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A Walk on the Wild Side
With its depiction 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 imagination of all the generations that have followed since. As Algren admitted, it 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 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.
Cover Photograph: Jason Fulford
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.
Cover Photograph: Jason Fulford
346 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1956
80 people are currently reading
3495 people want to read
About the author
Nelson Algren
70 books297 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 - 30 of 154 reviews
August 6, 2017
Walk on the Wild Side, Lou Reed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wNkn...
"Mr. Algren, boy, you are good."-- Ernest Hemingway
Walk on the Wild Side is set in Perdido Street in the old French Quarter of depression-era New Orleans. With its depictions of an array of prostitutes, bootleggers, and hustlers, it is wild, but also warm, passionate, edgy, angry, funny. He wrote it soon after hanging out there for a time, and, “I've stayed pretty much on that side of the curb ever since." Algren never feels like he is slumming. He’s with these people all the way.
Walk on the Wild Side is the story of Dove Linkhorn, a wild and naïve and cocky 16-year-old from a small Texas town who finds his way to New Orleans. The book predates and probably highly influenced books with out-of-control wild characters such as Heller’s Catch 22 and Kesey’s Cuckoo’s Nest. Oh, and almost anything by Kerouac, Bukowski, or Pynchon. I read it in part because I had recently read Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, which it would be grouped with, as well. Tacks back and forth between black humor and despair, with tolerance for all manner of individuals, a kind of moral map for democracy. Like Whitman, visceral.
“To this lopsided shambles owned by this unlicensed ghost, this speakeasy spook who had been alive once but died in the crash and was now only haunting the thirties, came trudging, some uphill and some down, all those who could not admit that the money was spent, the dream was over; the magic done. They still wore the clothes they wore before 1929 and no one knew when they might buy clothes again.”
"Never Come Morning " is my favorite Algren (so far), but this is very good. Hilarious and sad, lyrically melancholy. I listened to it on audiotape, which made the rich language come alive.
Algren summed his book up 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."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wNkn...
"Mr. Algren, boy, you are good."-- Ernest Hemingway
Walk on the Wild Side is set in Perdido Street in the old French Quarter of depression-era New Orleans. With its depictions of an array of prostitutes, bootleggers, and hustlers, it is wild, but also warm, passionate, edgy, angry, funny. He wrote it soon after hanging out there for a time, and, “I've stayed pretty much on that side of the curb ever since." Algren never feels like he is slumming. He’s with these people all the way.
Walk on the Wild Side is the story of Dove Linkhorn, a wild and naïve and cocky 16-year-old from a small Texas town who finds his way to New Orleans. The book predates and probably highly influenced books with out-of-control wild characters such as Heller’s Catch 22 and Kesey’s Cuckoo’s Nest. Oh, and almost anything by Kerouac, Bukowski, or Pynchon. I read it in part because I had recently read Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, which it would be grouped with, as well. Tacks back and forth between black humor and despair, with tolerance for all manner of individuals, a kind of moral map for democracy. Like Whitman, visceral.
“To this lopsided shambles owned by this unlicensed ghost, this speakeasy spook who had been alive once but died in the crash and was now only haunting the thirties, came trudging, some uphill and some down, all those who could not admit that the money was spent, the dream was over; the magic done. They still wore the clothes they wore before 1929 and no one knew when they might buy clothes again.”
"Never Come Morning " is my favorite Algren (so far), but this is very good. Hilarious and sad, lyrically melancholy. I listened to it on audiotape, which made the rich language come alive.
Algren summed his book up 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."
November 12, 2015
"...um homem que escreve e que não deve ser lido por quem não aguenta um murro. O Sr. Algren ataca com ambas as mãos, cerca-nos e mata-nos se não formos incrivelmente cuidadosos."
Ernest Hemingway
Não me matou mas deixou-me com cicatrizes...
Comprei este livro por duas razões:
1. Porque foi escrito em 1956...
2. Porque Sartre sofreu com o envolvimento de Simone de Beauvoir com Algren. E, depois de chegar ao fim deste Romance, posso afirmar que a minha lógica estava certa: Nelson Algren era Especial.
Dove é um provinciano do Texas com a cabeça atulhada de sonhos. Aos dezasseis anos foge de casa na busca de um futuro em Nova Orleães.
O ano é o de 1931, o apogeu da Grande Depressão, quando a sobrevivência era o único sonho realizável. Vigaristas, prostitutas, proxenetas, ladrões, bêbedos, loucos, marginais,...sobreviventes. Heróis, de uma saga magnífica, que me fizeram chorar por eles e rir com eles.
