Critical Essay | Critical Review by James R. Frakes

Critical Review by James R. Frakes

SOURCE: "Something of Algren for Everyone," in The New York Times Book Review, November 11, 1973, p. 20.

In the following review of The Last Carousel, Frakes comments on Algren's use of humor in the stories.

It's about time! When we've got a living American writer as sure-footed and as fast off the mark as Nelson Algren, it's almost criminal not to have something of his in hard covers at least once a year, to heft and roar at and revel in. Having, early in his career, ceded the Chicago territory to Sandburg, Farrell and Algren, Ernest Hemingway later paid our man the ultimate tribute: "Mr. Algren can hit with both hands and move around and he will kill you if you are not awfully careful." Was he, like Seymour Glass, never wrong?

What we have here in this big fat volume [The Last Carousel] is a cockeyed chrestomathy of...
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