The struggle to write with deep emotion is the subject of this extraordinary book, the previously unpublished credo of one of America's greatest 20th-century writers. "You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich," writes Nelson Algren ...
Meanwhile they competed, week in and week out, to show Oliver his faith wasn’t misplaced. If one week Reba was top broad, Frenchy was moping all the next, feeling so useless and so untrue that Oliver had to buck her up a bit – ‘Don’t feel so bad, honey, you done your best. That week she had was j...
But at the corner there was only the amputee who sold papers there, his cap wrapped in the Daily News and folded into his crutch’s handle to rest his armpit while he whooped, ‘Graziano suspended!’ Somebody was always suspending somebody, the punk reflected moodily. And the way the arc lamp swung ...
That day so still so burning By the brought-down look of that gas-plate trap you’d scarcely have guessed it was the best deal we’d had yet. Everybody in LA was driving convertibles and us two fools thinking if a place had a rag carpet it had true class. This place had a carpet and cups, too. I wa...
- The Travel Writings CHICAGO II IF YOU GOT THE BREAD YOU WALK “The people of these parts address each other as Mulai (Lord) and Sayyid (Sir), and use the expressions ‘Your Servant’ and ‘Your Excellency.’ When one meets another, instead of giving the ordinary greeting he says respectfully, ‘Here ...
