450 research outputs found
Nelson Algren 11-05-1975
No full textGregory Fitzgerald and Jack C. Wolf Interview Nelson Algren, who at the time had been a published author for over forty years. His most notable works at this time were "The Man with the Golden Arm" and "A Walk on the Wild Side", both of which were made into films. The Session begins with Algren reading an excerpt from "Chicago: A City on the Make", a book length poem published in 1951. Fitzgerald asks Algren to tell the story of Gregorio Cortez in great detail. Algren goes on to share how Cortez had gone about evading and fooling the Texas Rangers. The conversation turns to the connection between Nelson Algren's personal story and how the Robin Hood trope would emerge in his writing. He describes his fascination with survival and some of the less than savory things he had to do to survive after he left college. He realized he could make more money writing stories than he could selling coffee and swindling individuals so he set himself up in West Texas and began writing short stories. Algren describes the quality of "Somebody in Boots" and mentions where the title comes from. Fitzgerald asks Algren to describe where he stands with academic critics and critics and general. They also explore Algren's role as a critic and Algren shares his opinions of other writers and who were and were not risk takers. The conversation turns to the description of the presentation of Algren's work on stage and on screen and the 1800's style in which his material was presented. The conversation closes with some mentions of Algren's experience with teaching and his next project.Archived web conten
H. Maragou on R. Ward’s collection of critical essays : Nelson Algren
No full textRobert Ward, ed. Nelson Algren: A Collection of Critical Essays. New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007. 188 pp. (Hardcover) ISBN-0 8386 4108 3 This collection of critical essays, edited by Robert Ward, is the first critical reader dealing with the oeuvre of Nelson Algren, an author whose rise to literary fame in the 1940s was as spectacular as his plunge into obscurity less than two decades later. In his introduction to this collection that attempts to restore Nelson Algr..
A aproximação dos ausentes: as cartas de Simone de Beauvoir para Nelson Algren
No full textIn this paper, starting from the 304 letters written by Simone de Beauvoir to the
American writer Nelson Algren, we investigate the apparent hiatus distancing the
submissive and dependent woman who passionately declares herself to her interlocutor
and the thinker who positions herself publicly in favour of individual freedoms. Due to
both physical and cultural distance, in the immediate aftermath of World War II,
Beauvoir and Algren discovered themselves mainly through exchanging letters. These
letters, then, take the place of the absence of the other. So, to reveal herself and arouse
the interest of her beloved, the author uses some strategies of persuasion, for example,
the way to show dependence or even a highly passionate tone revealed in some of the
missives. However, this declared dependence does not exceed from writing to the
reality, since she does not definitively abandons her life in Paris to live in Chicago,
refusing, therefore, to incarcerate her uniqueness in the models of a traditional marriage.Neste trabalho, partindo das 304 cartas escritas por Simone de Beauvoir para o
escritor americano Nelson Algren, investigamos o aparente hiato que distancia a mulher
submissa e dependente, que se declara apaixonadamente para seu interlocutor, da
pensadora que se posiciona publicamente em favor das liberdades individuais. Por conta
da distância tanto física quanto cultural, no período imediatamente posterior à Segunda
Guerra, Beauvoir e Algren se descobriram sobretudo através da troca epistolar. As
cartas, então, ocupam o lugar da falta do outro. De modo que, para se revelar e despertar
o interesse do amado, a autora utiliza algumas estratégias de convencimento, como, por
exemplo, a maneira de se mostrar dependente ou, ainda, o tom altamente passional que
perpassa algumas das missivas. Entretanto, a dependência declarada não ultrapassa o
plano da escrita para a realidade, já que ela não abandona definitivamente sua vida em
Paris para viver em Chicago, se recusando, pois, a encarcerar sua singularidade nos
modelos de um casamento tradicional
The second sex in the works of Nelson Algren
No full textThis is the first critical study in the history of Nelson Algren criticism and scholarship to focus on Algren’s representation(s) of women. The critical consensus is that his women are ‘sympathetically imagined’ yet Algren has a reputation for being ‘no feminist.’ In this thesis I unpack this dichotomy by performing radical re-readings of his four novels, Somebody in Boots (1935), Never Come Morning (1942), The Man with the Golden Arm (1949), and A Walk on the Wild Side (1956). In each case I demonstrate that these novels perform feminist and masculinity studies work in their documentation and problematisation of rape and prostitution. I also unpack the mythologisation of love in Algren’s work which is based on out-dated readings of his protagonists’ intimate relationships and on a too-close association of his life with his literature. As such, this thesis also foregrounds the role critical readings play in the construction of a writer’s reputation.The ‘second sex’ of the title signals a) the thesis’s focus on women and b) the personal connection between Algren and Simone de Beauvoir who met on the cusp of writing The Man with the Golden Arm and The Second Sex. Re-reading archival evidence, I argue that Algren’s reputation as ‘no feminist’ owes much to being cast as Beauvoir’s ‘macho’ lover in the mythology of their relationship. Putting Algren’s women at the centre of readings demonstrates that he brought an incisive awareness of gender issues to the table when he and Beauvoir met in 1947.Foregrounding the women in Algren’s work, the richness and sophistication of Algren’s writing comes more fully to light. This thesis aims to provide a clearer sense of Algren’s place in American literature and an assessment of his relevance to the international canon of work on human sexuality, prostitution, and rape
The Texas stories of Nelson Algren
No full textTwelve stories on the author's hobo days in Texas where he searched for work during the 1930s depression and was jailed for stealing. In one story he writes, "God help you if you run and God help you if you fight; God help you if you're broke and God help you if you're black.
