ALGREN
The Life and Legacy of the author of The
Man With the Golden Arm, A Walk
on the Wild Side, and more.
The documentary in-production,
Algren, will spotlight the hard-knock
life and authentic creative legacy of one
of the most underrated writers of the twentieth
century, Nelson Algren. Algren was the poetic
pied piper of the underdog. He lured his
characters forth from the ramshackle tenement
buildings, grimy taverns, cluttered police
departments and prison cells of the Chicago
neighborhoods he called home, and onto the
pages of his stories and novels. Without
Algren, modern literature might not have
dared to explore so honestly the souls of
drunks and gamblers betting their lives
for a swig of whisky, or the prizefighters
slugging their demons to no one’s
applause—those miscreant, marginalized
masses for whom Algren is most well-known
for chronicling in his Chicago-centric fiction.
The central theme of the film-- visualized
by the legendary photo archives of Chicago
photographer Art
Shay, a great friend of Algren’s--
is that Algren's brutally honest portrayal
of the American underclass and his hard-nosed
lifestyle became his pathway to unwavering
compassion. Algren’s point-of-view
will be the central to the film. As a man
who lived among the underclass in a one-room
apartment without a shower or bath, his
compassion for his down-and-out neighbors
emerged from his identification with them.
He quotes literary mentor Walt Whitman (from
the poem "You Felons on Trial in Courts"),
in Never Come Morning: "I
feel I am of them--/I belong to those convicts
and prostitutes myself--/And henceforth
I will not deny them--/For how can I deny
myself?" The film will revive Algren
as the under-celebrated voice for America’s
voiceless, and explore his life as an artist
whose compassion for humanity—and
the underdogs whom he regarded as the "true"
America— is a message of universal
relevance and timelessness; a battle-cry
manifested fully in this work that is too
readily eschewed in the canon of American
literature.
|