Não me é fácil escrever mais sobre este livro sem me arriscar a ser inconveniente, ou desagradável, ao falar de crises económicas, de pobreza, de sofrimento, de Vidas Perdidas...
Recomendo:
1. A quem gosta de um livro a sério: com uma prosa perfeita, por vezes quase poesia (muitas vezes poesia, porque a música está sempre presente);
2. A quem não tem medo de se sentir encurralado; querendo continuar a ler e não querendo saber o que vem a seguir (porque suspeitamos que nada virá de bom);
3. A quem gosta de Cormac McCarthy; muitas vezes me lembrei de Suttree, embora o romance de Algren não se centre numa única personagem principal; todas são principais e secundárias;
4. A quem não se importe de ler um livro que não está na "moda". Pouca gente do Goodreads o leu, mas quem leu não se arrependeu;
5. Porque eu recomendo. E sou uma mulher com "bom gosto literário", disseram-me há dias...(Só me atrevi com o ponto 5. porque espero que quem se pôs a ler esta opinião tenha parado algures no terceiro parágrafo :P)
Ernest Hemingway
Não me matou mas deixou-me com cicatrizes...
Comprei este livro por duas razões:
1. Porque foi escrito em 1956...
2. Porque Sartre sofreu com o envolvimento de Simone de Beauvoir com Algren. E, depois de chegar ao fim deste Romance, posso afirmar que a minha lógica estava certa: Nelson Algren era Especial.
Dove é um provinciano do Texas com a cabeça atulhada de sonhos. Aos dezasseis anos foge de casa na busca de um futuro em Nova Orleães.
O ano é o de 1931, o apogeu da Grande Depressão, quando a sobrevivência era o único sonho realizável. Vigaristas, prostitutas, proxenetas, ladrões, bêbedos, loucos, marginais,...sobreviventes. Heróis, de uma saga magnífica, que me fizeram chorar por eles e rir com eles.
Não me é fácil escrever mais sobre este livro sem me arriscar a ser inconveniente, ou desagradável, ao falar de crises económicas, de pobreza, de sofrimento, de Vidas Perdidas...
Recomendo:
1. A quem gosta de um livro a sério: com uma prosa perfeita, por vezes quase poesia (muitas vezes poesia, porque a música está sempre presente);
2. A quem não tem medo de se sentir encurralado; querendo continuar a ler e não querendo saber o que vem a seguir (porque suspeitamos que nada virá de bom);
3. A quem gosta de Cormac McCarthy; muitas vezes me lembrei de Suttree, embora o romance de Algren não se centre numa única personagem principal; todas são principais e secundárias;
4. A quem não se importe de ler um livro que não está na "moda". Pouca gente do Goodreads o leu, mas quem leu não se arrependeu;
5. Porque eu recomendo. E sou uma mulher com "bom gosto literário", disseram-me há dias...
May 3, 2026
Absolutely devastating writing.
A possible “hard travellin’” companion to Jim Tully’s Beggars Of Life and Circus Parade and Kerouac’s On The Road.
This was published in 1956.
Kerouac’s much more culturally influential novel was published in 1957.
Algren’s hard hitting novel is set during the Great Depression when Prohibition was in effect; Kerouac’s tome is set in post-WWII America.
While On The Road will always be a sentimental favorite of mine, A Walk on the Wild Side is something else entirely - paragraph after paragraph of heart shattering beauty, raw knuckle poetry.
Algren is the superior writer of the three.
Synopsis?
Episodic and haunting, occasionally violent, the novel follows the rise of the illiterate and deceptively simple man, Dove Linkhorn as he journeys from his impoverished Texas hamlet, walking barefoot- a man so destitute he doesn’t even own shoes- in search of a more interesting if not easier lifestyle.
He arrives in New Orleans and finds his new life on Perdido Street and Storyville among the whores, their pimps, their madams, and their rooms for entertaining gentlemen callers.
Perhaps Dove Linkhorn isn’t as simple a fool as others have taken him.
Vividly depicted characters practically over populate the novel - each with their own harrowing back story.
But there is poetry to be found in abundance in this novel.
I’d place Algren leagues above the short time home-run hero Kerouac proved to be.
A few excerpts are pasted below:
A possible “hard travellin’” companion to Jim Tully’s Beggars Of Life and Circus Parade and Kerouac’s On The Road.
This was published in 1956.
Kerouac’s much more culturally influential novel was published in 1957.
Algren’s hard hitting novel is set during the Great Depression when Prohibition was in effect; Kerouac’s tome is set in post-WWII America.
While On The Road will always be a sentimental favorite of mine, A Walk on the Wild Side is something else entirely - paragraph after paragraph of heart shattering beauty, raw knuckle poetry.
