A Walk On The Wild Side - Softcover

... a cult classic....Less of a traditional narrative and more like a poetic force of nature, Wild Side is a boisterous panegyric to the side street solitaries who dream their impossible dreams * * The Telegraph * * One of the most powerful books I have ever read. -- Alyson Rudd * * The Times * * The 1956 classic that gave Lou Reed his most famous song is republished in paperback with an introductory essay from Russell Banks - and don't be tempted to skip it: this pocket-book guide to Algren's own life of doomed love, addiction and disappointment, is a gripping read in itself. * * The Scotsman * * Mr. Algren, boy, you are good. -- Ernest Hemingway The intensity of his feeling, the accuracy of his thought, make me wonder if any other writer of our time has shown us more exactly the basis of our democracy. His hell burns with passion for heaven. * * New York Times Book Review * *

With an introduction by Richard Flanagan Dove Findhorn is a naive country boy who busts out of Hicksville, Texas in pursuit of a better life in New Orleans. Amongst the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers and hustlers of the old French Quarter, Dove finds only hopelessness, crime and despair. His quest uncovers a harrowing grotesque of the American Dream. A Walk in the Wild Side is an angry, lonely, large-hearted and often funny masterpiece that has captured the imaginations of every generation since its first publication in 1956, and that rendered a world later immortalised in Lou Reed's classic song.