Entrapment and Other Writings

by Nelson Algren, Brooke Horvath (Editor), Dan Simon (Editor)

Nelson Algren sought humanity in the urban wilderness of postwar America, where his powerful voice rose from behind the billboards and down tin-can alleys, from among the marginalized and ignored, the outcasts and scapegoats, the punks and junkies, the whores and down-on-their luck gamblers, the punch-drunk boxers and skid-row drunkies and kids who knew they'd never reach the age of all of them admirable in Algren’s eyes for their vitality and no-bullshit forthrightness, their insistence on living and their ability to find a laugh and a dream in the unlikeliest places.
In Entrapment and Other Writings—containing his unfinished novel and previously unpublished or uncollected stories, poems, and essays—Algren speaks to our time as few of his fellow great American writers of the 1940s and ’50s do, in part because he hasn’t yet been accepted and assimilated into the American literary canon despite that he is held up as a talismanic figure. "You should not read [Algren] if you can’t take a punch," Ernest Hemingway declared. "Mr. Algren can hit with both hands and move around and he will kill you if you are not awfully careful."

Genres: Short Stories

304 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2009

About the author

People 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.

Reviews

[Stephanie Griffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nelson Algren’s writing career spanned from the 1930s to the early 1980s. In that time he wrote his masterpiece The Man With The Golden Arm, one of my all-time favorite novels.
In Entrapment and Other Writings, Brooke Horvath and Dan Simon have collected some of the short stories and essays that were previously published, as well as unfinished writings such as his novel Entrapment.
Algren’s stories are largely about the disenfranchised, the out-of-luck and never-had-any-luck. He writes about Chicago’s bars, gambling joints, boxing arenas, etc. His personal job experiences were varied, including migrant work, newspaper work, and no work. In later life he wrote many essays on political issues including the Viet Nam war and government corruption.
The situations in these stories aren’t glamorized. They’re put out there in all their stinking brutal glory. This is what life is.
Algren’s characters are realistic. They are what most of us are in this age of the widening gap in the U.S. between the haves and the have-nots. People just trying to get by while maybe dreaming of a better station if they haven’t given up already. I would rather read about these people than the sterile rich and famous.

“And the citydesk cynic winked back something about there being men low enough to sit on a cigarette paper and swing both legs.” - Utility Magnate, 1939

Entrapment and Other Writings provides a good representation of Algren’s writings and I do recommend it for all Nelson Algren fans.

[Andrew]

A collection of Algren B-sides, ranging from the excellent -- I have no doubt that Entrapment would stand as one of Algren's finest if it was completed -- to some rather middling short stories and half-assed journalism. There are some rather fine essays in here about the sort of world that Algren depicted in his fiction, but on the whole, his talents are better deployed in character sketches. And the essay where he asks Mayor Koch to stop cracking down on brothels because it's bumming him out just comes off as the worst sort of late-period Norman Mailer nonsense.

[Georges Hattab · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely an underrated writer. Discovered Algren through this book. The expression style is crude, colloquial, and poignant. Algren is not afraid of going all the way to depict with words a moment, an emotion, a character. This rawness is a refreshing breeze of humanity. Favorite shorts are: The lightless room, Do it the hard way, Single exit, The man with the golden arm.

[Downward · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is a collection of Algren's (mostly) unreleased work. while the fiction is largely excerpted from novels it was later edited out of, and thus sort of scatterbrained, contextless, and weak, the nonfiction in the "other writings" portion at the end is especially good. it highlights the humanity of Algren, emphasizing his relationship with the underclass, which provides depth to his fiction and reason behind the social realism he delivers in a way that, outside of Stephen crane and Emile Zola was kinda hard to come by.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very powerful.

[Stop]

Read the STOP SMILING Two Takes Review of Entrapment:

In our monthly column, we ask two reviewers to offer their perspective on the same book. The latest entry focuses on Nelson Algren's Entrapment and Other Writings.


Reviewer Beth Capper writes:

Chicago is always at the center of things in Algren's work. It is a city he both loved and despised. Algren's capacity for explaining its appeals and pitfalls is perhaps why he is so adored by its residents, and why his word on Chicago has become the final one. His vision of the city is at once romantic and foreboding: its unforgiving winters and its back streets lit by "indifferent stars."

++

And from Gretchen Kalwinski:

These short works are a solid survey of Algren’s still-vibrant writing, but contemporary readers may stumble on the Entrapment passages where he uses a noir-ish, “daddy-o” jazz-language to render period-specific street poetry to an almost-goofy affect.

Read the Two Takes Review...

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a nice collection of short stories, previously unpublished works, essays and an interview. A must read for Algren fans. Included are two scenes from his unfinished novel "Entrapment." Once again we get a gritty view of dope fiends and prostitutes, based on these two snippets "Entrapment," could have been great. I particularly enjoyed "Walk Pretty All The Way," humorous story told from the perspective of a runaway fourteen year old girl. It's not often that Algren writes from the female POV, but it's great storytelling when he does. “The Swede was a Hard Guy” is great essay recounting the Chicago Black Sox scandal of 1919 (the title refers to Sox shortstop Charles 'Swede' Risberg.) Algren fondly remembers his innocent teammate, third baseman Buck Weaver, who was banned from organized baseball with seven others. Weaver never took a dime from the gamblers who paid his teammates to fix the World Series and was denied his request to have a separate trial. Weaver was portrayed by John Cusack in the film "Eight Men Out." More info at http://www.clearbuck.com/bio.htm

[Carly Safko · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's always strange to me that Nelson Algren isn't more famous. The Man With the Golden Arm and Never Come Morning are both excellent novels that more than hold up decades after being published. Entrapment is a collection of snippets, short fiction, and drafts of published works, so it's not his best work. But as a fan I appreciated the writing on a fragmentary basis.

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Generally, I see collections of previously uncollected work by deceased writers and hold off; usually you're dealing with detritus that hasn't been published for a reason. This book, however, is the huge exception to the rule. Every single scrap collected here is worthy of the finest accolates Algren collected in his lifetime.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Algren is a leviathan. This included some previously unpublished work.
He's always a mix of satiric and poignant.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Algren looks at the world that America's middle class refuses to even admit exists. Here there is a Mark Twain like look at America and which is never as pretty as most would like.