The American author Nelson Algren (1909-1981) wrote novels and short stories about underworld characters, often set in the slums of Chicago. Nelson Algren has been called the poet of the under-world. His characters are the pimps and pushers, clowns and...

Nelson Algren can be categorized, first of all, as a journalist. For forty-eight years he recorded life in the back alleys of America's cities and the problems of isolated people with no skills who are victims of hostile environments with which they...

Nelson Algren can be categorized, first of all, as a journalist. For forty-eight years, he recorded life in the back alleys of America's cities and the problems of isolated people with no skills who are victims of hostile environments with which they...

Brooke Horvath, Understanding Nelson Algren. Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2005. 227 pp. $34.95. Brooke Horvath has written a useful and accessible introduction to Nelson Algren that concentrates on his fiction but also brings in his poetry, essays, and even his writing...

Somebody in Books "The writing of history," Goethe said, "is a way of getting rid of the past." Perhaps he was referring to biography, which seems to be a way of collecting the remains of a life and depositing them in a...

In the essay below, Cox and Chatterton provide an overview of Algren's short stories, stating that critical focus on his novels has minimized "Algren's considerable achievement in the [short story genre."]

In the following essay, Lid discusses the primary conflicts in the short story "A Bottle of Milk for Mother" by examining Algren's use of detail, character, and symbolism.

In the following introduction to The Texas Stories of Nelson Algren, Drew provides an overview of the time Algren spent in Texas during the 1930s and discusses how the author incorporated his experiences in the Southwest into his short stories.