The Novel
"But blow wise to this, buddy, blow wise to this: Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own" (312).
Depression-era teenage Dove Linkhorn lives in poverty with his brother and their father, an alcoholic street-preacher. He develops a relationship with Teresina Vidaverri, the woman who runs a small restaurant. That ends when he rapes her and, fearful and guilt-ridden, he heads out on the road. He encounters an adolescent drifter and petty criminal who goes by the name Kitty Twist. She passes herself off as his younger brother while they travel. She gets arrested and they get separated before he reaches New Orleans.
Nelson Algren's 1956 novel initially reads like the love child of Steinbeck and James T. Farrell filtered through the Beats. Once Dove arrives in the Big Easy, the story gives us gumbo servings of Southern Gothic, social satire, and chaotic stream of consciousness. Linkhorn gets involved in various schemes and scams to make money. He re-encounters Kitty Twist at a brothel. She feels like she should matter, but she becomes a minor character and incidental plot device. He becomes employed in the peep show and he encounters Hallie, a mixed-race prostitute with whom he has a short-lived relationship. A good deal of the central section frequently wanders from these characters, however. We get detailed, often brutal details of brothel life. Customers come in and take center stage. The novel devotes more than a dozen pages to one client's fetish and then he departs, never to be seen again. When Dove ends up in jail, we're treated to the stories of the people he encounters: "Above gutters that run with a dark life all their own or down cat-and-ashcan alleys too narrow for a Chrysler, they hid out in that littered hinterland behind the billboards' promises" (318). More than anything, we have a novel about a setting.
The finale returns to the original locale and delivers a bleak conclusion.
Ernest Hemingway and Studs Terkel rank among those who have praised Algren's writing and this novel maintains a following, but his reputation with the public has faded considerably. It is some reflection of A Walk on the Wild Side's mixed reception that the cover of the 2019 edition which I read boasts of an introduction by Russell Banks that never actually appears within. Algren nevertheless maintains some presence in the culture. He was, for a time, a lover of Simone de Beauvoir. Many people still know The Man With the Golden Arm (1949), an earlier award-winning novel which became a groundbreaking Otto Preminger film (1955) starring Frank Sinatra. True crime and boxing aficionados might recall that he wrote a punchy article on the trial of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in 1975 and it formed the basis of his final novel, The Devil's Stocking (1983). Chicago, where he spent much of life, has a small memorial fountain and an eponymous short-story contest.
He has also become entangled with popular music. Algren took the title of this novel from the 1952 song, "The Wild Side of Life" (Arlie Carter and William Warren), and musical artists as diverse as Leonard Cohen and The Tubes have recorded songs influenced by his writing. The Back Alley Theatre in Van Nuys, California staged a short-lived musical adaptation of A Walk on the Wild Side in 1988.
The most famous Algren-inspired songs drop the indefinite article from their title, taking the cue from the 1962 film adaptation. The musical influence therefore will be considered further under Walk on the Wild Side.
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At least five other books have since pinched the title, more or less, among them Christine Warren's 2008 paranormal romance, Dennis Rodman's auto/biography, and a children's book. There's also a British TV series which features quipping human voices inserted into wildlife footage. None of these are part of this particular wild story.