{"id":206,"date":"2012-03-15T08:30:44","date_gmt":"2012-03-15T08:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/douglascowie.com\/?p=206"},"modified":"2012-03-14T11:46:23","modified_gmt":"2012-03-14T11:46:23","slug":"nelson-algren-abc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/?p=206","title":{"rendered":"Nelson Algren ABC"},"content":{"rendered":"

My essay, “Narrative Proximity in the Work of Nelson Algren,” appears in Volume 17 of the journal American, British and Canadian Studies<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 You can read the abstract by following this link<\/a>.\u00a0 Volume 17 contains a number of other interesting essays, including one written by Matthew R. Turner<\/a> about one of my favorite films of all time, Blazing Saddles.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the process of editing the article I cut a long section that discusses Algren’s first novel, Somebody in Boots.<\/em>\u00a0 I’ve reproduced that section below.\u00a0 The full article is available in the journal (obviously), and discusses The Man with the Golden Arm<\/em> and Never Come Morning.<\/em><\/p>\n

In both Somebody in Boots<\/em> and The Man with the Golden Arm<\/em>, he uses the technique both to control the narrative tension of key scenes.\u00a0 In the scene that introduces Cass and Norah in his first novel, Somebody in Boots,<\/em> the importance of narrative proximity is twofold; it creates tension in the scene, and in so doing, establishes quickly and effectively the relationship between the two characters.\u00a0 This second point is vital, because these two protagonists are only introduced to each other approximately three-quarters of the way into the novel, and Norah herself has only recently been introduced into the plot.<\/p>\n

The scene begins with Cass getting drunk alone in a speakeasy following the robbery of a butcher shop, and, as the narration follows the drunken dislocation of Cass\u2019s thoughts and perceptions, narrative proximity is used primarily for its comedic potential:<\/p>\n

After four straight shots, a sour and a solid stein, Cass decided he ought to lean against something.\u00a0 Against something close, right away.\u00a0 After he had leaned against something close for quite some time he became aware, with a slow and blinking awareness, that he was leaning against something close inside an L station.\u00a0 Somehow, this did not seem quite fair; somehow it seemed just a trifle improper. (180)<\/p>\n

The narration clings tightly to Cass\u2019s perspective, with the more detached authorial tone only creeping in to provide necessary clarity.\u00a0 The rhythm of the sentences also reflects the drunk\u2019s point-of-view\u2014his moment of overly deliberate self-rectification\u2014through the use of repetition\u2014the four instances of \u201clean against something\u201d and, in the final sentence, of \u201csomehow\u201d\u2014as well as the variation in sentence length and structure, from the choppy fragment, \u201cAgainst something close,\u201d through the meandering, repetitive \u201cleaning against something\u201d sentence to the final sentence, bisected by a semicolon.\u00a0 The drunkenness and the amusement continue as Cass tries to work out how to buy an El ticket from a peanut machine while thinking about the monkey house at Lincoln Park Zoo.<\/p>\n

When the perspective shifts to Norah Egan, the hay-bag whore watching Cass\u2019s antics from across the street, the slapstick trails off and the tension and desperation that define her life also dictate the action.\u00a0 This scene is the first in which Algren shows Norah as a prostitute.\u00a0 Before her narrative breaks off in favor of Cass\u2019s and Nubby\u2019s robbery, the narrator presents her as \u201cNorah Egan, free, white, female and twenty-one, alumna of Cicero high-school class of \u2018thirty-one, Norah wasn\u2019t thinking now that just because she was hungry she might go downstairs and stroll slowly past strangers\u201d (166).\u00a0 Now, \u201cLittle Norah Egan\u201d (181) is doing just that, and Algren dictates the tone and tension of the scene through his insistence on keeping the narrative close to her perspective.<\/p>\n

When Norah takes hold of Cass\u2019s arm the narrative proximity begins to change.\u00a0 For one last burst, the perspective stays with Cass as he attempts drunkenly to make sure that Norah doesn\u2019t get offended that he doesn\u2019t recognize her (they\u2019ve never met).\u00a0 After this paragraph, however, the narration pulls back to an omniscient viewpoint in order to show Norah and Cass in their setting as they cross the street at State and Eighteenth, and a cab driver laughs as the crooked cop Gerahty looks the other way for the long time that it takes her, supporting a stumbling drunk, to cross.\u00a0 The cabbie\u2019s laughter signals the shift to a narrative perspective centered on Norah.\u00a0 It begins by a simple shift in point-of-view: \u201cShe heard men laughing, and she wanted to run.\u00a0 The drunk on her arm said, \u2018Did ah get me ta-tooed?\u2019<\/em>\u201d (181). The important point here is that Cass is referred to as \u201cthe drunk on her arm.\u201d\u00a0 For the remainder of the scene he is \u201cthe drunk\u201d\u2014not Cass.\u00a0 The narrative position has overlapped with Norah\u2019s perspective, and she doesn\u2019t know him by name.<\/p>\n

