''The Neon Wilderness'' (1947) is the first short-story collection by American writer

Nelson Algren Nelson Algren (born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham; March 28, 1909 – May 9, 1981) was an American writer. His 1949 novel ''The Man with the Golden Arm'' won the National Book Award and was adapted as the 1955 film of the same name. Algren articulated ...

. Two of its stories had received an

O. Henry Award The O. Henry Award is an annual American award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American short-story writer O. Henry. The ''PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories'' is an annual collection of the year's twenty best ...

. Algren received an award from the

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...

the same year.

Overview

The book collects 24 stories: 8 previously published (from 1933 to 1947) and 16 new. Most of them are set in then-contemporary

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

(1930s and 1940s), in the so-called "Polish-American ghetto". They revolve around the lower classes: workers and unemployed, drunkards and gamblers, prostitutes and hustlers, small-businessmen and policemen. Unlike

Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...

Zola Zola may refer to: People * Zola (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name * Zola (musician) (born 1977), South African entertainer * Zola (rapper), French rapper * Émile Zola, a major nineteenth-century French writer Plac ...

, their general tone is tragi-comedy or sympathetic

satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming ...

. Two stories had received an

(and been reprinted in the related annual volume): Algren's second-published story "The Brothers' House" (1935 award) and "A Bottle of Milk for Mother (Biceps)" (1941 award). Two had been selected for ''

The Best American Short Stories The Best American Short Stories yearly anthology is a part of ''The Best American Series'' published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since 1915, the BASS anthology has striven to contain the best short stories by some of the best-known writers in con ...

'': "A Bottle of Milk for Mother" (as "Biceps", 1942 volume) and "How the Devil Came Down Division Street" (1945 volume). The year the collection was released, Algren received an award from the

and a grant from Chicago's Newberry Library.

The collection contains the following 24 stories (with first appearance for the 8 previously published). # "The Captain Has Bad Dreams" # "How the Devil Came Down Division Street" (1944, '' Harper's Bazaar'') # "Is Your Name Joe?" # "Depend on Aunt Elly" # "Stickman's Laughter" (1942, ''

The Southern Review ''The Southern Review'' is a quarterly literary magazine that was established by Robert Penn Warren in 1935 at the behest of Charles W. Pipkin and funded by Huey Long as a part of his investment in Louisiana State University. It publishes fiction ...

'') # "A Bottle of Milk for Mother" (1941, as "Biceps", ''

'') # "He Couldn't Boogie-Woogie Worth a Damn" # "A Lot You Got to Holler" # "Poor Man's Pennies" # "The Face on the Barroom Floor" (1947, ''

The American Mercury ''The American Mercury'' was an American magazine published from 1924Staff (Dec. 31, 1923)"Bichloride of Mercury."''Time''. to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured wri ...

'') # "The Brothers' House" (1934, ''

Story Story or stories may refer to: Common uses * Story, a narrative (an account of imaginary or real people and events) ** Short story, a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting * Story (American English), or storey (British ...

'' magazine) # "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone" # "He Swung and He Missed" (1942, ''

'') # "El Presidente de Méjico" # "Kingdom City to Cairo" # "That's the Way It's Always Been" # "The Children" (1943, ''

'') # "Million-Dollar Brainstorm" # "Pero Vencermos" # "No Man's Laughter" # "Katz" # "Design for Departure" # "The Heroes" # "So Help Me" (1933, ''

'' magazine)

Notes

That first appearance was as "The Face on the Barroom Floor, or Too Much Salt on the Pretzels". (See Contento reference.)

References

William G. Contento
"Stories: Algren, Nelson"
in "Miscellaneous Anthologies Index" ("updated March 17, 2015"), ''Homeville: Bibliographic Resources'' (at Phil Stephensen-Payne's ''Galactic Central'')

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

''The Neon Wilderness''
"Algren received a 1947 Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a grant from Chicago's Newberry Library." Brooke Horvath, ''Understanding Nelson Algren'',

University of South Carolina Press The University of South Carolina Press is an academic publisher associated with the University of South Carolina. It was founded in 1944. By the early 1990s, the press had published several surveys of women's writing in the southern United States ...

, 2005, , p
167

Chicago Public Library The Chicago Public Library (CPL) is the public library system that serves the City of Chicago in the U.S. state of Illinois. It consists of 81 locations, including a central library, two regional libraries, and branches distributed throughout the ...

"The Nelson Algren Collection"
(1933–1999), Special Collections, 2005 — Partial bibliography with editions and printings, first appearances and reprintings, reviews and notices, etc.

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

"O. Henry Award Winners 1919–1999"
''Bold Type'' (via

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)

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...

"A bottle of milk for mother" (1941)
"From the ''Southern Review'' under the title of 'Biceps'. In O. Henry memorial award prize stories of 1941."

External links

*
The Neon Wilderness
' at Seven Stories Press (current edition, 1997) {{DEFAULTSORT:Neon Wilderness, The 1947 short story collections American short story collections Works originally published in Story (magazine) Doubleday (publisher) books Seven Stories Press books Chicago in fiction Fictional portrayals of the Chicago Police Department

Overview

Contents

Notes

References

External links