Elementary Secondary Higher Ed Common Reads
0 0
Download high-resolution image

The Last Carousel

Fiction and Reportage

Author Nelson Algren
Introduction by Susan Jacoby
Paperback
$21.95 US
Seven Stories Press
On sale Jan 20, 2026 | 448 Pages | 9781644214831
Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies

See Additional Formats
The fiction and reportage included in The Last Carousel, one of the final collections published during Nelson Algren's lifetime, was written on ships and in ports of call around the world, and includes accounts of brothels in Vietnam and Mexico, stories of the boxing ring, and reminiscences of Algren's beloved Chicago White Sox, among other subjects. In this collection, not just Algren's intensity but his diversity are revealed and celebrated.
Dark Came Early in That Country 
Could World War I Have Been a Mistake? Otto Preminger’s Strange Suspenjers 
I Never Hollered Cheezit the Cops 
The Mad Laundress of Dingdong-Daddyland 
The Leak That Defied the Books 
Tinkle Hinkle and the Footnote King 
Hand in Hand Through the Greenery 
with the grabstand clowns of arts and letters
Come In If You Love Money 
Brave Bulls of Sidi Yahya 
I Know They’ll Like Me in Saigon 
Airy Persiflage on the Heaving Deep 
No Cumshaw No Rickshaw 
Letter from Saigon 
What Country Do You Think You’re In?
Police and Mama-sans Get It All 
Poor Girls of Kowloon 
After the Buffalo 
The Cortez Gang 
The House of the Hundred Grassfires 
Previous Days 
Epitaph: The Man with the Golden Arm 
The Passion of Upside-Down-Emil
A Story from Life’s Other Side
Merry Christmas Mr. Mark 
I Guess You Fellows Just Don’t Want Me 
Everything Inside Is a Penny 
The Ryebread Trees of Spring 
Different Clowns for Different Towns 
Go! Go! Go! Forty Years Ago 
Ballet for Opening Day: 
The Swede Was a Hard Guy
A Ticket on Skoronski 
Ode to an Absconding Bookie 
Bullring of the Summer Night 
Moon of the Arfy Darfy 
Watch Out for Daddy 
The Last Carousel 
Tricks Out of Times Long Gone
One of the most neglected of modern American authors and also one of the best loved, NELSON ALGREN (1909–1981) believed that “literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity.” His own voluminous body of work stands up to that belief. Algren’s powerful voice rose from the urban wilderness of postwar Chicago, and it is to that city of hustlers, addicts and scamps that he returned again and again, eventually raising Chicago’s “lower depths” up onto a stage for the whole world to behold. Recipient of the first National Book Award for fiction and lauded by Hemingway as “one of the two best authors in America,” Algren remains among our most defiant and enduring novelists. His work includes five major novels, two short fiction collections, a book-length poem and several collections of reportage. A source of inspiration to artists as diverse as Kurt Vonnegut and Donald Barthelme, Studs Terkel and Lou Reed, Algren died on May 9, 1981, within days of his appointment as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. View titles by Nelson Algren

About

The fiction and reportage included in The Last Carousel, one of the final collections published during Nelson Algren's lifetime, was written on ships and in ports of call around the world, and includes accounts of brothels in Vietnam and Mexico, stories of the boxing ring, and reminiscences of Algren's beloved Chicago White Sox, among other subjects. In this collection, not just Algren's intensity but his diversity are revealed and celebrated.

Table of Contents

Dark Came Early in That Country 
Could World War I Have Been a Mistake? Otto Preminger’s Strange Suspenjers 
I Never Hollered Cheezit the Cops 
The Mad Laundress of Dingdong-Daddyland 
The Leak That Defied the Books 
Tinkle Hinkle and the Footnote King 
Hand in Hand Through the Greenery 
with the grabstand clowns of arts and letters
Come In If You Love Money 
Brave Bulls of Sidi Yahya 
I Know They’ll Like Me in Saigon 
Airy Persiflage on the Heaving Deep 
No Cumshaw No Rickshaw 
Letter from Saigon 
What Country Do You Think You’re In?
Police and Mama-sans Get It All 
Poor Girls of Kowloon 
After the Buffalo 
The Cortez Gang 
The House of the Hundred Grassfires 
Previous Days 
Epitaph: The Man with the Golden Arm 
The Passion of Upside-Down-Emil
A Story from Life’s Other Side
Merry Christmas Mr. Mark 
I Guess You Fellows Just Don’t Want Me 
Everything Inside Is a Penny 
The Ryebread Trees of Spring 
Different Clowns for Different Towns 
Go! Go! Go! Forty Years Ago 
Ballet for Opening Day: 
The Swede Was a Hard Guy
A Ticket on Skoronski 
Ode to an Absconding Bookie 
Bullring of the Summer Night 
Moon of the Arfy Darfy 
Watch Out for Daddy 
The Last Carousel 
Tricks Out of Times Long Gone

Author

One of the most neglected of modern American authors and also one of the best loved, NELSON ALGREN (1909–1981) believed that “literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity.” His own voluminous body of work stands up to that belief. Algren’s powerful voice rose from the urban wilderness of postwar Chicago, and it is to that city of hustlers, addicts and scamps that he returned again and again, eventually raising Chicago’s “lower depths” up onto a stage for the whole world to behold. Recipient of the first National Book Award for fiction and lauded by Hemingway as “one of the two best authors in America,” Algren remains among our most defiant and enduring novelists. His work includes five major novels, two short fiction collections, a book-length poem and several collections of reportage. A source of inspiration to artists as diverse as Kurt Vonnegut and Donald Barthelme, Studs Terkel and Lou Reed, Algren died on May 9, 1981, within days of his appointment as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. View titles by Nelson Algren

Additional formats

Other Books by this Author

Subscribe

Penguin Random House Higher Education

© 2025 Penguin Random House

Back to Top
0
    • 0
    Wish List (0)