Never a Lovely So Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren

by Colin Asher

This definitive biography reclaims Nelson Algren as a towering literary figure and finally unravels the enigma of his disappearance from American letters. For a time, Nelson Algren was America’s most famous author, lauded by the likes of Richard Wright and Ernest Hemingway. Millions bought his books. Algren’s third novel, The Man with the Golden Arm , won the first National Book Award, and Frank Sinatra starred in the movie. But despite Algren’s talent, he abandoned fiction and fell into obscurity. The cause of his decline was never clear. Some said he drank his talent away; others cited writer’s block. The truth, hidden in the pages of his books, is far more complicated and tragic. Now, almost forty years after Algren’s death, Colin Asher finally captures the full, novelistic story of his life in a magisterial biography set against mid-twentieth-century American politics and culture. Drawing from interviews, archival correspondence, and the most complete version of Algren’s 886-page FBI file ever released, Colin Asher portrays Algren as a dramatic iconoclast. A member of the Communist Party in the 1930s, Algren used his writing to humanize Chicago’s underclass, while excoriating the conservative radicalism of the McCarthy era. Asher traces Algren’s development as a thinker, his close friendship and falling out with Richard Wright, and his famous affair with Simone de Beauvoir. Most intriguingly, Asher uncovers the true cause of Algren’s artistic exile: a reckless creative decision that led to increased FBI scrutiny and may have caused a mental breakdown. In his second act, Algren was a vexing figure who hid behind a cynical facade. He called himself a “journalist” and a “loser,” though many still considered him one of the greatest living American authors. An inspiration to writers such as Hunter S. Thompson, Martha Gellhorn, Jimmy Breslin, Betty Friedan, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Russell Banks, and Thomas Pynchon, Algren nevertheless struggled to achieve recognition, and died just as his career was on the verge of experiencing a renaissance. Never a Lovely So Real offers an exquisitely detailed, engrossing portrait of a master who, as esteemed literary critic Maxwell Geismar wrote, was capable of suggesting “the whole contour of a human life in a few terse pages.”

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Politics, History

560 pages, Hardcover

Published April 16, 2019

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nelson Algren? Heard of him, but that's about it, which makes it odd that I would bother picking up a new biography of the writer, but it had New York Times cred and I had a gift certificate, so the book was in the right place at the right time (something every author wishes for his book).

Turns out Nelson Algren is one of those Hemingway-Steinbeck generation writers whom history has not been kind to. "Famousy" in his day, but in our day, better known only by the early, mid-20th century intelligentsia.

Luckily for me (and the author), Algren makes pretty good press because he was nothing if not interesting, starting with his politics (Communist) followed by his sympathies (society's down and outs).

As a subject, Algren is also helped by our times. He had little use for the monied class, the powerful, and the politically-emboldened. Meaning? Many of the quotes out of his mouth come across as prescient and would serve nicely as warnings about dangerous sholls ahead.

It's easy to see why, given he lived through the 30s, served in the big war, then observed the REAL witch hunts of the McCarthy era (he was on the list). Oh, how a certain Cheetos Benito would LOVE to round up his enemies and put them away a la Senator Joe!

So there's that. Asher goes into lengthy descriptions of Nelson's books, too, the most famous to my ears being The Man with the Golden Arm and A Walk on the Wild Side. The thing is, after reading a bio like this, I'm usually hungry to sample a book by the subject, and for some reason, I'm not. For some reason, I have this thing in my head that his characters will come across as a bit like Guys and Dolls (God save us all!).

Probably not fair, so some day, yes. I'll take A Walk on the Wild Side, because I can use it at my age. The wild, I mean. So thanks, Nelson (via Colin). For making even Communists look good, I mean.

[Aaron Shulman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't say this lightly: This book is a masterpiece. It is crisply and addictively written, tenaciously researched, and both generous in spirit and critical in approach. You don't have to be interested in Algren or even know who he is, or be into literary biographies, to love this book. It is the story of a brilliant writer who lived a singular life, but also the story of 20th-century America, with striking relevance to our current moment. Ultimately, this book is about the meaning and purpose of literature and art in general, and about our responsibility to seek and hear the voices of the most muted among us. Asher has done us all a great service by writing this unputdownable, thought-provoking book.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nelson Algren was a good writer. He may have been the best writer some of us have never read. He's famous for a couple of novels, but I suspect that, like Jack Kerouac, his best writing is seldom read today. And also like Kerouac he preferred to write about the marginal regions of our cities and streets and roads filled with characters blasted by hard experience. Algren and Kerouac stayed in the shadows with the characters they loved so much rather than surfacing in the literary mainstream. And often, market be damned, they just wrote what they wanted to.

