From John Reed to Jane Addams: or what time will it be when the last El crashes? Nelson Algren’s proletarian roots, the FWP, and the granular naturalism of Never Come Morning

Abstract

As a literary figure, Nelson Algren draws small change. While there is certainly a modestly respectable drip of scholarship that flows down through the decades since the height of his success in 1949, with the publication of his magnum opus, The Man with the Golden Arm, it rarely emits more than the babble of a backyard brook. Algren himself, in a 1963 interview with H.E.F. Donahue, referred to his legacy as that of “the tin whistle of American letters” (Donahue 151). It comes as no surprise then that his work pre-The Man with the Golden Arm receives all the attention due to a squeaky penny whistle. While Algren’s first two novels, Somebody in Boots from 1935 and Never Come Morning from 1942, received their share of plaudits and support from critics and authors that traveled similar political and literary circles, the timing of their publication did the author no financial favors – one arriving amidst the Great Depression, and the other during a paper shortage resulting from America’s participation in World War II.