Ragged Figures: The Lumpenproletariat in Nelson Algren and Ralph Ellison.
No full textThrough a reconstruction of the mid-century careers of Nelson Algren and Ralph Ellison, Ragged Figures expands the identity of Marxism in U.S. literature beyond European theoretical orthodoxy, proletarian content, and social-protest form. These novelists revalue Marx’s minor concept of the lumpenproletariat as the central concept and literary figure of an alternative Marxist aesthetic, one grounded in the experiences and practices of marginalized peoples in the U.S during the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War.
The lumpenproletariat (“proletariat in rags”) is one of Marxism’s more unstable concepts. Marx used the term to reference subjects who exist outside the labor-capital dialectic and who lack stable class identity: tramps, beggars, prostitutes, or the criminal underworld, for example. Because he deems such types marginal to the economic and political investments of Marxism, he deploys the term with a lack of empirical precision and a dismissive scorn. Reading Marx against the grain, and relying on the generative theoretical reformulations of Marxism undertaken by Louis Althusser, I re-theorize the lumpenproletariat as Marxism’s own name for the deconstructive productivity of the marginal. In its various political identities, its occupation of the gaps and interstices of social formations, and in the epistemological disruptions it poses to codified thought and ideology, the lumpenproletariat embodies a vantage point from beyond the margins of what orthodox Marxism knows, enabling situated revision and expansion of Marxism’s theoretical and political effectiveness.
Algren and Ellison utilize both the experiences of lumpenproletarian characters—the “ragged” figures and populations shifting at the margins of U.S. society and ideological discourses—and this open-ended theoretical “raggedness” that the lumpenproletariat conceptualizes in order to do the work of figuring (out)—using the practical protocols of literary production and figurative language—contingent analyses of capitalism and attendant opportunities for resistance. By reconstituting Marxism around the figure of the lumpenproletariat and contingent re-imaginings of U.S. and African-American sociocultural realities and forms, Ellison and Algren produce an aesthetically-inventive, theoretically-adventurous mode of Marxist writing that forces us to reconsider the literary and political reputations of these writers and the unexpected presences of Marxism within U.S. and African-American literature and culture.PhDEnglish Language & LiteratureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/86576/1/nfmills_1.pd
La question de la manipulation et de l'image dans la traduction des "Lettres à Nelson Algren"
No full textDans le cadre de ce mémoire, nous nous sommes interrogée sur les raisons pouvant pousser un traducteur à manipuler une traduction, ainsi que sur les manières dont cette manipulation pouvait être effectuée. Nous avons choisi de travailler à partir des « Lettres à Nelson Algren » écrites par Simone de Beauvoir ainsi que de la traduction réalisée par Sylvie le Bon de Beauvoir. Nous avons commencé par exposer des éléments de contexte, puis nous avons comparé les deux textes en nous fondant sur la méthodologie proposée par Antoine Berman. Notre dernière partie est dédiée aux raisons pouvant mener un traducteur à manipuler un texte. Nous concluons que les petites manipulations répétées peuvent avoir des conséquences plus lourdes qu’une censure plus aisément visible, et que la subjectivité du traducteur, ainsi que la volonté de préserver l’image de l’auteur, peuvent expliquer un manque de fidélité envers le texte original
Passeggiate selvagge e dintorni: le traiettorie mondadoriane di Nelson Algren (1949-1963)
No full textBetween 1954 and 1961, the Italian publishing house Mondadori published Nelson Algren’s four most important titles: L’uomo dal braccio d’oro, 1954 (The Man with the Golden Arm, 1949); Mai venga il mattino, 1956 (Never Come Morning, 1942); Le notti di Chicago, 1957 (The Neon Wilderness, 1947); Passeggiata selvaggia, 1961 (A Walk on the Wild Side, 1956), adding as a coda, in 1966, the essay collection Chi ha perduto un americano?, 1966 (Who Lost an American?, 1963). However, the 1950s critical reception of the Mondadori intellectuals/publishers/advisors points to a problematic placement of Algren in the Italian postwar American literary canon that partly mirrors the author’s trajectory in the United States.
In this essay, I will examine Algren’s Italian publishing history by starting with his American trajectory and analyzing archival documents held at the Arnoldo and Alberto Mondadori Foundation
- …
