Somebody in Boots

Last updated November 07, 2019

Somebody in Boots is writer Nelson Algren's first novel, based on his personal experiences of living in Texas during the Great Depression. The novel was published by Vanguard Press in 1935. The title refers to someone with material well-being and authority, as poor folk and the powerless wore shoes or went barefoot. The bosses and police feared by the poor and downtrodden wear boots, which not only symbolize their power and relative affluence, but can be used as weapons against them.

Nelson Algren was an American writer. Algren may be best known for The Man with the Golden Arm (1949), a novel that won the National Book Award and was adapted as the 1955 film of the same name.

Great Depression 20th-century worldwide economic depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930s, beginning in the United States. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations; in most countries, it started in 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s. It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. In the 21st century, the Great Depression is commonly used as an example of how intensely the world's economy can decline.

The Vanguard Press (1926–1988) was a United States publishing house established with a $100,000 grant from the left wing American Fund for Public Service, better known as the Garland Fund. Throughout the 1920s, Vanguard Press issued an array of books on radical topics, including studies of the Soviet Union, socialist theory, and politically oriented fiction by a range of writers. The press ultimately received a total of $155,000 from the Garland Fund, which separated itself and turned the press over to its publisher, James Henle. Henle became sole owner in February 1932.

Plot

Cass McKay is a poor illiterate young man set adrift by the Depression. He is a southerner, a "Final Descendant of the South", one of the "wild and hardy tribe that had given Jackson and Lincoln birth... slaveless yeomen who had never cared for slaves or land...."

Cass lives in the Rio Grande Valley in West Texas in a shack "like a casual box on the border; wooden and half-accidental" with his father, his brother (a World War I vet disabled by exposure to poison gas during the war), and sister, subsisting on oatmeal or rice and handouts from the "Relief Station". After a fight between his father and brother, Cass starts drifting, riding the rails from El Paso, Texas to Chicago, with stops in Shreveport, Louisiana and New Orleans. His journey (and the novel) ends in Chicago during the 1933-34 World`s Fair with the intimation that Cass likely will become a career criminal, already having committed a variety of offenses that have landed him in jail twice.

Rio Grande Valley location in south Texas

The Rio Grande Valley is an area located in the southernmost tip of South Texas. It lies along the northern bank of the Rio Grande, which separates Mexico from the United States. The four-county region consists of Hidalgo, Cameron, Willacy, and Starr counties. It is one of the fastest growing regions in the United States, with its population having jumped from about 325,000 people in 1969 to more than 1,300,000 people by 2014. Some of the biggest cities in the region are: Brownsville, Harlingen, Weslaco, Pharr, McAllen, Edinburg, Mission, San Juan, and Rio Grande City. These cities are surrounded by many small neighborhoods or Colonias similar to those in Mexico. The area is generally bilingual in English and Spanish with a fair amount of Spanglish. There is a large seasonal influx of winter Texans or Texans who come down from the north for the Winter and then go back up north before Summer hits.

World War I 1914–1918 global war starting in Europe

World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, the Seminal Catastrophe, and initially in North America as the European War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It is also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the resulting 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide.

El Paso is a city and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States, in the far western part of the state. The 2018 population estimate for the city from the U.S. Census was 682,669, making it the 22nd largest city in the United States. Its metropolitan statistical area (MSA) covers all of El Paso and Hudspeth counties in Texas, and has a population of 840,758.

Autobiographical element

The novel is based on Algren's own wanderings through America during the Great Depression. Born in Detroit Michigan and raised in Chicago, Algren graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelor of Science in journalism in 1931. He began traveling throughout the country and wound up in Texas in 1933, where he wrote his first short story while working at a gas station. Intending to return home, he stole a typewriter from a local business college and was imprisoned for theft.

The material in Somebody in Boots would later be reworked into Algren's 1956 novel A Walk on the Wild Side , which also featured a wandering Texan.

Algren typically denigrated his first novel, which he felt was a primitive work. In a preface to a 1987 paperback re-issue published by Thunder's Mouth Press, Algren wrote, `This is an uneven novel written by an uneven man in the most uneven of American times.`` Algren earlier had said that he was glad the book had gone out of print as he felt A Walk on the Wild Side was a superior book.^[1]

Somebody in Boots sold only 750 copies. A byproduct of the book was his relationship with Amanda Kontowicz, whom he met at a publication party for his book. The couple married in 1937, divorced, remarried and eventually were divorced a second and final time.^[2]

Native Son & Richard Wright

Native Son was the original title Algren gave to the novel, but it was changed in accordance with the wishes of his publisher. Algren and Richard Wright had met at Chicago's John Reed Club circa 1933 and later worked together at the Federal Writers' Project in Chicago.^[3] According to Bettina Drew's 1989 biography Nelson Algren: A Life on the Wild Side, he bequeathed the title "Native Son" to Wright.

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A Century of Progress International Exposition was a World's Fair registered under the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), which was held in Chicago, as The Chicago World's Fair, from 1933 to 1934 to celebrate the city's centennial. The theme of the fair was technological innovation. The fair's motto was "Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Adapts", giving out a message that science and American life were wedded. Its architectural symbol was the Sky Ride, a transporter bridge perpendicular to the shore on which one could ride from one side of the fair to the other.

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References

↑ Blades, John (10 May 1987). "Nelson Algren`s `Boots` Still Has A Powerful Kick". Chicago Tribune. Tribune Co. Retrieved 7 September 2011.
↑ Liukkonen, Petri. "Nelson Algren". Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Finland: Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from the original on 5 December 2006.
↑ Taylor, David A. "Literary Cubs, Canceling Out Each Other's Reticence". The American Scholar. Phi Beta Kappa Society. Retrieved 6 September 2011.

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[1] Blades, John (10 May 1987). "Nelson Algren`s `Boots` Still Has A Powerful Kick". Chicago Tribune. Tribune Co. Retrieved 7 September 2011.

[2] Liukkonen, Petri. "Nelson Algren". Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Finland: Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from the original on 5 December 2006.

[3] Taylor, David A. "Literary Cubs, Canceling Out Each Other's Reticence". The American Scholar. Phi Beta Kappa Society. Retrieved 6 September 2011.