SOURCE: An introduction to The Texas Stories of Nelson Algren, University of Texas Press, 1995, pp. ix-xviii.

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.

This slender volume [The Texas Stories of Nelson Algren] preserves a unique and devastating view of the Lone Star State during the Depression, a melancholy and explosive world of hoboes, migrant workers, ranch hands, penniless Mexicans, carnival roustabouts, and the dangerous and helpless inhabitants of county jails. These firsthand impressions of impoverished lives formed the philosophical and moral foundation for all of Nelson Algren's later work. Though dubbed "the poet of the Chicago slums" and long known as a naturalistic urban writer, the author of The Man with the Golden Arm and...