A Walk On The Wild Side
Nelson Algren
Available as eBook
The book that inspired Lou Reed’s ‘A Walk on the Wild Side’ and was made into a screenplay by John Fante
Dove Findhorn is a naïve country boy who busts out of Hicksville, Texas in pursuit of a better life in New Orleans. Amongst the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers and hustlers of the old French Quarter, Dove finds only hopelessness, crime and despair. His quest uncovers a harrowing grotesque of the American Dream.
A Walk in the Wild Side is an angry, lonely, large-hearted and often funny masterpiece that has captured the imaginations of every generation since its first publication in 1956, and that rendered a world later immortalised in Lou Reed´s classic song.
“… a cult classic….Less of a traditional narrative and more like a poetic force of nature, Wild Side is a boisterous panegyric to the side street solitaries who dream their impossible dreams”
the Telegraph
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“One of the most powerful books I have ever read.”
Alyson Rudd
the Times
“The 1956 classic that gave Lou Reed his most famous song is republished in paperback with an introductory essay from Russell Banks - and don’t be tempted to skip it: this pocket-book guide to Algren’s own life of doomed love, addiction and disappointment, is a gripping read in itself.”
the Scotsman
“Mr. Algren, boy, you are good.”
ernest Hemingway
“The intensity of his feeling, the accuracy of his thought, make me wonder if any other writer of our time has shown us more exactly the basis of our democracy. His hell burns with passion for heaven.”
new York Times Book Review
Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren was born in 1909 in Detroit and lived mostly in Chicago. His published works including A Walk on the Wild Side (which inspired the Lou Reed song of the same name), Somebody in Boots and Never Come Morning. He was also a prolific writer of short stories, essays, travelogues and poems. In 1950 The Man with the Golden Arm earned him the first American National Book Award.
His life was a succession of gambling problems, disastrous marriages and wild extremes - ranging from Texas prisons and skid-row soup-kitchens to Hollywood parties and literary celebrations. He also had a passionate love affair with French feminist Simone de Beauvoir.
Algren died in 1981, shortly after being appointed as a fellow of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.