The clock in the room above the Safari told only Junkie Time. For every hour here was Old Junkie's Hour and the walls were the color of all old junki… - Nelson Algren

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The clock in the room above the Safari told only Junkie Time. For every hour here was Old Junkie's Hour and the walls were the color of all old junkies' dreams: the hue of diluted morphine in the moment before the needle draws the suffering blood. / Walls that went up and up like walls in a troubled dream. Walls like water where no legend could be written and no hand grasp metal or wood. [...] He was falling between glacial walls, he didn't know how anyone could fall so far away from everyone else in the world. So far to fall, so cold all the way, so steep and dark between those morphine-colored walls of [an addict]'s terrible pit.

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About Nelson Algren

(March 28, 1909 – May 9, 1981) was an American writer. Best known for two of his novels, The Man with the Golden Arm (1949, , adapted into ) and A Walk on the Wild Side (1956, adapted into ), Algren also wrote short stories collected in The Neon Wilderness (1947), and the book-length essays Chicago: City on the Make (1951) and Nonconformity (1953/1996).

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Nelson Ahlgren Abraham

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To see life steadily, and see it whole, as a creature of the deep sees it, from below. Our myths are so many, our vision so dim, our self-deception so deep and our smugness so gross that scarcely any way now remains of reporting the American Century except from behind the billboards.

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