ALGREN, Nelson. [Jane Fonda].
A Walk on the Wild Side.
New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1956.
$2,250.00
In Stock
Item Number: RRB-153101
+$500
First Edition of Nelson Algren's A Walk on the Wild Side; Signed by Him and Actress Jane Fonda
First edition of Algren's "most critically acclaimed and best-known novel" (ANB), basis for the 1962 film directed by Edward Dmytryk, and starring Jane Fonda, Laurence Harvey, Capucine, Anne Baxter and Barbara Stanwyck. Octavo, original half cloth. Boldly signed by Nelson Algren and actress Jane Fonda on the front free endpaper. The 1962 film adaptation marked one of the earliest screen roles of Jane Fonda, who played the young drifter Kitty Twist near the start of a career that would make her one of the most celebrated American actresses of her generation. The daughter of the actor Henry Fonda, she went on to win two Academy Awards, for Klute in 1971 and Coming Home in 1978, and became as widely known for her political activism as for her work on screen. The film is also remembered for its acclaimed title sequence by the designer Saul Bass. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket photograph by Arthur Shay. A superior example, rare and desirable signed by Algren and Fonda.
"Asked to name the best American authors of his day, Ernest Hemingway is said to have replied: 'Faulkner. (Pause.) Algren.' Breaking into the fight talk that was one of their tools, Hemingway said, 'Mr. Algren can hit with both hands and move around, and he will kill you if you're not awfully careful" (New York Times). Basis for the 1962 film starring Laurence Harvey and Jane Fonda. A Walk on the Wild Side (1956) follows Dove Linkhorn, a penniless drifter from Depression-era Texas, through the brothels, back streets, and flophouses of New Orleans. Nelson Algren (1909-1981) was the foremost American novelist of the urban poor and the dispossessed, the hustlers, addicts, and outcasts of the Chicago and New Orleans underworld, and his The Man with the Golden Arm had won the first National Book Award for Fiction in 1950. The novel is the source of his often-quoted advice, "Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own." Its title was later borrowed by Lou Reed for his 1972 song "Walk on the Wild Side."
A Walk on the Wild Side.
$2,250.00
In Stock