Norah\u2019s perspective is important both to the drama of the scene and to the establishment of their relationship, which will provide the emotional center for the rest of the novel.\u00a0 Narrative proximity allows a sympathy to take hold and develop.\u00a0 It works primarily through the contrast of Norah\u2019s shifting wariness about Cass and the knowledge\u2014not shared by Norah\u2014that Cass is not much more than a na\u00efve drunk.\u00a0 To Norah he is another trick picked up off the street, and therefore to be regarded with caution, no matter how drunk.\u00a0 All depictions of \u201cthe drunk\u201d come from Norah\u2019s limited understanding of him, with the third person narrator providing no judgement or comment to embellish her perspective.\u00a0 Thus, \u201cOn the staircase up to her room the drunk took a notion that she was going to thrash him; he kept telling her that he\u2019d pay her this time, that he wouldn\u2019t try to heel out. With every step he paused to assure her of this; that made it hard, he was such a big lout\u201d (181). Narrative proximity here serves to characterize Norah and Cass simultaneously; the words are essentially hers, and the matter-of-factness reflects her wariness and shrewdness, while the fact that she\u2019s describing Cass serves to characterize him further, from a subjective point-of-view that does not belong to Cass\u2014the protagonist of the novel\u2014but that doesn\u2019t necessarily belong to the narrator, either.\u00a0 In this scene it is reasonable to read from the narrator an implicit approval of Norah\u2019s opinion of the drunk; but as will be seen, this isn\u2019t always the case.\u00a0 Approval or disapproval is secondary anyway; allowing the character\u2019s viewpoint to determine\u2014to have control\u2014not of the situation, but of its telling\u2014to allow the otherwise voiceless character a voice\u2014is the primary objective.<\/p>\n

It becomes clear that this objective is vital when Gerahty reasserts himself onto the scene.\u00a0 The crooked cop is a de facto pimp to the brothel where Norah lives, but rather than state this matter-of-factly, Algren dramatizes it by using Norah\u2019s experience and words.<\/p>\n

Once she\u2019d told Gerahty to go to hell, and he\u2019d hit her between the eyes.\u00a0 It had served her right for talking back, and the Dago girl on the second floor had laughed with Gerahty at night on the stairs.\u00a0 Gerahty\u2019d take it out in trade with that dirty Dago, but never with herself.\u00a0 He said he didn\u2019t like blondes was why.\u00a0 He\u2019d said his wife was a blonde was why.\u00a0 On the night that they laughed, they\u2019d laughed at her. (182)<\/p>\n

This passage comes when she\u2019s just getting the drunk into the room, and after she\u2019s explicitly thought that she\u2019s got to hurry up and roll him because Gerahty saw her.\u00a0 The diction and syntax here are both Norah\u2019s.\u00a0 Her rival prostitute isn\u2019t named, nor is she \u201cthe Italian girl,\u201d rather, she\u2019s \u201cthe Dago girl\u201d and \u201cthat dirty Dago\u201d.\u00a0 Rather than saying that Norah is the bottom rung of the whorehouse ladder (although a short discourse on hay-bags, girls who pick up drunks, has already been offered), Norah\u2019s words imply it: \u201cbut never with herself.\u201d\u00a0 Norah is the whore who must always pay in cash and beatings.<\/p>\n

Again repetition underpins the technique.\u00a0 \u201cDago\u201d is repeated twice.\u00a0 Gerahty\u2019s reason for never taking it in trade with Norah is split between two sentences that are almost identical.\u00a0 And Gerahty\u2019s and the Dago\u2019s laughter echoes from the second sentence of the paragraph to the last, in which \u201claughed\u201d is repeated twice.\u00a0 The repetition helps to depict, rather than simply to describe, Norah\u2019s claustrophobic life.\u00a0 She labors\u2014she whores\u2014under the weight of the Dago, of Gerahty, of the laughter that targets her.\u00a0 The repeating laughter also indicates that beatings and money alone are not the only issue at stake here, but also shame and status.\u00a0 Norah\u2019s use of \u201che\u2019d said\u201d (again, repeated) raises a complication to both technique and its effect in this paragraph; she repeats to herself the things that Gerahty has offered as excuses, in effect answering the unspoken question, \u201cwhy?\u201d.\u00a0 Furthermore, like the laughter, her<\/em> repetition of his<\/em> words reinforce her status and confirm the shame she feels.<\/p>\n