"Yet once you've come to be part of this particular patch, you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real." Algren wrote that about Chicago, which was his particular patch and his great subject. He once told Simone de Beauvoir his job was to write about Chicago. And the city he knew was that of gritty streets, furnished rooms, small and smoky taverns, and poker games. Knowing his subject, he remained less concerned with the academic elements of the craft--structure, style, and symbolism--than with what he thought of as "the things of the earth." He was the "bard of the stumblebum," those he set to walking the streets of his beloved Chicago.

I read this to coincide with a simultaneous reading of Deirdre Bair's biography of de Beauvoir. I was familiar with the Algren-de Beauvoir letters and earlier biographies but was still intrigued by Bair's statement that Algren had been the love of her life. I wanted to read more of the affair between this man of Chicago's streets and shadows and the cool French existentialist. Algren's love for Simone was as white hot as hers for him I learned in Asher's well-researched telling. Its winding-down when he wouldn't leave Chicago and she wouldn't leave Sartre and the existential scene could be foretold.

There's more to Algren's story than de Beauvoir, though. She may have been a classier dame than Algren usually gravitated toward, but if his wanting to marry her didn't work out, there were many loves and a couple of other marriages, good and bad, regrettable and sad. Before the women, though, before he began to write, he wandered the midwest looking for work. In Chicago he became involved in the Communist Party. This returned to haunt him for decades; he was a subject of FBI interest his whole life. He served in Europe during the war. Trying to provide for his 2d marriage he even tried his hand at teaching a couple of times. Algren believed that writing programs are a hustle and that all anyone needed to successfully write for commercial markets was to accumulate life experiences and draw on them. This section makes for some funny reading as Asher describes how a man who believed writing couldn't be taught tried to juggle those beliefs with the responsibilities of teaching at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. And always there was the writing. He never stopped writing.

In the end, as Asher tells it, the story is sad. Alone as he reached old age he was drawn away from Chicago to live in Paterson, NJ and Sag Harbor, Long Island. By then the power of his prose had declined considerably and he was writing mostly journalism, unable to find in the 1970s the affirmations so evident to him in the 1940s. But he was happy being more writer than author.

[Nora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I'm married to the writer.

I have watched Colin pour his heart and mind into this book for seven years and the result is incisive, intelligent and a lot of fun. The somewhat tragic life of Nelson Algren is one worth revisiting in the era of Trump and social media. Algren's literature was political because it was honest and it challenged those in power -- and Algren paid a heavy price. Colin's book is truly the definitive bio of this great American writer.

[Lidija · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily one of the best biographies I have ever read. Beautifully written.

[Alex Gershman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Colin Asher deserves so much credit for this book; the amount of research here is astounding. Things stated as fact by Algren, reported as fact in other biographies--often attempts by Algren to discredit his himself as a writer, in later years--are revealed as false. New events are reported for the first time. Asher compares several (likely hard to find) accounts just to put together a single paragraph in his 500-page biography. Thoughtfully constructed arguments are made about Nelson's aims as a writer, as a political activist, etc.

The most interesting part of this book is obviously the information taken from the FBI's file on Algren. Nearly 900 pages accumulated over 30 years, Asher is the first person to obtain it and understand, fully, just how much the FBI was involved in Algren's career--the people they blacklisted, the money they cost him, the books they cost us.

Even if you haven't read Algren's fiction, this book is worth reading. I'd recommend it highly, along with Never Come Morning and The Man With the Golden Arm. Asher does a great job of building intrigue around Nelson's novels without spoiling them in any way.

[Christian Belanger]

here are 2500 words on this book: https://southsideweekly.com/bard-of-t...

[Kevin Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

How could I, an alleged lover of books, have lived so long knowing so little about the life and work of Nelson Algren? Yes, he was out there on the frontiers of my awareness, with so many others. Then, on one of my regular visits to the "New Books" section at the main branch of the Boston Public Library, this strangely-titled volume (the title comes straight from Algren's prose) fell into my hands. For some reason, I actually read this one, rather than toy with it until it was time to bring it back.