Algren is the superior writer of the three.
Synopsis?
Episodic and haunting, occasionally violent, the novel follows the rise of the illiterate and deceptively simple man, Dove Linkhorn as he journeys from his impoverished Texas hamlet, walking barefoot- a man so destitute he doesn’t even own shoes- in search of a more interesting if not easier lifestyle.
He arrives in New Orleans and finds his new life on Perdido Street and Storyville among the whores, their pimps, their madams, and their rooms for entertaining gentlemen callers.
Perhaps Dove Linkhorn isn’t as simple a fool as others have taken him.
Vividly depicted characters practically over populate the novel - each with their own harrowing back story.
But there is poetry to be found in abundance in this novel.
I’d place Algren leagues above the short time home-run hero Kerouac proved to be.
A few excerpts are pasted below:
Description of New Orleans during the worst of the Depression:
From the Barracks Street wharf to Bienville, drydock to drydock, dead ocean liners lay like ruined whales, their great white hulls turning to rust. The whole town was in drydock.
Over all, in a coffee-hued haze from happier years, one still smelled the big brown smell of coffee. The warehouse walls, like the hulls, were stained with it. Below the planks ancestral sacks were rotting in the lap and wash.
The whole town was in drydock, the whole country in hock…
”But blow wise to this, buddy, blow wise to this: Never play cards with a man named Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own. Never let nobody talk you into shaking another man’s jolt. And never you cop another man’s plea. I’ve tried ‘em all and I know. They don’t work.”
No one heeded the brainless rain and no one heard what the rain tried to tell. For the wind and the rain came every day and whispered like two unpaid lawyers together all night, fixing to say what, in the coming day, what everyone wished to hear said.
“It’s awful when it’s like this,” Dove thought, “and it’s like this now”
This is Beat in everything but name.
Not the pose—the real thing.
Long form, slow burn, and it hurts.
November 21, 2015
Nelson Algren (1909 – 1981)
”Vidas Perdidas” no original ”A Walk On The Wild Side” é um romance do escritor norte-americano Nelson Algren (1909 – 1981) publicado em 1956.
Nelson Algren é referenciado como um dos escritores mais original no panorama literário norte-americano, premiado com o “National Book Award” em 1949 com o romance ”The Man with the Golden Arm”; com uma vida recheada de problemas, com o jogo, com casamentos desastrosos, com a pobreza, com a prisão por roubo e pela relação amorosa que manteve com a escritora francesa Simone de Beauvoir (na altura casada com o escritor francês Jean-Paul Sartre).
”Vidas Perdidas” segue os passos de um jovem de 16 anos, Dove Linkhorn, órfão de mãe, analfabeto, com um pai, Fitz Linkhorn, pregador fanático e um irmão, Byron, alcoólico, numa fuga a um ambiente pobre, degradante, sem perspectiva de vida, sem vislumbre de futuro, empreendendo uma viagem de Hicksville, no Texas, para Nova Orleães.
Nessa “viagem” Dove Linkhorn encontra Terasina Vidavarri, uma mulher mais velha que vive nos destroços do que restava do Hotel Crockett, um relacionamento amoroso curto, arruinado pela incompreensão, pelo orgulho, pela mentira e pela violência.
“É uma sorte amar, seja quando for, porque nestas alturas temos alguém para quem viver" pensava Terasina. "Mas não amar também é uma sorte. Porque assim não temos problemas.” (Pág. 35)
Já em Nova Orleães, Dove Linkhorn acaba “perdido” em Perdido Street, onde mulheres e homens vivem vidas inquietas, ”Vidas Perdidas”, escondendo a solidão com o consumo desenfreado de bebidas alcoólicas e de drogas, pobres e famintos que tentam desesperadamente sobreviver; com prostitutas e chulos, numa exploração sórdida de mulheres, um mundo marginal formado por alianças provisórias, num dos períodos mais conturbados da história dos Estados Unidos da América, os anos 30, o período da Grande Depressão, onde a decadência e a amargura dominam, mas onde acaba por existir alguma réstia de esperança e de amor.
A narrativa de ”Vidas Perdidas” não é estruturada de uma forma ordenada, espelhando a vida errática e aleatória de Dove Linkhorn e das várias personagens, numa linguagem inventiva, com um humor negro sublime, por vezes, confusa, entre o passado e o presente, mas com descrições e detalhes fascinantes.
”Vidas Perdidas” é um excelente romance, com um início brilhante, ambientado a um dos períodos mais negro do “Sonho Americano” - com personagens inesquecíveis, com destaque para Dove Linkhorn, Terasina Vidavarri, a prostituta Hallie e Kitty Twist - mas que em determinados períodos a narrativa de torna excessivamente confusa, com a profusão de personagens que desaparecem e reaparecem sem qualquer explicação; numa história de personagens infelizes e desesperadas em busca da “fortuna”, do amor e da redenção.
