this novel of Chicago street life, Inthe Midwestern city becomes a metaphor for American experience, epitomizing a system which requires one either to become a victim or to victimize others. Algren's portrait of the alienation, exploitation, and degradation of dispossessed people explores the familiar naturalistic themes of fate and choice, struggle and defeat, success and failure. But unlike the gospel of Social Darwinism and the Protestant Ethic so often present in popular literature, Algren's portrayal celebrates losers caught in the peculiarly American cycle of success and failure, the "special American guilt" of owning nothing "in a land where ownership and virtue are one." This critique of the Horatio Alger myth so common in popular literature (that everyone can succeed with determination, hard work, and a little luck) advances that dialogue one step further, uniting the message of classic American realism with the popular appeal of irreverent...