Before he published a thing, Algren grew up on Chicago's extremely mean streets, helped his father repair flat tires, survived public school and bucked the odds by finding a way to college as the Great Depression loomed. Finishing school as the economy hit rock bottom, he took to the road and freight trains, somehow making it all the way to Texas via New Orleans.

In short, he lived enough to gain an appreciation for those living at the margins, not through "imbedding," but by simply playing the cards he had been dealt. When he started writing it down, he did his best to make real the stories of those people at survival's edge. His best turned out to reveal a prodigious talent.

Algren became an immediate success. He made a bit of money (nothing compared to the publishers and the lawyers) and became the flavor-of-the-month in many literary circles until Joe McCarthy reared his hideous head and Algren's political associations began to make profit-conscious publishers and others leery of him. As the mossbacks of the House UAC tightened his world around him, our anti-hero cracked. His long-suffering wife and some friends saw no other option than to check him in to one of the medieval psychiatric institutions of the time. Algren survived that, too, and as luck would have it, his fortnight of confinement might have saved him. It provided an airtight excuse for him to miss an interview with government destroyers in which he would certainly have perjured himself and might well have ended up behind bars. Salvation comes in strange packages. Through it all he wrote.

Colin Asher captures all of this and much, much more in this exhaustively-researched and artfully-constructed biography of a flawed man about whom we all should know much more. By example, the book reminds us of the incredible commitment required of the skilled biographer. Projects like this one are not for the faint of heart, or short of funds. Much of what Algren wrote about his own life was misdirection, probably designed to re-write a story of which he was not entirely proud. Mr. Asher takes none of it at face value, and lets the evidence contradict his subject at several turns. Asher's telling rings true to me, for the most part, but I am unencumbered by any real knowledge of the context.

Even though he spent years in a complex and often improbable affair with Simone de Beauvoir, Algren did not generally seek out the company of other writers. For him, writers who spend too much time with other writers end up writing what writers want to read. Algren was much more comfortable immersing himself in the lives of people at the edge, too often reviled by polite society. He found plenty of those in his native Chicago and devoted his extraordinary talent to telling their stories. While I might wince if my daughter (or son) brought Algren's unadulterated reincarnation home to meet the parents, I would likely be happy to buy such a character one or several beers, and hear what he has to say. The least I can do is now read one of his novels.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's rare for me to read an author biography without having read much of anything by the author. In "Never a Lovely So Real," Colin Asher not only tells an epic life story, but he is re-introducing America to one of its great but forgotten authors. A man whose name should be next on the lips of anyone mentioning Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Vonnegut, Bellow or Updike has somehow been lost to our culture. Colin makes an interesting case for why (red listing had something to do with it) and a compelling argument that we're worse off for this serious cultural omission. I hope this biography is widely read and that it leads to renewed interests in the works of an author who strikes me very much as an American Bertolt Brecht.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

You will learn about a family and, in the process, an author. You’ll learn about the places the author lived in, the people he loved, revered, and of being very human. I think Nelson Algren lived an “all in” life: every step real and owned completely. I appreciated and loved learning about Algren as son/brother/worker/writer/man - a flawed, genuine human in his world. Colin Asher has lovingly crafted and researched this biography you should invest in.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is certainly a biography which cried out to be written. I have never read an Algren book, nor have I seen any movie based on his work, and, to be honest, I am doubtful that I will change either status. But Asher makes a compelling case for Algren as a central literary figure of the 20th Century, and in telling the man's story, he also provides a compelling summary of the culture in which Algren lived. Algren's story is archetypal for many, many individuals of his time.

I'm not sure how I feel about Algren the man. I admire the new places he took American literature in his writing, and his concern for the country's dispossessed. I feel the sadness of his failure ever to find emotional fulfillment. He apparently was a compelling friend, and to people of a wide variety of backgrounds and temperaments. But somehow despite the excessive length of this book, I never felt a clear sense of him as a person, but the shortcoming is probably mine.

Algren's connection with the literary lights of his era is astonishing.He was particularly closely involved with Richard Wright and Simone de Beauvoir, but he also apparently inspired many authors of consequence -- Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, and a host of others.