“E sentiu uma sombria apreensão pela possibilidade de estar destinado a só fazer sofrer as pessoas que lhe eram mais queridas.
De vir a sofrer muitas amarguras, umas súbitas, outras lentas, algumas só de passagem, e uma que nunca o iria abandonar.” (Pág. 116)
“Há uma vantagem que as mulheres têm sobre os homens: podem descer aos infernos e sair de lá direitas outra vez.” (Pág. 132)"
"Tenho a sensação de ter estado em todos os lugares que Deus criou", pensou Dove, "mas a única coisa que encontrei foi gente com vidas muito difíceis. A única coisa que encontrei foram problemas e degradação. A única coisa que encontrei é que aqueles que tinham vidas mais difíceis de levar são mais propensos a ajudar os outros do que aqueles que as têm fáceis. A única coisa que encontrei foi duas espécies de pessoas: as que preferiam viver do lado da rua dos perdedores com outros perdedores a vencer inteiramente por si próprias e as que queriam ser vencedoras mesmo que a única maneira que lhes restava de subir na vida fosse pisando os que tinham tombado. A única coisa que encontrei foram homens e mulheres, e todas as mulheres já tinham caído." (Pág. 384 - 385)
November 19, 2012
An amazing and beautiful ride! It would seem that Algren's name no longer rings in the counter culture lit canon the way that writers like Kerouac, Hunter S Thompson, Hubert Selby Jr, Bukowski, Pynchon and Burroughs do though you can find elements of all these writers by chance or by influence in Walk On The Wild Side. WOTWS is surely one of the great well springs from which tales of the American underbelly, druggy lit, road lit and even gonzo and many aspects of post modern writing would flow from. It was published 1 year before On the Road, 4 years before Naked Lunch, 8 years before Last Exit to Brooklyn, 7 years before Pynchon's V. and 10 years before Hell's Angels. Where some of the other more famous touchstones of Beat and Post Modern lit show some aging and wear and tear in the overall quality and depth of the work now that the explosion and fan fare of their historical literary moment is beginning to settle, Algren's great work remains a knock out and shamefully under-celebrated. A great story, experimentation with flow and form, timeless characters in hallucinatory technicolor, all executed by a master's hand. This is rich, colorful, underground, funky, twisted stuff and it's a beautiful blast to get inside of.
August 27, 2017
I'd not read Algren before. I'd known of him for a long time, but my primary interest in him was his connection to Simone de Beauvoir as her lover. Following her trail I'd read their published letters and then, early this year, the Algren biography by Mary Wisniewski. All that brought me to A Walk on the Wild Side. And I found some surprises there and took comfort in them, much like Paul Simon took comfort in the whores of 7th Avenue. First, I thought at times--not always--Algren's style reminded me a little of Cormac McCarthy. This is most apparent in the opening scenes in Texas, where Dove Linkhorn's story begins. And, as I say, I didn't think that quality consistent throughout the novel, which was, I thought, a bit too long.
Algren wrote a novel about people scraping by in the hardscrabble underbelly of Perdido Street in New Orleans in the early years of the Great Depression. It's inhabited by hustlers, prostitutes, and gamblers. They eke out a living however they can on the street. Business on Perdido consists of bars, the counterfeit love of prostitutes, door-to-door scams, and bootlegging. The industry of the street is a mom and pop condom factory, where Dove works for a time. Near the end Algren calls his characters outlaws and derelicts. They're lost, beaten down by the times and their own marginal lives. But he sees their elemental nature as spiritual, even angelic. Algren himself said, "The book asks why lost people sometimes develop into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives." His answer is the narrative of Dove Linkhorn's young manhood. His answer was my last surprise. The ending made me remember the end of Wise Blood. But where Hazel Motes saw only emptiness, Dove's vision of everlasting promise serves to remind us these characters are at least God's creatures. Here, though, God is Algren, and the final truth is that he had a deep love for his characters.
Algren wrote a novel about people scraping by in the hardscrabble underbelly of Perdido Street in New Orleans in the early years of the Great Depression. It's inhabited by hustlers, prostitutes, and gamblers. They eke out a living however they can on the street. Business on Perdido consists of bars, the counterfeit love of prostitutes, door-to-door scams, and bootlegging. The industry of the street is a mom and pop condom factory, where Dove works for a time. Near the end Algren calls his characters outlaws and derelicts. They're lost, beaten down by the times and their own marginal lives. But he sees their elemental nature as spiritual, even angelic. Algren himself said, "The book asks why lost people sometimes develop into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives." His answer is the narrative of Dove Linkhorn's young manhood. His answer was my last surprise. The ending made me remember the end of Wise Blood. But where Hazel Motes saw only emptiness, Dove's vision of everlasting promise serves to remind us these characters are at least God's creatures. Here, though, God is Algren, and the final truth is that he had a deep love for his characters.
