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Articles by Colin Asher
The Prison-To-Music Pipeline
From Leadbelly to Johnny Cash to Tupac, author Colin Asher gets the how but not the why. The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music By Colin Asher W.W. Norton & Co. Music, as musician and producer T Bone Burnett has said, might be America’s “greatest cultural export,” and has been for at least a century, from blues, folk, and country to jazz, rock, and hip hop: “We’ve spread our culture all over the world with this music. Music is an important part of our national identity.
The Time Johnny Cash Almost Started a Prison Riot at San Quentin
“I think this is a very important thing: to give a man some hope in prison, to give a man some encouragement to be a better citizen while he is there and if he is a better citizen, while he is there, he is going to come out a better citizen.” –Johnny Cash, testifying before the House Committee on the Judiciary, 1972 * Article continues after advertisement There were signs hanging from the red wall behind the stage in the north dining hall—a few words and some musical notes that had been...
Colin Asher’s Book Notes music playlist for his book The Midnight Special
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Sounds from Rikers Island | Colin Asher
Elmo Hope at the Rudy Van Gelder studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, 1953. (Photo by Francis Wolff) A bit more than three years into his exile from New York City, St. Elmo Sylvester Hope sat for an interview with Down Beat magazine in Los Angeles. He was a diminutive, softspoken man who looked like what his mother had once dreamed he'd become-a professor. But he was actually a working musician who seemed to be on the cusp of fame after years of obscurity.
We Are All Members of One Another: Colin Asher on Nelson Algren
To celebrate the release our new paperback edition of (the first ever!) National Book Award-winning novel, The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren, we are proud to share Algren scholar Colin Asher’s foreword to this reissue, in which Asher explores Algren's dedication to the underdog, and his lifelong effort to humanize those who'd been pushed to the margins by mid-century American society.
Unsung Side Characters:
In a world of card players, the very look on L.Q. Jones' lined face tells you something quite clear: that he is not going to tell you everything. It's an incredible face, and an incredible look that typically inhabits it. It's irritating, his face.
When Richard Wright Broke With the Communists
On a Friday in early June 1941, Richard Wright addressed the opening session of the Congress in Defense of Culture in New York City. “Some of you may wonder why a writer, at a congress of writers, should make the theme of war the main burden of a public talk,” he began.
My 2020 in Reading
I don’t account or tabulate much in my life. I don’t keep a diary, a lists of places visited, or track how many steps I take in a day. I have my memories, my inner life, and the writing I produce that all of you see. There are times I wished I tracked more of what I did—how many professional baseball games have I really attended?—but I am usually content to allow the numbers to slip from me, to embrace the haze of existence for what it is. The exception is my reading.
Washington Independent Review of Books
Colin Asher is the author of Never a Lovely so Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren (W.W. Norton, 2019), a literary biography written as a work of creative nonfiction. His writing has appeared in the Believer, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, and many other publications. 4 entries by Colin Asher
Is Your Smart TV Watching You?
ACR: Everything is connected We wouldn’t have a properly dystopian situation on our hands without a nice little acronym to accompany it, and so, ladies and gents, meet ACR, or automatic content recognition. This smart TV feature makes use of just a few pixels of whatever you’re watching and sends that information back to a massive database. This data about what you watch is then used to target you with ads inside and outside your TV viewing experience.
Singing the Back Streets
Singing the Back Streets Never a Lovely So Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren by Colin Asher Norton, 543 pp., $39.95 Nelson Algren; drawing by Tom Bachtell Nelson Algren arrived in Hollywood on January 26, 1955. He had spent the previous year rewriting a book he couldn’t stomach and running from a wife he didn’t love.
Colin Asher and Aaron Shulman in Conversation
“I think you go after the TV stations if you are trying to mount an insurrection these days, or if you’re a totalitarian clinging to power—literary writers are nowhere on the radar.” Things Nelson Algren and the Panero family have in common: Being shaped by politicsFaith in literature Loss of faith Taking pleasure in pissing people off On a Sunday afternoon in April, the Believer’s Hayden Bennett sat down with Aaron Shulman and Colin Asher to discuss their new books, both of which began as...
He Was a Famed Novelist of America’s Underclass. What Happened?
Nonfiction Image Nelson Algren, outside the Chicago police headquarters in 1956.
The 25 Best Books of the First Half of 2019
All talk of beach reads aside, summer really is a perfect time to pick up a book. While any time of year is good for a bulky biography or a gripping noir, the lazy days that make up the middle of the calendar present the brief respites we need to sit around and catch up on the more manageable titles we may have missed.
When Nelson Algren Fell in Love with Simone de Beauvoir
(February 21–September 23, 1947) Nelson Algren boarded the El on a Friday evening and rode it toward the Loop—beneath Milwaukee Avenue, through the narrow tunnel under the Chicago River, and then south under State Street. He emerged at Monroe station and began walking east toward the Palmer House—a swank hotel where uniformed porters greeted soigné tourists beneath a gilded awning. Nelson entered the Palmer House lobby and looked around.
Low Life
Apr/May 2019 A biography of novelist Nelson Algren Christian Lorentzen The Life and Work of Nelson Algren by Colin Asher W. W. Norton & Company $39.95 List Price For more info visit: Amazon • IndieBound • Barnes & Noble Call it a curse for an American writer to be born in 1909.
Never a Lovely So Real
The Life and Work of Nelson Algren Colin Asher (Author) Sign up for the monthly New Releases email. Please enter a valid email address. By signing up you agree to W. W. Norton's privacy policy and terms of use. Thank you! We'll be in touch soon. DONE This definitive biography reclaims Nelson Algren as a towering literary figure and finally unravels the enigma of his disappearance from American letters.
But Never a Lovely So Real
Nelson Algren was the son of a no-luck working stiff and the grandson of a religious zealot turned grifter, and he was a type of loser we can’t stomach in this country. Algren made his living as a writer for forty years, occasionally to great acclaim. At the height of his career, wealth, leisure, and the lasting respect of his peers were on offer, but Algren shrugged at those prospects and kept going his own way.
The Short Corridor: How the Most Isolated Prisoners in America Took on the System, and Won
LAST YEAR might be remembered as a turning point in the history of the American prison system. Several states, including New Jersey, New York, and California, reported a sharp decrease in prison population. President Obama became the first sitting president to visit a federal prison and meet with a group of inmates. Criminal justice reform, starting with a repeal of mandatory sentencing, became a topic of political urgency.
Nelson Algren: The Great, Forgotten Progressive Writer That You Should Know
Nelson Algren: The Great, Forgotten Progressive Writer That You Should Know By Colin Asher on Wed, 01/02/2013 - 5:48pm | This month the Believer was kind enough to grant me 9,000 words worth of page space for a lengthy homage to Nelson Algren, a great-but-mostly-forgotten-writer. Algren has been dead for 31-years and obscure for far longer but his writing continues to deserve attention and consideration. If I hold faith with any writer it's Algren. He had an expansive view of literature.
But Never a Lovely So Real
Nelson Algren was the son of a no-luck working stiff and the grandson of a religious zealot turned grifter, and he was a type of loser we can’t stomach in this country. Algren made his living as a writer for forty years, occasionally to great acclaim. At the height of his career, wealth, leisure, and the lasting respect of his peers were on offer, but Algren shrugged at those prospects and kept going his own way.
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