The book is a bit more scholarly than might have been best. 75 pages of footnotes and indices is a lot! It is also a nuisance to read on a kindle a work with notes at the end of each chapter, and the small number of pictures included are postage-stamp size reading the book on this device. I strongly recommend getting it from the library rather than paying the startlingly high $18 that I did for an unsatisfactory reading experience.

Nevertheless, Asher's scholarship is impressive and convincing, and it was sometimes fun to see how he had reconciled conflicting accounts in different sources.

This is certainly a worthy book and one worth reading, even if it will take a week out of your life to do it. I did enjoy it, though it rambled on a bit longer than I wish it had.

[Julia Mertz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before reading this book, I thought that it primarily told the story of how Nelson Algren's early identification with the Communist Party came back to covertly haunt his career and life during the Red Scare in the US.

This book provided so much more. It gives a thoughtful portrait of Algren's life and times. Broken down into chapters each covering a handful of years at the most, Never a Lovely So Real picks its way through Algren's entire life, richly describing the people and places he encountered that would serve as source material for his novels. It also dispels several myths, including the myth that he was a cynical recluse in his later years.

This is a thoroughly researched and consistent biography that I would recommend to anyone who has enjoyed any of Nelson Algren's writing.

[Mckeage]

I have read a lot of author's biographies but this one is outstanding. That was clear from the introduction, when Mr. Asher, wrote,"The first you should know about Nelson Algren is that he wrote like this:” That is an absolutely inspired way to begin a biography about an author especially one as singular and underappreciated as Algren has been. The book grabbed my attention and held it all the way through to the equally extraordinary afterword where Mr. Asher talked about how and why Algren is remembered as he is. A great read. Now I have read and reread Algren's books because this biography have given them such context.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite being a Chicagoan for almost thirty years, and an avid reader, I have not yet read a book by Nelson Algren. I feel lucky to have read Colin Asher's biography beforehand, as it has situated Algren's writings in a way that will undoubtedly enhance my reading of them. Moreover, as someone who both loves and remains perplexed by Chicago, and often feels like it is my time to leave from here, it was an incredible treat to be transported to a 1930s, 40s, and 50s Chicago as experienced through the lens of Algren's life and work.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I’ve read this year so far. It only lags when Asher expounds on Algren’s writings, especially his longer works; otherwise it is a page turner. Algren was, to say the least, a fascinating and bewildering character with a empathetic heart for the marginalized in society and a keen critique of American consumerism that emerged after WWII and a disdain for elitism. What would he say about our current political situation?

[Ann Colette · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story is tragic in ways I can't describe without spoilers, but fundamentally it's about the destructive ripple effects of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI as seen in the life of a seminal 20th century writer who mistook external damage for internal failures.

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

As thorough a biography of Algren as it's possible to create. Well written and accessible. Must read for anyone interested in Algren's life and work.

[Zachary Kocanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book I've read this year.

[Dave Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant!

[Dan La Noue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full Disclosure: I know the author and worked with him for a semester as an assistant writing instructor to a class he taught. It is thanks to him that I first learned of Nelson Algren, a half-forgotten giant of 20th Century American literature who reported on the human condition from places most writers would never dare tread figuratively, let alone physically.

Few writers, then and now, are interested in telling stories about so-called "low-lifes" (working women, pimps, junkies, veterans, fighters, etc.) and the writers who do tend to sensationalize, exploit, pity or make pulp out of their subjects. Algren, by contrast, was an adamant champion of their humanity. He admired people who strived on the margins, and felt that no matter how the law or society judged them, they lived more honestly and honorably than those handing out the sentences or curling up their noses. Algren also recognized, in his subjects, the collateral damage of an America who was just starting to get drunk off her own myth-making in the opening decades of the 20th Century, who increasingly saw her citizens less as people to protect and nurture and more as grist for the mills of war and industry.

At one time, Nelson Algren was one of the most prominent and well-regarded authors of his generation, but you wouldn't know that today. Many factors contribute to his relative obscurity: falling in and out of critical and commercial favor, dogged political persecution, and his own deep unease with fame. A general haziness clouds his legacy, where rumors, fibs and apocryphal quotes swim alongside the truth.

