Nelson Algren (born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham, March 28, 1909 – May 9, 1981) was an American writer. His 1949 novel The Man with the Golden Arm, won the National Book Award,[2] and was adapted as the 1955 film of the same name. Algren articulated the world of "drunks, pimps, prostitutes, freaks, drug addicts, prize fighters, corrupt politicians, and hoodlums".[citation needed] Art Shay singled out a poem Algren wrote from the perspective of a "halfy", street slang for a legless man on wheels.[3] Shay said that Algren considered this poem to be a key to everything he had ever written.[3] The protagonist talks about "how forty wheels rolled over his legs and how he was ready to strap up and give death a wrestle".[3] According to Harold Augenbraum, "in the late 1940s and early 1950s he was one of the best known literary writers in America".[4] The lover of French writer Simone de Beauvoir,[4] he is featured in her novel The Mandarins,[4] set in Paris and Chicago. He was called "a sort of bard of the down-and-outer"[4] based on this book, but also on his short stories in The Neon Wilderness (1947) and his novel A Walk on the Wild Side (1956). The latter was adapted as the 1962 film of the same name (directed by Edward Dmytryk, screenplay by John Fante).

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