A Walk On The Wild Side

Just took a walk on the wild side. Heavy duty emotion and truth. A Walk On The Wild Side by Nelson Algren. What a book. Born in1909, died in 1981, Algren also wrote The Man With The Golden Arm and many others. So far I've read The Man, and A Walk, and they both tasted pretty good. Because they are real and unafraid to expose the truth.
A Walk is set in 1930's New Orleans and follows the life of one illiterate character through ups and downs, legal and illegal, whorehouses, jails and bars, con men, petty crooks, hardened criminals, alcoholics and drug addicts, until he ends up beaten to within an inch of his life and goes home to where the journey started, blind, and life-wise. He wasn't the most reputable character I've ever met, but when he took a beating at the end of the book it saddened me.
I am always drawn to stories like these because they expose us all as pimps and dreamers and grand schemers with a tenuous connection to reality. To the truth.
I have never believed that getting a paycheck, "owning" a home and having barbecues made me any better than the most hopeless drunk.
We both survive in the same way. By fooling ourselves. By believing in a dream.
The drunk always believes his latest scheme is going to score him the big prize. Gonna buy his freedom. I believe I will get paid to write.We could be right, we could be wrong. But we are both doing the same thing.
The drunk, the loser is more honest than us hard working bugs. He's saying "this is what I am, I'm not pretending to be anything else." We run around pretending to be well off, pretending to be happy and pretending to know the score. The truth is we are just as unhappy as a bum and we might understand life even less.
Algren says of the book: "The book asks why lost people sometimes develop into greater human 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 part has been simply to acquire, to take all and give nothing, are the most contemptuous of mankind."
You cannot argue with those words. The end of it sounds like he is describing the 1%-ers.
My heart aches when I follow the schemes of these characters hatching plans to make them rich. They know they are fooling themselves, I know they are going to fail and it is painful to read. Because I want them to succeed. Us wee folk think we have an intelligent plan to climb the ladder of success when we know the game is rigged and we won't get what we want. It's all the same, baby.
He's describing the work environment in 1930's New Orleans: "......they hid out in that littered hinterland behind the billboards' promises, evading the rat-race for fortune and fame. Their names were "Unemployed Talent Scout" and "Part Time Fry Cook" and "Part Time Beautician". And they strolled as matter-of-factly through their part time nightmares into a self-styled daylight no less terrible than all their dreams."
He could have added "Part Time Liquor Store Clerk" to the list and it would have fit.
Here's another one: ".....and it took a cardinal to perceive that the country's economic collapse was actually a wonderful piece of luck, for every day it brought thousands closer to the poverty of Christ, who had been nowhere near before."
Santorum could utter these words and supporters would be nodding their heads in agreement.
One more:"Caught between the double disappointment of dying too soon or staying alive to no purpose whatsoever..............."
That one speaks for itself.
Don't read Nelson Algren. You can't handle it.
I know you'd rather go to the movies to see Dr.Seuss' The Lorax and chow down on $9 popcorn, and then come home to the house that the bank owns and congratulate yourself on your wonderful life.