When Gerahty arrives in the room to take the five dollar bill she\u2019s just stolen from the drunk, he holds \u201cout his hand with a black kid glove on it,\u201d and in a short paragraph Algren writes, \u201cNorah didn\u2019t have any black tight gloves like that\u201d (182).\u00a0 Here narrative proximity allows a moment of abject self-pity without allowing it to spill into mawkish pathos.\u00a0 In this passage the technique also works in the manner identified by Giles, calling the middle-class position\u2014represented by Gerahty\u2014into question: Algren juxtaposes cruel, glove-handed, married Gerahty against the helpless and hopeless perspective of Norah, rolling a drunk and fearing the cop, but he has also shown the influence that the glove-handed cop\u2019s excuses hold in positioning Norah\u2019s own thinking about herself.\u00a0 Gerahty\u2019s middle-class perspective is only given voice through Norah\u2014through the object of its gaze.\u00a0 The oppressed therefore voices the oppressor\u2019s position, which not only illustrates the extent to which Norah has internalized that oppression, but also demonstrates the gulf of both power and circumstance between the entitled and dispossessed characters: Norah is living a sub-human existence, to the amusement of someone whose job it is, among other things, to protect her from the same crimes he perpetrates against her.<\/p>\n

While the drunk lies passed out on the bed, Norah rocks herself to sleep, huddled in a chair and wrapped in his jacket.\u00a0 When she awakes in the morning to his footsteps, narrative proximity shifts\u2014with Norah\u2014from self-pity and loneliness back to the sharp wariness that defines the other half of her thinking.\u00a0 She of course knows nothing of who this guy is; she picked him up when he was incoherently drunk.\u00a0 So when she awakes to find him skittish and pale and staring out the window, she is understandably \u201ca little afraid\u201d (183). As with Cass\u2019s drunk scene, Algren keeps the narration close to Norah\u2019s viewpoint, neither wavering over to that of Cass\u2014which would immediately diffuse the narrative tension, if not Norah\u2019s\u2014nor providing any outside narration that strays beyond her point-of-view.\u00a0 The exclusive focus on Norah, however, does result in Cass\u2014already well established throughout the novel as a character who acts without much consideration for the consequences\u2014becoming anyone, capable of just about anything in this little room, and acting strangely.\u00a0 To Norah each of his actions carries the potential for violence, and Algren does nothing to dispel this implication from an omniscient perspective, thus implicitly corroborating her view.\u00a0 The effect here is complicated: the reader has spent more than 150 pages with Cass, and knows him well; Norah, on the other hand, knows him not at all.\u00a0 The narrative proximity to Norah functions as a filter, not only for the scene itself, as described above, but also for Giles\u2019s \u201cmiddle-class perspective\u201d: the filter allows one to see the gap between being able to afford to see Cass as he is, and not having that luxury.<\/p>\n

So in the dim morning light Norah narrates, \u201cNo use getting him sore though, or he might sock her.\u00a0 He wouldn\u2019t have been the first and he looked pretty tough.\u00a0 But he didn\u2019t look as though he knew many tricks\u201d (183).\u00a0 This description is in fact fairly accurate, but Norah doesn\u2019t know that, and so her speculation continues throughout the scene.\u00a0 Each time he does or says something, the narrative commentary on it comes from her. The narrative proximity lends irony to the scene, because nothing she thinks about him is unfounded, but nor is much of it particularly accurate, beyond the initial judgement that he doesn\u2019t look as though he knows many tricks.\u00a0 The irony is robbed of much comic potential\u2014unlike elsewhere in Algren\u2019s work\u2014because Cass is in fact unpredictable, and as Norah fears, he is certainly capable of becoming a Gerahty, who refuses to take anything in trade, and prefers punching her in the face.\u00a0 Furthermore, as already established, Norah lives a life in which she has no choice but to expect the worst, and to accept\u2014at least partially\u2014the excuses that make \u201cthe worst\u201d her fault.\u00a0 Thus, while Norah can\u2019t quite work out \u201cwhy he was standing that way with his head cocked off to one side and looking like a down-in-the-mouth hound\u201d (183), each time she braces herself against the possibility that \u201che might sock her\u201d\u2014five times in just over two pages\u2014the menace is real.<\/p>\n