March 3, 2014
If you like your characters damaged and your prose poetic, this is the book for you. No author does it better.
August 15, 2023
Far better than I expected. References to Lou Reed’s “Walk on the wild side” are understandable, but not very fitting. The soundtrack to this book should probably be old New Orleans jazz with an off-key piano and some out-of-breath trombone, or some shuffling, greasy rhythm ’n' blues. Or perhaps something by Tom Waits, like this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLDA3...
A walk on the wild side is filled with people down on their luck – beggars, derelicts, grifters, winos, prostitutes – riding freight trains through the night, always gambling on the wrong horse, spending every hard-won dollar just as quickly in a seedy bar or brothel. Yet it's not a sad book - it's lively, passionate, strangely optimistic and sometimes very funny as well.
Nelson Algren does not loose too much time on plot, but this he compensates with atmosphere and darkly poetic writing, in a style very much his own:
Great book.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLDA3...
A walk on the wild side is filled with people down on their luck – beggars, derelicts, grifters, winos, prostitutes – riding freight trains through the night, always gambling on the wrong horse, spending every hard-won dollar just as quickly in a seedy bar or brothel. Yet it's not a sad book - it's lively, passionate, strangely optimistic and sometimes very funny as well.
Nelson Algren does not loose too much time on plot, but this he compensates with atmosphere and darkly poetic writing, in a style very much his own:
For though in their narrow closets the women’s clothes still hung and their stoves still faintly gave off heat, the beer buckets stood half empty and the whiskey stood half drunk. One had steadied a dresser mirror by jabbing her slipper between it and the wood. Outside a dog kept trotting and sniffing between the deserted cribs. And an air of rage and terrible haste that could only mean the worst was yet to come walked the empty rooms.
It came by car splashing mud to the fender, men and wild boys leaped out –he heard the first glass smash and saw the first flame reach.
Bringing the ponce a pleasured sorrow, a kind of release from everything.
The same sick pleasure at the same dead dream. Though he could not place the curious name of that place nor its women’s names either dark or fair.
He had never seen those wild boys. Nor how a rain puddle made fever fire below a last porch light left burning.
Great book.
June 16, 2013
Nelson Algren's novel relates the adventures of Dove Linkhorn, an illiterate young man who leaves poverty and a failed love affair behind him to wander the countryside. He has many adventures along the way until he settles for a time in New Orleans, where he will experience happiness and great tragedy.
Linkhorn is an appealing character, whose desire to better himself makes him easy to sympathize with. The real star of this novel, however, is Algren's prose. Hemingway himself felt that Algren was one of the best writers in America, although their styles couldn't be more different. In contrast to Hemingway's stark, deceptively simple prose, Algren's is full of flourishes and wordplay. I have never encountered a writer that was more adept at breaking my heart and making me laugh out loud on the same page--sometimes in the same paragraph. There are verbal fireworks going off in this book. His characters are extreme types living on the fringe of society, but Algren makes them come alive. Highly recommended.
Linkhorn is an appealing character, whose desire to better himself makes him easy to sympathize with. The real star of this novel, however, is Algren's prose. Hemingway himself felt that Algren was one of the best writers in America, although their styles couldn't be more different. In contrast to Hemingway's stark, deceptively simple prose, Algren's is full of flourishes and wordplay. I have never encountered a writer that was more adept at breaking my heart and making me laugh out loud on the same page--sometimes in the same paragraph. There are verbal fireworks going off in this book. His characters are extreme types living on the fringe of society, but Algren makes them come alive. Highly recommended.
May 4, 2013
Though the writing is very impressive - descriptive, ironic, poetic, I couldn't get into the story because none of the characters is developed enough for me to care much about them. It felt long and repetitious. Many of the characters seemed like caricatures rather than real people. Dove Linkhorn, the main character, was some what sympathetic though not entirely, as he often contributed to his own situation.
June 23, 2025
I stumbled across this book in the bookshop and was taken by the title, which turned out to be the inspiration for Lou Reed's song with the same name. Having been one of my favourite songs last year I was keen to see how much inspiration the song took from the book.
