Algren articulated the world of "drunks, pimps, prostitutes, freaks, drug addicts, prize fighters, corrupt politicians, and hoodlums".

[citation needed] Art Shay singled out a poem Algren wrote from the perspective of a "halfy," street slang for a legless man on wheels.

"[4] The lover of French writer Simone de Beauvoir,[4] he is featured in her novel The Mandarins,[4] set in Paris and Chicago.

He was called "a sort of bard of the down-and-outer"[4] based on this book, but also on his short stories in The Neon Wilderness (1947) and his novel A Walk on the Wild Side (1956).

[6][7] In his essay Chicago: City on the Make, Algren added autobiographical details: he recalled being teased by neighborhood children after moving to Troy Street because he was a fan of the South Side White Sox.

Before returning to Chicago, he was caught stealing a typewriter from an empty classroom at Sul Ross State University in Alpine.

His first novel, Somebody in Boots (1935), was later dismissed by Algren as primitive and politically naive, claiming he infused it with Marxist ideas he little understood, because they were fashionable at the time.

The couple would summer together in Algren's cottage in the lake front community of Miller Beach, Indiana, and also travel to Latin America together in 1949.

In her novel The Mandarins (1954), Beauvoir wrote of Algren (who is 'Lewis Brogan' in the book): At first I found it amusing meeting in the flesh that classic American species: self-made leftist writer.

The Man With the Golden Arm was adapted as a 1955 movie of the same name, starring Frank Sinatra and directed and produced by Otto Preminger.

He reworked some of the material from his first novel, Somebody in Boots, as well as picking up elements from several published short stories, such as his 1947 "The Face on the Barroom Floor".

[15] According to Kurt Vonnegut, who taught with him at Iowa in 1965, Algren's "enthusiasm for writing, reading and gambling left little time for the duties of a married man.

"[16] Algren played a small part in Philip Kaufman's underground comedy Fearless Frank (1967) as a mobster named Needles.

Strapped for cash more than a decade after his only two commercially successful novels, he saw Vietnam as an opportunity to make money, not from journalism fees but dealing on the black market.

In 1975, Algren was commissioned to write a magazine article about the trial of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, the prize fighter who had been found guilty of double murder.

[19] After Algren died, it was discovered that the article about Hurricane Carter had grown into a novel, The Devil's Stocking, which was published posthumously in 1983.

[15] In September 1996, the book Nonconformity was published by Seven Stories Press, presenting Algren's view of the difficulties surrounding the 1956 film adaptation of The Man With the Golden Arm.

[citation needed][20] Algren's friend Stuart McCarrell described him as a "gut radical," who generally sided with the downtrodden but was uninterested in ideological debates and politically inactive for most of his life.

McCarrell states that Algren's heroes were the "prairie radicals" Theodore Dreiser, John Peter Altgeld, Clarence Darrow and Eugene V.

[21] Algren references all of these men – as well as Big Bill Haywood, the Haymarket defendants and the Memorial Day Massacre victims – in Chicago: City on the Make.

Among his affiliations, he was a participant in the John Reed Club in the 1930s and later an honorary co-chair of the "Save Ethel and Julius Rosenberg Committee" in Chicago.

[22][23] According to Herbert Mitgang, the FBI suspected Algren's political views and kept a dossier on him amounting to more than 500 pages but identified nothing concretely subversive.

[24] During the 1950s, Algren wished to travel to Paris with his romantic companion, Simone de Beauvoir, but due to government surveillance his passport applications were denied.

His friend Art Shay wrote about Algren, who while gambling, listened to old Polish love songs sung by an elderly waitress.

Polish bars that Algren frequented in his gambling, such as the Bit of Poland on Milwaukee Avenue, figured in such writings as Never Come Morning and The Man With the Golden Arm.

Articles appeared in the local Polish newspapers and letters were sent to Mayor Ed Kelly, the Chicago Public Library, and Algren's publisher, Harper & Brothers.

The general tone of the campaign is suggested by a Zgoda editorial that attacked his character and mental state, saw readers who got free copies as victims of a Nazi-financed plot, and said the novel proved a deep desire to harm ethnic Poles on Algren's part.

Algren and his publisher defended against these accusations, with the author telling a library meeting that the book was about the effects of poverty, regardless of national background.

In the book, as a period of unrest within the prison begins, the character 'Kenyatta' gives a speech closely mirroring the Fortean Times transcript of the 1977 hoax, and those of other American newspaper reports of the broadcast.

His short stories "A Bottle of Milk for Mother (Biceps)" (published in the Southern Review) and "The Captain is Impaled" (Harper's Magazine) were O. Henry Award winners in 1941 and 1950, respectively.