Nelson Algren Life Wild Side

Just think when it comes to being the most afraid you have ever been, multiply it by ten, then open your eyes! That would be a good approach when starting Wild Fire. In today’s world most of us have nuclear warfare in the back of our mind but Nelson DeMille brings that subject to the forefront of our mind. Scary, yes but the possibleness is there each day in our post-September 11, 2001 troublesome world. Wild Fire gives us a story of how “nuclear hell” could be started by so few, a great deal of of who think like too some think in our present day world.

John Corey is a former NYPD cop that was wounded in action and is a fellow member of the ATTF, Anti-Terrorist Task Force. Corey is an “in your face” man that will act original and get permission afterwards when he deems it necessary. He is married to Kate Mayfield who is an FBI agent, lawyer, and a fellow member of the ATTF. Kate is the steadier brain of the two but she can’t always control her husbands words and actions, but those activenesses normally prove to be rectify in his rogue way.

The Custer Hill Club is an exclusive club located in upstate New York that is very secretive and keeps those mysteries locked in a fenced in area that holds all the communications, power source, and weapons they thought they would need. The club has members that have very high positions in the United States government. A dear friend of John and Kate’s, Harry Muller, is sent to poke around the club to see what type of action goes on inside that very guarded fence. Upon Harry’s arrival he is came across and invited as a “guest” to the Custer Hill Club. Harry was seated at a table with the head of the club, Bain Madox, and found himself in the middle of a meeting of the club’s executive board composed of these highly influential men of the present administration, civilian and military.

The plans that the club has would begin international devastation in a devious way one would never expect. Their plans, largely devised by Madox, would rid the world of millions of undesirable humans, at least those they thought to be not wanted and unneeded. Since Harry Muller has been exposed to the plans invented by these monsters, he is expendable and is killed. The invention of his body outside the grounds of the club brings the ATTF into the investigation, led by, of course, John and Kate.

The plots are a good deal of but distinctly specified as the reader flies through the book. It is the same non-stop action that I have found in all of DeMille’s stimulating stories, and in Wild Fire, fact and fiction intertwine. Most of us that live in today’s volatile world have a difficult time telling those facts from fiction. Just when things get too serious, Corey will say or do something that will make you smile. I do not want to spoil your enjoyment of this book so I will not disclose anything beyond what I have done above. Believe me, you will get enjoyment from this book if you like action, suspense, and government in action-or un-action-in a good deal of cases.

Nelson Algren Life Wild Side

Nelson Algren Life Wild Side Picture

Nelson Algren Life Wild Side Photo

Nelson Algren Life Wild Side Picture

Nelson Algren Life Wild Side Pic

Most helpful client reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
A Neglected Classic
By A
In a perfective world, _A Walk on the Wild Side_ would be remembered as Algren’s best book, and would be read in American creative writing of recognized artisti value classes.

Algren is a much-needed antidote to both romantics who idealize the poor and to conservatives who feel smugly superior to the lower classes but have no real sense of the difficultnesses they face.

Its social significance aside, _Walk_ must be read by any person fascinated in literary style. Algren’s narrative voice–pugnacious, amused, and quietly outraged–explains why Algren has always been read by writers, even if a larger standard audience proceeds to escape him.

(While it is true this novel reworks material from _The Neon Wilderness_, it is put to much better use here–read _Walk_ first!)

9 of 10 persons found the following review helpful.
Brilliant poetry in prose
By A
Having read the book a long time ago I can’t describe particulars, but it remains years later my #1 bestloved book of all time. If you receive pleasure from beautifully written stories with regards to not-so-beautiful people, this novel is a must-read. The characters are from society’s underbelly, and, while Algren does not glorify them, he makes you feel outstanding empathy for them. Besides presenting you with powerful characters, his use of words is astonishing. I may only describe Algren’s language as “raw poetry.” His words are poetic while the content is not (as opposed to, say, Henry Miller’s language, which is powerful and raw but can’t precisely be described as poetic [in my opinion, anyway]). This is merely a beauteous book most persons would call you crazy for describing as beautiful.

7 of 8 humans found the following review helpful.
A flawed masterpiece
By John
You are a good person, pay your taxes, honour your parents, do an honest’s days work…so not one thing in mutual with whores, drug addicts, boot-lickers, queers, hustlers, drunkards, jail fodder. You are a good honorable citizen looking out for others.

Last week I was on a train that got stuck outside of Bristol by the floods for assorted hours, we moved up and down the tracks and stopped before moving up and down the tracks again. Eventually we returned to Taunton and were dumped at the station. Outside the promised coaches were absent, it was bucketing down rain and no one from the rail company in charge. When coaches did arrive in dribs and drabs 300+ people ran as if fleeing a doomed city. No thoughts given to parents with babes in arms, to elderly passengers engaged in a struggle with heavy cases. I bet you that we were all good people, who compensate our taxes…

In Walk on the Wild Side, Nelson Algren asks “why lost persons now and again manufacture into dandier humane beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives. Why men who have suffered at the hands of other men are the natural believers in humanity, while those whose share has been plainly to acquire, to take all and give nothing, are the most contemptuous of mankind.”

The book was written at the on set of the cold war in the 1950′s but is set in the Deep south of the early 1930′s. Algren himself went into popular and critical decline soon after in part due to the abuses of McCarthyism and in portion to his own hard drinking, gambling and drug taking.

The story starts with Dove a Southern trailer trash illiterate 16 year old in the Mexican-Texas border. His grandfather is traveling preacher…described by Dove as the type that makes you want to throw your Bible away. He is barefoot, and in country yokel jeans. At the end he is in the height of fashion even though bedraggled due to prison sentence for being drunk and disorderly. Along the way we see the ins and outs of hustling, working in a peepshow, making and syndication rubbers etc. We meet the women he loves or has sex with and one who keeps her humanity sufficient perchance to love him. This unfolds as he jumps trains to New Orleans and then tries to make a living.

The narrative may at time feel like a series of short stories threaded together but it is both naturalistic and funny. See Dove as an innocent abroad who walks where others fear to tread and so sails through danger that passes over his head. It also has lots of little passages of songs scatters allround the book. Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed is based on the book and was going to be percentage of a musical of the book- want to see that if it ever happens!

It has to be said it’s a flawed masterwork but still better then a heap of other writers’ best work so give it a undertake and get a sense if you could believe in humanity if crushed at the bottom of the pile.

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