What a lively literary couple of days! This is the 100th anniversary of Nelson Algren's birth. And we in Chicago celebrate him even though the rest of the country is slow in catching up. Hint: one of his books, The Man With the Golden Arm was made into a movie starring Frank Sinatra in a dramatic role (no singing.) Hint 2: he was Simone de Beauvoir's lover - when she wasn't with Jean Paul Sartre. Hint 3: He won the first National Book Award which was presented by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and the only time Nelson was ever in a suit.
Art Shay, photographer and friend of Nelson Algren, has done most of the photos we see of Algren, and several books have been published with these very many pictures of him chronicling his activities in Chicago. So Art was a player in all three of the celebratory events held this last month.
I chose to go to the performance at Steppenwolf Theatre. This event was sponsored by Seven Stories Press, whose just published book Entrapment and Other Writings is a collection of Algren's works that had never been in print. The program, one night only, was called Nelson Algren Live, and had a cast of nine, assembled to read excerpts from these newly printed words.
There was a pre-performance dinner at the Bistro Zinc the night before for the actors and others involved, and as wife to one of the celebrities, I was invited to join, amongst others, Russell Banks (author), Don DeLillo (author), Barry Gifford (author/poet), Wellem Dafoe (actor), Art Shay (author/photographer) and Dan Simon (The Publisher and host). There were other dinner guests from Steppenwolf and Second Story Press. Gossip: Don DeLillo whose books run to maybe 800 pages, talks very little, and then in a quiet whispery voice. (He's tall and thin, not the short fat Dom DeLuise that you are thinking of.) Barry Gifford looks like a Poet, tall, sculpted face, white hair. The Publisher, Dan Simon is a cute young fella. And Willem Dafoe, the actor who plays unsavory characters on the screen, is the sweetest guy, with a pretty smile. Go figure.
Steppenwolf Theatre was sold out for the evening. The Nine, which also included Matha Lavey (artistic director of Steppenwolf), David New, (Assoc. Director), Randall Newsome (actor), Kathy Scambiatterra (actor/director), Rick Kogan (newspaperman/actor-on-occasion), Dan Simon (publisher and one-time-only actor) sat on chairs with the scripts they would read from when it was their turn at the pulpit.
As a backdrop, various Nelson Algren/Chicago photos from the Art Shay archives were projected, huge. Boy, they looked good filling the wall.
It's not fair to single out one reader, but I will. Willem Dafoe, wow!
There was an after-the-show party for the invited many, upstairs in the theatre party room. Bar, and table full of veggies and yummy sweets. A young English lady, (doing an extensive study of Algren here in the States), asked, "What is it with Americans and brownies?"
The highlight for me? Kissing a beaming Willem Dafoe and telling him how wonderful he is. Well, it would be more of a highlight, if he had kissed me and told me.....
---Florence
The highlite of my stay at the algren testimonial was watching people ask my brother-in-law for his autograph. I wonder if those people realized that I beat arthur in the streets of brooklyn in stickball and also whipped him in scrabble. I probably could have beat him in handball except I never played the game. But, I will give him credit, he does do good pictures.
Posted by: Donald Gerson | April 12, 2009 at 10:42 AM