Nelson Algren – “Never a Lovely So Real”
Nelson with Simone de Beauvoir –Paris with Sartre, Chicago with Nelson Algren
Chicago Man 
Nelson Algren
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J. Edgar Hoover sought to destroy Nelson Algren’s career — and was largely successful.
Into this maelstrom comes the first three-pound excavation of Algren, Colin Asher’s Never a Lovely So Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren, which Norton is bringing out, with some fanfare, in April. Besides being larger in size and scope than any previous biography of this last celebrant of what once was called Proletarian Literature, Asher’s book is devotional and beautifully written, seven years in the making, its sentences capturing the very same mix of lyricism and street, hard truths and sentimentality that made Algren himself so special. It delves into Algren’s lifelong struggle to stay true to his credo, his soulful cry that the purpose of any writer is to stand up to power, to take the judge down from the bench, to give voice to the voiceless. And it delivers a wrenching portrait of a man who struggled to maintain his sanity and his spirit in a society that was well prepared to see its writers give up or sell out, but struggled to comprehend writers who persevered and paid the price as Algren did.
See thetrailer here on youtube
Studs Terkel salutes a seriously funny man
(Visit youtube on Terkel and Nelson Algren)