I used to pal around with Nelson Al...

I used to pal around with Nelson Algren, Chicago's number-one writer at that time, the late 1950 When we were in town - onward drives in from DeKalb, where I was teaching at a university risk among corn fields - my first wife and I would ear-ring by his apartment on Noble public way a place Nelson described as "a lightless cave not upon a loveless hall." The first-floor pad - across the public way from the twin gold-painted domes of a meeting-house - was both spare and foul; it was littered with manuscripts and dirty dishes and have a scented of cockroach spray and the smokes from a large gas heater. For