My feelings towards this book are a lot like the lives of those explored in this book: bleak and shallow with very little redeemable characteristics. While I sometimes enjoyed the descriptions of this grim reality, the book also offered no relief from this harsh existence. Parts of this book were flat out uncomfortable to read, and rather than being a page turner, were firmly a page (and book) stopper.
The structure is all over the place with characters coming and going, seemingly without too much reason or explanation, and no sense of plot. I thought this might be to represent the lack of direction these characters face in their lives, always looking for the next hustle. But from the reader's perspective, this reads like someone with amnesia writing a book and forgetting who or what came before.
Lastly I fundamentally disagreed with the portrayal of those who have not in this book. Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat explores the morally ambiguous outlook of those struggling to get by, but who ultimately demonstrate redeeming qualities and that people can improve and deep down are good. Whereas the boyos in Tortilla Flat will do things which aren't necessarily right but for the right reasons, Dove and others in this book simply do bad things and all for the wrong reasons. Having experienced the kindness and generosity of those without first hand from my time on the road, I felt like this book's sordid atmosphere and outlook made it an easy relegation from the book shelf to propping up an uneven table.
My feelings towards this book are a lot like the lives of those explored in this book: bleak and shallow with very little redeemable characteristics. While I sometimes enjoyed the descriptions of this grim reality, the book also offered no relief from this harsh existence. Parts of this book were flat out uncomfortable to read, and rather than being a page turner, were firmly a page (and book) stopper.
The structure is all over the place with characters coming and going, seemingly without too much reason or explanation, and no sense of plot. I thought this might be to represent the lack of direction these characters face in their lives, always looking for the next hustle. But from the reader's perspective, this reads like someone with amnesia writing a book and forgetting who or what came before.
Lastly I fundamentally disagreed with the portrayal of those who have not in this book. Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat explores the morally ambiguous outlook of those struggling to get by, but who ultimately demonstrate redeeming qualities and that people can improve and deep down are good. Whereas the boyos in Tortilla Flat will do things which aren't necessarily right but for the right reasons, Dove and others in this book simply do bad things and all for the wrong reasons. Having experienced the kindness and generosity of those without first hand from my time on the road, I felt like this book's sordid atmosphere and outlook made it an easy relegation from the book shelf to propping up an uneven table.
January 31, 2021
I greatly enjoyed the book’s picaresque plot, fascinatingly washed up characters, linguistic virtuosity, and local flavor. The book says as much about the atmosphere of the Great Depression as Grapes of Wrath and is much more entertaining.
September 13, 2021
Elgren hasn't written a novel, he's painstakingly created a world. Reading this is like putting together a deconstructed onion or how I imagine that might be in the most theoretical way. By the end you have an understanding of each part and how they all come together to create the whole. The onion here is April of 1932, a really crazy fucking time in downtrodden New Orleans.
The effect is that you not only feel like you are walking alongside Dove down the unpaved streets of Arroyo or the sordid ones of Perdido Street, but you also have a sense of the people that came before you on that road without needing to be told. While an admirable literary pursuit, this doesn't always make for the most enjoyable read. I just watched Once Upon a Time In America, a 3-hour long epic and it very much had the same effect. It constructs a world you get sucked into so you must watch to the end, but there are times when you are disheartened by the monotony. A catch-22 perhaps.
The effect is that you not only feel like you are walking alongside Dove down the unpaved streets of Arroyo or the sordid ones of Perdido Street, but you also have a sense of the people that came before you on that road without needing to be told. While an admirable literary pursuit, this doesn't always make for the most enjoyable read. I just watched Once Upon a Time In America, a 3-hour long epic and it very much had the same effect. It constructs a world you get sucked into so you must watch to the end, but there are times when you are disheartened by the monotony. A catch-22 perhaps.
February 1, 2012
"And the coloured girls say
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
doo"
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
doo"
September 4, 2021
One of the best books I've ever read. In my utopia, Hemingway would have never made his way into the canon of great American literature, and Nelson Algren would be at the top of the heap. Gritty, brutal and utterly beautiful.
June 22, 2023
Sometimes I think the real prevailing theme in 20th Century American literature isn't alienation or a clash of ideologies and philosophies but rather the migration of our populace from the country to the cities, not unlike one of the great themes of English lit in the previous century. Algren's rural world is far from paradise, its innocence is thin and largely born of ignorance, but his city is hell itself and his characters utterly unfit to survive within the inferno.
This was my first Algren novel and I was surprised by how scathingly, perversely sexual it is. Almost hard to believe copies traveled by mail in a country so prone to censorship, though one would actually have to read the book to get the full effect, the near-poetic language proof against the spectacles above the blue nose. I can see the powerful influence Algren must have had on writers like Harry Crews and Terry Southern. My only real criticisms are that too many of the characters have the same voice and that a couple of the scenes descend into a kind of sadistic slapstick, amusing but damaging to the tone.
