Loving a Girl with a Broken Nose

Nelson Algren was Chicago's great broken-hearted lover, and even he gave up and moved to New Jersey in the end. My buddy Wayne and I have Algren watching over our shoulders the way Turgenev looked over Tolstoy (well he didn't, but the alliteration sounded good), so in his honor here's some quotations collected by The Local Tourist:

"Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring." Nelson Algren, Newsweek, August 13, 1984

"Loving Chicago is like loving a woman with a broken nose." Nelson Algren

"Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt." Studs Terkel, 1978

"Satan (impatiently) to Newcomer: The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous." Mark Twain "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar," 1897

"Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos." Ben Hecht

"In most places in the country, voting is looked upon as a right and a duty, but in Chicago it's a sport." Dick Gregory, 1972

"He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way." David Mamet

"Chicago is the product of modern capitalism, and, like other great commercial centers, is unfit for human habitation." Eugene Debs, 1908

"It's a 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes; it's dark and we're wearing sun glasses. Hit it!" The Blues Brothers

"The Chicago Tribune has come out against syphilis. Bet you 8 to 5 syphilis will win." Anonymous, 1940

Coffee Grinder Blues

Rereading Nelson Algren's A Walk on the Wild Side, the story of door-to-door salesman of French Dripolator coffee pots and coffee-grinding man Dove Linkhorn, inspiring me to post the lyrics invoked by one of Dove's best customers...


Coffee Grindin' Blues
as sung by Lucille Bogan (1923-1935)

Ain't nobody, it ain't nobody
Ain't nobody in town can grind a coffee like mine

I drink so much coffee, till I grind it in my sleep
I drink so much coffee, I grind it in my sleep
And when it get like that, you know it can't be beat

It's so doggone good that it made me bite my tongue
It's so doggone good it made me bite my tongue
Will keep it for my daddy, ain't gonna give nobody none

I ain't ever loved it this-a way before
I ain't ever loved it this-a way before
And I hope the Lord that I won't love it any more

I've got so now that I can't control my mind
I've got so now that I can't control my mind
I go to bed blue and I get up cryin'

It's so doggone good that it made me talk out of my head
It's so doggone good it made me talk out of my head
And it's better to me than any that I have ever had

Now I grind my coffee, at the 2 and 3 dollars a pound
I grind my coffee, at the 2 and 3 dollars a pound
And it ain't no mo' cheap like mine in town

It's so doggone good until it'll make you bite your tongue
It's so doggone good that it'll make you bite your tongue
And I'm a coffee grindin' mama and won't you let me grind you some?

“Die Weltliteratur” by Milan Kundera, Part One: Snobbery on the Left

I love this guy Milan Kundera. You think he's talking about one thing, then you find out he's talking about something much more profound than the stated topic and by the end of the article or book he's set off a couple of cherry bombs and who knows where the pieces land?

"Die Weltliteratur" in the January 8 NEW YORKER (it's not posted online, so you're going to have to buy the magazine) starts out asking us to read more books by foreign authors and turns into a discussion of class among so-called progressives. I was struck by his description of the abuse heaped on Camus by other intellectuals for not being the right sort of person (an Algerian pied noir) and "not knowing what to think" in order to fit in, although time has shown Camus to be on the right side of most fights and a greater friend of humanity than the occasional Stalinist Sartre.

Simone deBeauvoir gave tongue to questions about gender and social class (her thoughts on pay equity in traditionally female occupations like teaching and nursing were a revelation for me after ten years on the psych ward and twenty years as a teacher). She then ditched the raffish Nelson Algren in favor of the abusive Sartre. My prejudice in favor of Algren is well-known, but we're talking about a man whose great-heartedness was recognized instincively by Billie Holliday, versus that friend of the oppressed Jean Paul who said "it was not our duty to write about Soviet labour camps" because it might discourage the French working class who according to Sartre still believed in Santa Claus as well. I'd say maybe it was about sex, but have you gotten a good look at Sartre?

Perhaps because of deBeauvoir's involvement, the snobbery against Camus reminded me of watching the moral collapse of feminism in the 1970s, when the leaders of the movement seemed to abandon working class women who needed a fair wage in favor of navel-gazing about gender. The East Coast magazines were full of the word empowerment but out here there were a lot of abandoned single mothers who had to live in trailers and could have used some help with the electric bill. I remember women talking about Ms. magazine; the magazine's indifference to problems with their subscriptions became a metaphor for the movement leaving them behind.