However, this scene is also a perverse courtship, and the narrative proximity allows her attitude towards him to soften gradually, even if it only breaks\u2014if it does at all\u2014when he produces his wad of cash.\u00a0 The courtship cannot really be called a courtship after all, because even if some affection develops between them\u2014and it does\u2014the relationship is always primarily based on money.\u00a0 But Norah\u2019s narration, in the form of her unspoken reactions to everything he does and says, guides the rest of the scene, and simultaneously reveals her intelligence and vulnerability.\u00a0 When he calls her \u201chay-bag,\u201d the defensive self-pity flashes again: \u201cHay-bag whore. Everyone hated a hay-bag.\u00a0 She was in for it now, kikes had hot tempers\u201d (184).[i]<\/a>\u00a0 But her attitude changes when he calls her Blondie in a friendly tone.\u00a0 In fact, her complex reaction demonstrates the importance of narrative proximity, and I will quote it in its entirety before discussing it:<\/p>\n

He was calling her \u201cBlondie\u201d now, but he\u2019d called her Hay-Bag at first.\u00a0 So he wasn\u2019t so hard, he was kind of soft.\u00a0 He was kind of soft and kind of nasty; and the soft-nasty ones were the ones she feared most.\u00a0 They were the smartest and the meanest, both at once.\u00a0 But she wondered whether he\u2019d called her Blondie more for her eyes than for her skin, or for her hair more than both eyes and skin put together.\u00a0 She looked in the mirror, but she couldn\u2019t tell for certain. (184-185)<\/p>\n

Once again repetition is important to the technique, because repetition allows the approximation of a logical thought process to take hold.\u00a0 Here she is trying to talk herself back into a fear that has dissipated in the face of what is in fact Cass\u2019s na\u00efve and fearful earnestness, but which she must force herself to regard as a lout\u2019s cunning, and as potentially lethal.\u00a0 By giving Norah\u2019s position the full benefit of the doubt, Algren can also subtly convey her essential humanness; that tender word, \u201cBlondie\u201d, catches in her mind, and she begins to overcomplicate the reasoning behind his choice.\u00a0 From what one knows about his character by this point in the novel, one assumes that it is highly unlikely that Cass has given it any thought, but Norah reveals herself, behind the toughness, to be as insecure, and needing of compliments, needing of compassion, as any other person.\u00a0 Norah reveals this aspect of her nature, but not to any character.\u00a0 If narrative proximity allows one to laugh at the triumph of technique, it is also the triumph of technique that produces understanding of and empathy for Algren\u2019s most debased characters.\u00a0\u00a0 As we will see, further implications of this aspect of narrative proximity become clear in Never Come Morning<\/em>, which I will discuss later.<\/p>\n

The understanding of and empathy for Norah develop through the narrative proximity that drives the scene.\u00a0 The sentimentality of a girl looking in a mirror vanishes as the scene hurtles to a close.\u00a0 It will end with the two making a half-spoken deal: that Cass can stay, for a price.\u00a0 But first Norah must move back to the hyper-defensive.\u00a0 The drunk charges towards her and she must assume she\u2019s under attack.\u00a0 She mentally prepares herself for a beating, giving to herself the reasons for it by repeating the same thoughts she\u2019s already had:\u00a0 \u201cThe soft-nasty ones were the kind that socked you.\u00a0 Sometimes they were the worst.\u00a0 He was coming up to her pulling up his shirt.\u00a0 What the hell.\u00a0 And he\u2019d walked a straight line\u201d (185).\u00a0 A girl\u2019s confusion over why she might be pretty drops in favor of straight fear and preparation for a beating.\u00a0 But it breaks when he removes his spitball of money from his bellybutton: \u201cWhen he unrolled it she saw enough there to keep a man with a woman for almost as long as just about any man ever feels like keeping any woman around\u201d (185).\u00a0 Here Norah exhibits a twofold cynicism in her thinking.\u00a0 First, she can use the lunk who she was about to toss onto the street for his cash; this is the cynicism of any prostitute in her position.\u00a0 But she also shows a world-weary cynicism that has little to do with the money, for she recognizes in this same thought that neither this lunk, nor any other man she\u2019s ever met, is one who will stick around for ever.\u00a0 The Cicero high school class of \u201931 shop girl is no more.\u00a0 Nowhere has the omniscient narrative voice commented upon any of this; instead, the characters\u2019 own perspectives have dramatized it.\u00a0 In a few short pages, Algren\u2019s use of narrative proximity has accomplished the feat of creating a potential menace of a harmless drunk, and most importantly, dramatizing the violent and degraded world of Norah\u2019s life as a prostitute, while also introducing to each other the two protagonists whose interacting lives will govern both the plot and the emotional center of the remainder of the novel.<\/p>\n


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[i]<\/a> It\u2019s worth noting here that she refers to him as a kike\u2014she\u2019d decided previously that he \u201ctalked like some kind of kike\u201d; another attribute of narrative proximity, which will be discussed later, is that Algren allows his characters to repeat their inaccurate or just plain wrong thoughts, as long as they believe them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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