Literature
Nelson Algren
1909–1981 · novelist, short-story writer
Detroit-born author of The Man with the Golden Arm, the first National Book Award winner for fiction, who became the great chronicler of Chicago's down-and-out.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Sag Harbor, New York
aged 72- Birth name
- Nelson Ahlgren Abraham
- Detroit years
- 1909–1912
- Field
- Literature
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Algren was born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham in Detroit in 1909, the son of Gerson Abraham, a machinist, and Goldie Kalisher. The family moved to Chicago when he was about three, and it was Chicago's West Side and its bars, boxers, addicts and hustlers that became his lifelong subject. His novel The Man with the Golden Arm (1949) won the first National Book Award for Fiction in 1950 and was filmed with Frank Sinatra in 1955; A Walk on the Wild Side (1956) and the stories of The Neon Wilderness cemented his reputation. His Detroit link is mostly one of birth, but the city's rock underground remembered him: MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer recorded the spoken-word track Nelson Algren Stopped By on his 2002 album Adult World.
Highlights
- The Man with the Golden Arm won the first National Book Award for Fiction (1950)
- A Walk on the Wild Side (1956), filmed in 1962
- Long relationship with Simone de Beauvoir, who portrayed him in The Mandarins
- Subject of MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer's track Nelson Algren Stopped By (2002)