Posts tagged “entrapment”
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Double Entrapment review in Stop Smiling
July 30, 2009
The problem with a writer like Nelson Algren — a writer who’s at once so good and so inexplicably forgotten — is this: how do you get readers to remember how good he is? We’re talking about a writer whose core beliefs include the statement that “I can see no purpose in writing about people who have won everything” — but in America in the 1950s, the book-buying public had won everything, and Algren — and the seething, fantastic underbelly of America he chronicled — faded from their sight.
But the double review of Entrapment and Other Writings in Stop Smiling is a hopeful sign. From Beth Capper:
. . . Algren comes out swinging with prose so shattering that it makes the whole read worthwhile. Such writing demonstrates that the America Algren canonizes is both nostalgic and ever-present, as though if you scrubbed hard enough at the sidewalk on Chicago’s Division Street — now lined with fashionable boutiques, cafes and condos — you might see the scuffed heels of the prostitutes he was so fond of writing about. . . his word on Chicago has become the final one.
Tags: algren at sea, entrapment, fiction, man with the golden arm, nelson algren, reviews, stop smiling
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In These Times on Nelson Algren and Entrapment
June 11, 2009
Brian McLelland of In These Times on Entrapment and Other Writings:
. . . Editors Brooke Horvath and Dan Simon, of Seven Stories Press, are like the racetrack “stoopers” Algren wrote about in the story “Stoopers and Shoeboard Gazers.” Just as stoopers walk around the track, looking for winning tickets thrown out by mistake, Horvath and Simon have combed through Algren’s old papers, hoping to find unpublished gems. What they find, instead, is a written record that Algren’s talent persisted long after his desire to use it burned out.
For more from the article—and for some of our thoughts on it—take a look at the rest of this post.
Tags: brian mcclelland, brooke horvath, Dan Simon, entrapment, in these times, man with the golden arm, nelson algren, reviews
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Divergence Magazine on Entrapment, Dan Simon, and 100 years of the spirit of Nelson Algren
May 5, 2009
“Thanks for caring about Algren,” [Dan] Simon said before hanging up the phone… I don’t think it’s about wanting people to read Algren; it’s about needing them to. Read an Algren book. Then, walk around Skid Row and try to look away from those desolate eyes staring back; or, try to watch any war on TV and remain unaffected; just try to ignore that dope-sick junkie nodding on the corner. You won’t be able to. Because you won’t be disconnected from them; you’ll be one of them. —from Divergence
Tags: articles, california, cypress college, Dan Simon, divergence, entrapment, nelson algren, never come morning
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Photos from Nelson Algren Live
April 16, 2009
Tags: barry gifford, chicago, Dan Simon, don delillo, entrapment, man with the golden arm, martha lavey, nelson algren, nelson algren live, readings, steppenwolf theatre, willem dafoe
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Nelson Algren Live reviewed in the Chicago Tribune
April 8, 2009
The ubertext of “Nelson Algren Live,” a literary evening that had the great Don DeLillo happy merely to read little bits of narration, and featured the truly delicious casting of Martha Lavey as Simone de Beauvoir? Algren spent a life writing about others and kept this hitherto-unpublished story hidden, because Blackie Cavanaugh, a gaping, emotional, closed, taciturn wound, was far too much like himself.
Tags: barry gifford, chicago, chicago tribune, Dan Simon, don delillo, entrapment, martha lavey, nelson algren, nelson algren live, reviews, steppenwolf theatre, willem dafoe
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Nelson Algren Live: 100th Birthday Celebration at the Steppenwolf Theatre
April 6, 2009
April 6 at 7:00 PM, Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St., Chicago, IL 60614. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased from the Steppenwolf Theatre web site, or by calling the box office at 312-335-1650.
Nelson Algren Live will feature readings from…
Tags: art shay, Authors, barry gifford, Dan Simon, entrapment, nelson algren, readings, russell banks, steppenwolf theatre
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Nelson Algren profile at SocialistWorker.org
April 2, 2009
Algren was able to write with the voices of the forgotten, the people living on the fringes of society, in a time when no one wanted to hear those voices . . . Some fans of Algren may romanticize the down-and-out lives he depicted–the addicts, prostitutes and small-time criminals–as the “salt of the earth.” But they would be as wrong as the civic leaders who would have preferred that Algren shut up.
Tags: articles, entrapment, man with the golden arm, nelson algren, never come morning, socialist worker
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Entrapment in the Chicago Reader
April 2, 2009
The man who was letting everything go was sleeping one off in all his clothes. Six a.m. barely pinpointed the careworn shade of the second-rate hotel. The curtains were drawn as he had drawn them. Rain was on the walks below. Above the darkened TV screen a little clock made a muted ticking. In the utmost country of his brain the sleeper heard a ceaseless tolling. Marking some grief so distant that no wind but the one that blows in sleep might bring it. News of a lost day too dear for losing. Belled by some wind that once helped him home.
Tags: articles, brooke horvath, chicago reader, Dan Simon, entrapment, excerpt, nelson algren
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Previously-unpublished Algren piece appears in Harper’s
March 19, 2009
There used to be a bright little whorehouse on the north side of West 45th Street called the Lucky Lady. You came off the street to a window throughout which you could see a young woman sitting at a desk.…
Tags: articles, entrapment, harper's, nelson algren
“entrapment” Posts
- Jul 30, Double Entrapment review in Stop Smiling
- Jun 11, In These Times on Nelson Algren and Entrapment
- May 5, Divergence Magazine on Entrapment, Dan Simon, and 100 years of the spirit of Nelson Algren
- Apr 2, Entrapment in the Chicago Reader
- Mar 19, Previously-unpublished Algren piece appears in Harper’s
