us today- income inequality, class war, racism (which plays out in a fascinating half-imagined conversation between himself and James Baldwin), and Feminism. (Simone de Beauvoir- with whom he had a "torrid" intimate relationship, cleverly and anonymously appears in this book.) It's no wonder Algren ended up in Joe McCarthy's sights.
He is a strange Feminist- his chapter "Kalyani of the Four Hundred" is powerful. It describes the plight of caged prostitutes in India- and if this chapter doesn't break your heart in two- you are an inhuman fucking pig. However, Algren has dalliances with (uncaged) prostitutes and details them in a strangely compassionate, yet uncompassionate way.
This is why he's a little hard to wrap your head around. He was born to a blue collar family and scraped by for his entire life despite his success. So when he writes about the poor and downtrodden, only the most extreme cases evoke his sympathy. For the rest, he has a degree of compassion (having been one of them), but it is not colored with sentiment (like Steinbeck, who romanticized them) and it has its limits.
All in all, I was floored. I never read Algren because I didn't like his subject matter (prostitutes, pimps, drunks, gamblers, junkies)- but after sampling his writing...I'm going to start reading him stem to stern. I really can't believe that a writer of his quality has been so largely overlooked. He idolized Hemingway- but honestly, he is much the same caliber, yet on a different scale.
If these topics pique your interest, I highly recommend this book.
This is not a book I thought I would really enjoy- sure, I bought it because of the premise- author Nelson Algren is a passenger on a merchant freighter making regular stops in South and Southeast Asia, intermittently making observations about Ernest Hemingway.
I like Hemingway, and I like sea stories, so I figured I'd give it a whirl. My other motivation for reading this book is because I'm interested in what those parts of the world were like in the 1950's.
What I was not prepared for, was how good a writer Algren is. He's a great observer, could tell a fantastic story, and had a brilliant, cutting, acerbic wit. ...and he was funny...extremely funny- that I didn't expect at all. (He could also laugh at himself and take a joke in a way that was not self-denigrating.)
Nelson's accessible intellectualism further bolstered the content of the book. Between the stories about the seedy low-life of all the ports of The East, he dissects and assails the critics of Hemingway (with whom a brief personal meeting in Cuba is related at the beginning of the book) and then lambastes them soundly with his aforementioned acid wit, and ability as a real writer of living, breathing, flesh-and-blood literature.
Don't be misled that this book is a yuk-fest. Algren takes on topics that plague us today- income inequality, class war, racism (which plays out in a fascinating half-imagined conversation between himself and James Baldwin), and Feminism. (Simone de Beauvoir- with whom he had a "torrid" intimate relationship, cleverly and anonymously appears in this book.) It's no wonder Algren ended up in Joe McCarthy's sights.
He is a strange Feminist- his chapter "Kalyani of the Four Hundred" is powerful. It describes the plight of caged prostitutes in India- and if this chapter doesn't break your heart in two- you are an inhuman fucking pig. However, Algren has dalliances with (uncaged) prostitutes and details them in a strangely compassionate, yet uncompassionate way.
This is why he's a little hard to wrap your head around. He was born to a blue collar family and scraped by for his entire life despite his success. So when he writes about the poor and downtrodden, only the most extreme cases evoke his sympathy. For the rest, he has a degree of compassion (having been one of them), but it is not colored with sentiment (like Steinbeck, who romanticized them) and it has its limits.
All in all, I was floored. I never read Algren because I didn't like his subject matter (prostitutes, pimps, drunks, gamblers, junkies)- but after sampling his writing...I'm going to start reading him stem to stern. I really can't believe that a writer of his quality has been so largely overlooked. He idolized Hemingway- but honestly, he is much the same caliber, yet on a different scale.
If these topics pique your interest, I highly recommend this book.
August 14, 2015
Not bad. Quick read. Got a lot of salty language and blunt speaking. Exotic locales. Anecdotes of brawls and whores and the ways of third-world ports. Algren talks fast and slick 1950s slang, but he was kind of an older man even when this book was written. Strange character. Amidst his travelogue there's some nice pearls of opinion; for instance he absolutely slams literary critics of the day; in his defense of the greatness of Hemingway. I'm not entirely convinced of anything Algren really says, though. Pretty glib, off-the-cuff, slapdash maunderings...
January 15, 2021
Insufferable narrator, okay otherwise.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews