Let’s face it, the guy was a bum.
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Some 400 people crammed into Lotte’s Pub last December to celebrate Algren nonetheless. It was the committee’s first Algren bash. “We had to turn people away,” says Stu McCarrell, who was once Algren’s pal. Saturday, December 1, the committee will be at it again, this time at the Bop Shop, 1807 W. Division. There will be videotapes of Algren speaking about his life in Chicago, McCarrell and another Algren chum, Roger Griffith, will read from his works. There will be readings from Conversations With Nelson Algren, a compilation of interviews collected by E.H.F. Donahue, a New York City cab driver and Algren fan. There will be music by John Mierl and the New Tradition Jazz Band and Yves Francois and His Orchestra (playing what Francois calls “continental underground”). And there’ll be a birthday cake for the committee.
Saturday night’s blow might be something like the parties that Algren himself threw in his flat at 1958 W. Evergreen, where he lived from 1959 through 1975. McCarrell remembers Algren would pack 40 or 50 people into his little flat. Guests would include “Mike Royko, Studs Terkel, and street people.”
The Wabansia apartment site is one of ten stops on a walking tour the committee offers. McCarrell, tireless in his dedication to the writer, is the docent. He helps organize the winter parties, and what he hopes will become yearly August picnics and March birthday celebrations. McCarrell also is collecting material for an archive that will include, among other things, a video that Leming is making about Algren and Wicker Park.
