Literary Debt
A Walk on the Wild Side reworks material from Algren's first novel Somebody in Boots, which was published in 1935. It also recycles material from Algren's short stories, particularly "The Face on the Barroom Floor", which was published in American Mercury in 1947. The protagonist of the short story, Fancy, is a bartender employed by a Chicago speakeasy. A woman-pleaser like Dove Linkhorn, Fancy is meted out much the same fate as Dove at the hands of a similar antagonist.
Read more about this topic: A Walk On The Wild Side (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words literary and/or debt:
“England has the most sordid literary scene I’ve ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy’s writing a foreword for this person. They all have to give radio programs, they have to do all this just in order to scrape by. They’re all scratching each other’s backs.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“There is, of course, a gold mine or a buried treasure on every mortgaged homestead. Whether the farmer ever digs for it or not, it is there, haunting his daydreams when the burden of debt is most unbearable.”
—Fawn M. Brodie (1915–1981)