Nelson Algren

The Steppenwolf Theatre feels like a womb. It's warm, dark, soporific, full of voices barely loud enough to be distinguished, a setting beyond time. Outside, the streets of Old Town are laced with spring afternoon snowflakes; on the South Side, at U.S. Cellular Field (formerly Comiskey Park), opening day has been postponed. The fact that Comiskey is no longer called Comiskey is a sign of how Chicago has changed, and not for the better.

The Steppenwolf Theatre feels like a womb. It's warm, dark, soporific, full of voices barely loud enough to be distinguished, a setting beyond time. Outside, the streets of Old Town are laced with spring afternoon snowflakes; on the South Side, at U.S. Cellular Field (formerly Comiskey Park), opening day has been postponed. The fact that Comiskey is no longer called Comiskey is a sign of how Chicago has changed, and not for the better.

" . . . a place of my own to live in, with a woman of my own and perhaps a child of my own. There's nothing extraordinary about wanting such things. . . ." So wrote Nelson Algren to Simone de Beauvoir when he feared that their love affair was, in her words, "doomed to come to an end, and soon." Neither wanted it to die. Both had plunged madly and sexually in love on her first trip to America in 1947. Their tragedy was that they chose work, and their respective cities over love.

Simone de Beauvoir came to the United States for the first time in the winter of 1947 (the trip is described in her book "America Day by Day"). Passing through Chicago on her way to California, having been given his number by a casual acquaintance, she called Nelson Algren--left-leaning, working-class, tough-guy American writer--and spent an evening with him touring the city's low-life neighborhoods, at the end of which they fell into bed.

Simone de Beauvoir came to the United States for the first time in the winter of 1947 (the trip is described in her book "America Day by Day"). Passing through Chicago on her way to California, having been given his number by a casual acquaintance, she called Nelson Algren--left-leaning, working-class, tough-guy American writer--and spent an evening with him touring the city's low-life neighborhoods, at the end of which they fell into bed.

Nice people didn't like Nelson Algren. The Chicago-bred author of "The Man With the Golden Arm," "A Walk on the Wild Side" and a number of immortal short stories about America's dispossessed behaved too much like his fictional characters for comfort.

Browse around a bookstore catering to cookbook fanatics or a big library that keeps up with the field, and you're likely to find quite a few facsimile reprints and scholarly editions. Every year seems to swell the ranks of libraries interested in this literature and knowledgeable editors or historians willing to map out unfamiliar culinary/cultural terrain for would-be learners. Some of the grist to this mill comes from donations of major private collections to scholarly libraries.

Being completely obsessed by Chicago, I much enjoyed your piece on Studs Terkel. As for the University of Chicago, I didn't learn of it until I got into the Army and a guy in the barracks told me he went there and I said he was lying because there was no such place. So much for West Side boys. As for Terkel, well, yes, my Chicago is the one I took away with me, but I don't think I could feel the same way about the city if Studs, Nelson Algren and their sort weren't out there brooding and sentimentalizing and being bitter about it. CLANCY SIGAL Los Angeles

Even the famous have to rest their feet sometimes. Five Times correspondents from around the world reveal the favorite rest-stops, loitering places and relaxing haunts of celebrities of an earlier time. ZAGORSKI'S RATHSKELLER, Chicago To Nelson Algren, author of "A Walk on the Wild Side" and "The Man with the Golden Arm," Chicago was "the city on the make." From the 1930s through the 1960s, he trapped in gritty prose its petty thieves, addicts, whores and gamblers.

NONCONFORMITY: Writing on Writing by Nelson Algren (Seven Stories: $16, 130 pp.). Why does this essay, an expose of the lily-livered fear ruining American literature in the 1950s and '60s, possess exactly the same echo as a thin dime in a tin cup?

" . . . a place of my own to live in, with a woman of my own and perhaps a child of my own. There's nothing extraordinary about wanting such things. . . ." So wrote Nelson Algren to Simone de Beauvoir when he feared that their love affair was, in her words, "doomed to come to an end, and soon." Neither wanted it to die. Both had plunged madly and sexually in love on her first trip to America in 1947. Their tragedy was that they chose work, and their respective cities over love.

NONCONFORMITY: Writing on Writing by Nelson Algren (Seven Stories: $16, 130 pp.). Why does this essay, an expose of the lily-livered fear ruining American literature in the 1950s and '60s, possess exactly the same echo as a thin dime in a tin cup?

Even the famous have to rest their feet sometimes. Five Times correspondents from around the world reveal the favorite rest-stops, loitering places and relaxing haunts of celebrities of an earlier time. ZAGORSKI'S RATHSKELLER, Chicago To Nelson Algren, author of "A Walk on the Wild Side" and "The Man with the Golden Arm," Chicago was "the city on the make." From the 1930s through the 1960s, he trapped in gritty prose its petty thieves, addicts, whores and gamblers.

Browse around a bookstore catering to cookbook fanatics or a big library that keeps up with the field, and you're likely to find quite a few facsimile reprints and scholarly editions. Every year seems to swell the ranks of libraries interested in this literature and knowledgeable editors or historians willing to map out unfamiliar culinary/cultural terrain for would-be learners. Some of the grist to this mill comes from donations of major private collections to scholarly libraries.

The idea zings out over the Hollywood Hills like an awry Frisbee. Industry insiders clustered around Deirdre Bair rock with laughter. The hostesses, Marcia Nassitir and Anne Goursaud, are stunned. Nassitir (producer of "The Big Chill") and Goursaud (editor of "The Two Jakes") have optioned Bair's new biography, "Simone de Beauvoir," and are throwing one of La-La Land's more cerebral thirst-quenchers up on the cloud-high terrace of a mountain adobe.

Nice people didn't like Nelson Algren. The Chicago-bred author of "The Man With the Golden Arm," "A Walk on the Wild Side" and a number of immortal short stories about America's dispossessed behaved too much like his fictional characters for comfort.

Will Holt has been waiting for his "Walk on the Wild Side" for a very long time. It was 30 years ago that Studs Terkel introduced the young musician/composer to novelist Nelson Algren. "I told him, 'I really love your book, and I think it'd be a terrific musical,' " Holt recalled. "He looked at me very oddly and said: 'A musical with a legless man and a guy who goes blind?' I said, 'It's a different kind of musical.'

Will Holt has been waiting for his "Walk on the Wild Side" for a very long time. It was 30 years ago that Studs Terkel introduced the young musician/composer to novelist Nelson Algren. "I told him, 'I really love your book, and I think it'd be a terrific musical,' " Holt recalled. "He looked at me very oddly and said: 'A musical with a legless man and a guy who goes blind?' I said, 'It's a different kind of musical.'

Jack Miles' "The Trouble With Studs" (The Book Review, Nov. 23) puzzled me. Was the article meant to be a review of Studs Terkel's latest book or was Miles "roasting" the unofficial mayor of Chicago? Terkel and I worked together on The Illinois Writers Project (yes, WPA) in the 1930s. We have been friends since. Perhaps Studs stayed in Chicago while most of us left for New York or California not out of loyalty, sense of place or love for Chicago but because he had struck a vein of literary gold there.