Now, to quote the old ghost story, "I want my golden arm."
This was my first Algren novel and I was surprised by how scathingly, perversely sexual it is. Almost hard to believe copies traveled by mail in a country so prone to censorship, though one would actually have to read the book to get the full effect, the near-poetic language proof against the spectacles above the blue nose. I can see the powerful influence Algren must have had on writers like Harry Crews and Terry Southern. My only real criticisms are that too many of the characters have the same voice and that a couple of the scenes descend into a kind of sadistic slapstick, amusing but damaging to the tone.
Now, to quote the old ghost story, "I want my golden arm."
August 7, 2007
Unbelievable! Pimps, prostitutes, alcoholics, thieves, drug addicts, drifters, abortionists, scam artists, barflies. . . every down-and-out person you're ever likely to meet is in here. Algren wrote about the kinds people and places that he knew best and his work reads like dark poetry. An amazing command of the English language!
Read
May 19, 2008Before Kerouac, before Hubert Selby, and contemporary with Celine, there was Nelson Algren. Despite the fact that he's almost been forgotten by so many contemporary readers, his prose has all the earthy brute force that it must have had 50 years ago. If you want to know what the profligates of America must have been like in another era, this should be your jam.
August 11, 2014
I put this one off for a long time, knowing it was Algren's most popular, but then I kept encountering references to it involving Hunter Thompson. It is clearly the most outstanding of the 4-5 Algren books I've read. A brilliant feat of modernism, like a cross between Grapes of Wrath and Naked Lunch.
May 15, 2015
If you want to read a book about down and out people who treat each other poorly, this may be the book for you. It's only redeeming quality is the author's beautiful use of language. Otherwise, it was too unrelentingly negative for me.
February 6, 2016
I can't remember the last time I read something so beautifully written. Algren had an ear for the poetry of regional al speech and the wisdom of the uneducated.
the events of the story may depict an ugly part of society but the language is just So Beautiful. I couldn't put it down.
the events of the story may depict an ugly part of society but the language is just So Beautiful. I couldn't put it down.
June 19, 2017
Excellent writing but unremittingly grim!
March 29, 2021
Well..., I *almost* finished it. I found it overwrought and artificial. I’ve been disappointed in Algren so far. Will start Man with the Golden Arm, but won’t give it much thread...
April 2, 2023
Wow, this book is both gritty and magical. I loved it. I listened to it via audible as read by Keith Szarabajka, and he's excellent at the different voices, although I did find some trouble with the volume modulation, as the soft parts are hard to hear, but the loud, yelling parts are super loud. But I just loved the reading and the book. I'm going to have to buy a copy and read it myself to savor it.
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November 26, 2021“A Walk on the Wild Side” is a looser, lazier novel than “The Man with the Golden Arm,” but the New Orleans ambience is lovingly portrayed and Algren’s sympathy for the farthest-under underdogs never quits. Hemingway overrated him, as does Banks in his introduction to the 1998 edition we just read, and I can’t share their full enthusiasm. Still and all, I’m glad Algren’s scruffy brand of Americana has maintained a fair amount of cultural cachet. And hey, not just any writer can dream up monikers like Dove Linkhorn and Kitty Twist.
March 16, 2026
A gentleman’s 3. Some fine passages but mostly it felt like a gifted writer hammering out prose in the middle of a month-long bender. The plot is looser than the women he portrays on Perdido Street. Were pages tossed for being covered in vomit or did he just keep losing the thread? The characters are but bleak caricatures. It’s of a style, I guess. Just not mine.
December 10, 2020
Algren's characters are compelling and it seems he has a genuine fondness for these hapless creatures. Not as "wild" as I had anticipated it is still a somewhat sordid tale of the impolite side of life. An easy read with a descriptive style that has stayed with me after closing the cover.
April 15, 2013
What did I think? Thought it was great.
A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren is a crazy rollick through New Orleans in 1930-'31, in that era. Published in '56. Crest books reprinted it in paperback in '62.
We follow the insane adventures--misadventures--of Dove Linkhorn, a red-neck illiterate from Aurora, Texas, by rail. Freight, that is, in boxcars he jumps on his way out of town. He splits from Aurora because of a fall from grace from the gal he falls in love with, Terasina, his employer. He gets into her undies one morning, leaves her in bed, goes downstairs to the café she owns, and emboldened by his success with Terasina in bed, he figures she can't do without him, and opens her cash register. This is a sad mistake. Terasina comes tearing downstairs and tosses old Dove out her joint on his head. This, of course, is why he splits.