I remember a childhood Baptist service when an unwashed, poorly dressed black child wandered into the sanctuary during communion; she was eating barbecued potato chips and a grape pop and I at thirteen was the only one who picked up on the symbolism. I still worry if maybe that was Jesus or Elijah, a boddhisatva or one of the ushpizin. The biggest problem in working with poor people who have a lot of problems is that they're poor and have a lot of problems.

This is wandering around a lot and I haven't even gotten to the ideas that affected me the most in this article. That Darn Kundera. Our imaginary relationship is sort of like a man with a rubber ball walking a dog in an overgrown field lined by bushes. Milan Kundera throws the ball or hides it behind his back and teases me-- "where's the ball? Where's the ball?"-- and I, with my brain not much bigger than the tennis ball, go crashing into the bushes, and emerge with mixed results.

Angels in Cages on Honore Street

My buddy Wayne in Chicago, author of FIENDS BY TORCHLIGHT, DOWNWARD SPIRAL
-- and the only writer to publish erotica in Penthouse with the words "Division Street" in the title-- is an occasional photographer of Algrenesque and noir street scenes. I'm hoping someone in our Twilight Tales circle-- Roger, maybe?-- would use Wayne's photos for reprints of some out-of-print Nelson Algren books like NOTES FROM A SEA DIARY (my favorite), CONVERSATIONS WITH NELSON ALGREN and THE LAST CAROUSEL. Wayne has posted his favorite photographs of the year on his blog FRANKENSTEIN 1959.

Friends of Ormondroyd's Official Graffiti Wall and Commonplace Book

Less personal than a journal or diary, the "Commonplace Book" is a collection of random quotations, favorite authors, conversations, clippings, and bon mots. Add your own or comment on others', as you might scribble on a wall. Your entries need not serve as a Rorschach test; quotes can be silly or profound, heartfelt or just a momentary thought. Play nice. Additions will be woven into the main body, with initials to credit the contributor.

Thanks, Pat, Pamela, et al...

"What annoys me is that Spielberg is such an egomaniac these days that it has to be 'Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds. No, you pus-bag. It's H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, and it wouldn't kill you to put his fucking name on it." --Harlan Ellison

"The more he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
attributed to Samuel Johnson, later to Emerson.
(MF)

On a bathroom wall: "My mother made me a lesbian."
Scrawled underneath: "If I get her the yarn, will she make me one too?"
(MF)

Nelson Algren's Three Rules for Living:
One: Never eat in a restaurant called "Mom's".
Two: Never play cards with a man called "Doc".
Three: Don't sleep with anyone who has more problems than you do.
(MF)

"The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit." -- John D. MacDonald (Travis McGee's credo for a knight-errant's banner)
(M.F.)

My favorite epitaph, the one I hope to earn, inshallah, is Falstaff's:
"Nay, sure, he's not in hell: he's in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom. "
(the usual saying is "he sleeps in Abraham's bosom'; great-souled Falstaff prefered King Arthur, and so do I.)
(MF)

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
-- Groucho Marx (PR)


"In one hour of operation, the average gas mower emits the same amout of climate-changing hydrocarbons as a 1992 Ford Explorer driven over 23,000 miles."
-- Co-op America's Real Money, June/July 2002, adapted from The Organic Suburbanite by Warren Schultz, Rodale, 2001.(PR)


I don't need time. What I need is a deadline.
--Duke Ellington (PR)

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
stupidity.
--Hanlon's Razor (PR)

"Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks the customs of his tribe and island are the laws
of nature." - George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra
(RAH)

"Oh, Goddamnit, we forgot the silent prayer!" -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
(JDM)

(PJ) --Steve Benson, The Arizona Star

“[Tolstoy’s] opinions about syphilis … are not merely disreputable but they unmask an ignorant man who hasn’t taken the trouble in the course of his long life to read two or three books written by specialists.... Tolstoy calls doctors scoundrels and flaunts his ignorance of important matters because he is a second Diogenes whom no one will report to the police or denounce to the newspapers. So to hell with the philosophy of the great men of the world.... Reason and justice tell me that there is more love for mankind in electricity and steam than in chastity and abstinence from meat” --Chekhov (in letters)