This makes Algren an exceedingly difficult subject for a biography, yet Colin Asher rises to the occasion in brilliant fashion. Deeply sourced and vividly written, "Never a Lovely..." more than does Algren's life and work justice - it preserves his legacy for newer generations of readers for whom Algren's trenchant observations and electric prose are just as resonant today as they were yesterday.

I cannot begin to imagine the level of research and sleuthing Asher undertook for this biography. As I mentioned earlier, and as Asher himself articulates through his book, Algren lived much of his life with the wariness of a fugitive. A roaming bard, he traveled and relocated ceaselessly. A folk hero, he often told lies about himself and reveled in the smoke they cast about him. Yet Asher succeeds in pulling the loose threads of his life together and telling Algren's story.

Asher's prose is also consistently gripping, never at all falling into the dry reportage that can weigh down lesser biographies. I particularly loved his descriptions of Algren's native Chicago as seen through a young Nelson, roaming his local streets and the areas beyond. The poetry of Algren is very much alive in Asher's pen.

I highly recommend this book to both Algren aficionados and Algren novices, the latter of which can find in "Never So Lovely" an excellent starting point. And though I suspect Algren would bristle at the idea of someone writing about his life and work, and I likewise suspect he would make quite an emphatic exception in Asher's case.

Probably even buy Asher a drink afterwards, too.

[Johnny Wimmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Never a Lovely So Real" came to us from a Goodreads giveaway, and it's a good book. This dense biographical work covers the life and works of Nelson Algren and is an interesting look at a great writer. Good detail combined with a winning character add to a marvelous story. This book adds scope and dimension to the complexity of a writers life. It tells of the hard tough times, as well as the winning moments in raw detail to enhance the story. Well recommended!

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's the review of this book I wrote for January Magazine, will also appear in the next issue of my world-famous digest sized magazine Namaste, Motherfucker! If you feel compelled to own a hard copy, you can purchase said mag from me. What an option! https://januarymagazine.com/wp/algren...

[Aimee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an incredibly detailed account of the life of a fascinating author, Nelson Algren. I haven’t read an Algren novel yet but, after being immersed in his life and learning all about the inspiration for this writing, I’ll definitely pick one up.

[Alex Kudera · Rating 5 out of 5]

The biography ends on a sad note, but in it, we learn that Nelson Algren enjoyed a wide variety of successes and failures along the road.

[Theodore Fischer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not sure if this is a good or a bad thing but I (a native Chicagoan) enjoyed this biography more than I enjoyed any of Algren's books.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

You're Nelson Algren. You used to write novels. You used to be big. "I am big. It's the American literature that got small." How the author of THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM and A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE could have become a literary castaway is one of the great mysteries of American modern letters. This biography upholds Nelson's importance---he influenced everyone from Thomas Pynchon to Lou Reed---but never satisfactorily explains Nelson's downfall; McCarthyism, bad love affairs, horrible business deals (Nelson never made a cent off those two novels) don't quite add up to a gotterdamerung. Still, by the grace of God those who pick up this bio will be led back to his novels of the American demimonde.

[Martha Farley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best biography I've ever read. Incredibly thorough, engrossing and very touching biography of Nelson Ahlgren, an author who deserves much greater acclaim than he currently receives.

The author had access to biographical materials, family records, and taped interviews conducted by earlier authors and researchers and he weaves rich detail into a compelling narrative. He illuminates the role of Ahlgren's family, the economic and political climate of his times, and his passionate affair with Simone de Beavior. I think it would be engrossing even to readers who aren't familiar with Ahlgren's qork and legacy.

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would never have stuck with this book if it hadn't been so well written. I despised Nelson Algren who to me was a selfish, immoral, degenerate who believed the end justifies the means. Supposedly, he sided with the proletariat but he stole from his neighbors during the depression and ran scams even after having published several books. The author never holds Algren accountable for his misdeeds and blames his lack of fame and wealth on everything but Algren.

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Algren was my mother's uncle (His sister, Bernice, was my grandmother), so I've read a lot and have a lot of inside information about his life. I always learn more when I read a good biography. The access to the full FBI files was a key to making this particular biography full of interesting details.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

From my perspective, this man just did not live a fulfilled life. He had got through so much and yet so much of it was done by his own demise. Was wonderfully written and I hope to read one of his stories one day.