He meets up with a young seventeen years old gal, but she is more like two-thousand years old in experience. She talks Dove into a B&A., while she waits outside as look-out. She is nabbed, but Dove escapes, and hits the rails again.
In New Orleans his eyes are knocked out by the marvels of this amazing city of all sins. By and by, he links up with a pimp who recognizes Dove's talents as a cocksman, and puts him to work having his way with "virgins" while paid perverts peek through peepholes to watch Dove's expertise with the "virgins." Of course, these are not virgins, but are old-head whores pimped by Finnerty, who goes shares in the cash with Dove.
Dove can't stand up under the weight of his success, however, and is well on his way to the gutter via the bottle. He is saved by an octoroon beauty, Hallie, who goes into hiding with Dove, and among other things teaches him to read. The problem is, Hallie has a jealous boyfriend. A cat name of Schmidt who has one leg off at the knee, the other one off at the hip, and gets around right fine on a flat-board scooter he straps himself onto. Before he lost his legs, Schmidt had been an awesome athlete who was employed as a stooge in a wrestling team making decent dough. Schmidt still has enormous strength in his shoulders and arms, and is feared from one end of old Perdido Street to the other. He starts on a search for Dove and Hallie--well, he couldn't care less about Dove, but just wants Hallie back.
In the meantime, Dove gets tossed into jail, which saves him temporarily. When he gets out the jug six-months later, Schmidt still hasn't found Hallie. He does find Dove, however, in Dockerty's Dollhouse, a saloon that bills itself as the last speakeasy in the country. A wild and hellish place. What happens next I'll leave to those who want to read it for themselves. It isn't pretty. But it is a great read.
A fellow by name of E. Hemingway--who'n hell is he?--claims that Algren is a man's writer, plus a few more words that I'll not bother to go into here. It's late and time goes by too damned fast as 'tis, and I've spent way too much of it on this review. Jeez, how many words have I wasted?
Sumner
A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren is a crazy rollick through New Orleans in 1930-'31, in that era. Published in '56. Crest books reprinted it in paperback in '62.
We follow the insane adventures--misadventures--of Dove Linkhorn, a red-neck illiterate from Aurora, Texas, by rail. Freight, that is, in boxcars he jumps on his way out of town. He splits from Aurora because of a fall from grace from the gal he falls in love with, Terasina, his employer. He gets into her undies one morning, leaves her in bed, goes downstairs to the café she owns, and emboldened by his success with Terasina in bed, he figures she can't do without him, and opens her cash register. This is a sad mistake. Terasina comes tearing downstairs and tosses old Dove out her joint on his head. This, of course, is why he splits.
He meets up with a young seventeen years old gal, but she is more like two-thousand years old in experience. She talks Dove into a B&A., while she waits outside as look-out. She is nabbed, but Dove escapes, and hits the rails again.
In New Orleans his eyes are knocked out by the marvels of this amazing city of all sins. By and by, he links up with a pimp who recognizes Dove's talents as a cocksman, and puts him to work having his way with "virgins" while paid perverts peek through peepholes to watch Dove's expertise with the "virgins." Of course, these are not virgins, but are old-head whores pimped by Finnerty, who goes shares in the cash with Dove.
Dove can't stand up under the weight of his success, however, and is well on his way to the gutter via the bottle. He is saved by an octoroon beauty, Hallie, who goes into hiding with Dove, and among other things teaches him to read. The problem is, Hallie has a jealous boyfriend. A cat name of Schmidt who has one leg off at the knee, the other one off at the hip, and gets around right fine on a flat-board scooter he straps himself onto. Before he lost his legs, Schmidt had been an awesome athlete who was employed as a stooge in a wrestling team making decent dough. Schmidt still has enormous strength in his shoulders and arms, and is feared from one end of old Perdido Street to the other. He starts on a search for Dove and Hallie--well, he couldn't care less about Dove, but just wants Hallie back.
In the meantime, Dove gets tossed into jail, which saves him temporarily. When he gets out the jug six-months later, Schmidt still hasn't found Hallie. He does find Dove, however, in Dockerty's Dollhouse, a saloon that bills itself as the last speakeasy in the country. A wild and hellish place. What happens next I'll leave to those who want to read it for themselves. It isn't pretty. But it is a great read.
A fellow by name of E. Hemingway--who'n hell is he?--claims that Algren is a man's writer, plus a few more words that I'll not bother to go into here. It's late and time goes by too damned fast as 'tis, and I've spent way too much of it on this review. Jeez, how many words have I wasted?
Sumner
December 5, 2017
Forgot how friggin' GREAT Algren was.
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