Never Come Morning by Nelson Algren

First published: 1942

Type of plot: Naturalism

Time of work: The 1930’s

Locale: Chicago

Principal Characters:

• Bruno (Lefty) Bicek, the protagonist, a hoodlum and boxer
• Steffi Rostenkowski, his girlfriend, who becomes a prostitute
• Bonifacy Konstantine, a barber and the neighborhood crime boss
• Casey Benkowski, Bonifacy’s henchman and a former boxer
• Fireball Kodadek, Bruno’s knife-wielding adversary
• “One-Eye” Tenczara, a police captain intent on convicting Bruno
• Tiger Pultoric, a former boxing champion and Bruno’s idol

The Novel

Nelson Algren’s Never Come Morning is rooted in Chicago, particularly in its Polish slums, and concerns the fate of Bruno (Lefty) Bicek, a seventeen-year-old with ambitions of becoming either a professional baseball player or a professional boxer. The novel begins, however, with a boxing match which is lost by Casey Benkowski, who, as a slightly older version of Bruno, foreshadows Bruno’s “loss” after a boxing victory at the end of the novel. Through the chapter headings in book 1 of the novel, “The Trouble with Casey” is tied directly to “The Trouble with Bicek,” and the reader learns the fate of ambitious young men.

Under the tutelage of Casey and the “sponsorship” of Bonifacy Konstantine, Bruno steals a slot machine and transforms his neighborhood gang, the Warriors, into the “Baldheads,” who must have their heads shaved by Bonifacy. As president and treasurer of the new gang, Bruno has status that he exploits with Steffi Rostenkowski, whom he subsequently seduces. Before the reader learns what Bruno’s “trouble” is, Algren comments that the two events have brought Bruno from dependence to independence, from boyhood to manhood, and, ironically, from “vandalism to hoodlumhood.” One of Bruno’s “troubles” is his adherence to the gang’s code and his desire to belong, but he also fears Fireball Kodadek and his knife. Consequently, when the gang insists on their rights to Steffi, Bruno, though inwardly torn, assents; while the gang rapes Steffi, Bruno rages until in his frustration he breaks, with a well-placed kick, the neck of a Greek outsider. The Greek’s death temporarily ends Steffi’s ordeal, but Fireball and a friend take her to Bonifacy, who installs her as his mistress and as a prostitute in his brothel, which is run by “Mama” Tomek.

Bruno is subsequently arrested for the shooting death of a drunk, whom Casey killed, and “One-Eye” Tenczara, convinced that he is the Greek’s killer, attempts to break Bruno, who remains silent despite the interrogations, lineups, and beatings. After being convicted of the drunk’s murder, Bruno serves six months in prison before he is released and returns to work as a pimp and bouncer at Mama Tomek’s brothel. He and Steffi cannot express their feelings for each other, but she helps him cheat Bonifacy in a card game, and the rejuvenated Bruno arranges a fight for himself with Honeyboy Tucker. The infuriated Bonifacy attempts to ensure Bruno’s defeat, but Bruno manhandles Bonifacy’s gang, which includes Fireball and Tiger Pultoric, Bruno’s boxing idol. When Bruno takes Fireball’s knife, he overcomes his fear; when he beats Pultoric, he emerges as a man. He wins the ensuing boxing match, temporarily achieving his dreams of freeing and protecting Steffi and of becoming a contender for the championship. Bonifacy, however, has turned him in to Tenczara, who comes to Bruno’s dressing room to arrest him for the Greek’s murder.

The Characters

Bruno Bicek, Algren’s tragic protagonist in Never Come Morning, stands alone, differentiated from the other members of his gang by his sensitivity and humanity. In an environment that places a premium on mere survival, Bruno’s “flaws” mark him as “soft.”

His “softness” results in Steffi’s rape and subsequent prostitution, for she cannot return to her Old World mother and values. Like Bruno, however, she retains her humanity and her capacity for love and forgiveness, but Algren has taken care not to present her as the idealized virgin: Lazy and selfish, she permits Bruno’s seduction because she senses that he is the best of the available males. Algren’s portrait of her, like his characterization of Bruno, is complex. In this adolescent love story, readers do not encounter the star-crossed lovers of West Side Story (1961); they find young people with potential whose growth is irremediably stunted by their environment. They have few choices, and the few they have do not involve escape.

The impossibility of Bruno’s escape is foreshadowed by the fate of Casey, who is a bit older but whose life closely parallels his. Casey, like Bruno, is a boxer, but he is a loser, a hanger-on, a tool of Bonifacy; his position is reflected in his appearance at the barber’s back door, where he is reduced to asking for “advances” which are really handouts.

While Casey is a foil to Bruno, Fireball and Tiger represent tests that the hero must pass to achieve even the illusion of victory. Fireball (whose name reflects his former baseball prowess) is a has-been at eighteen, a youth whose tall, lean frame is being consumed by tuberculosis. With courage born of having nothing to lose, he uses his knife, with its implicit threat of mutilation, to overcome Bruno. Tiger is the Old King, the father figure, the former champion whom Bruno has worshiped, but who must be defeated before Bruno can be his own man. When he defeats Tiger and takes Fireball’s knife, Bruno becomes a man; the victory in the ring is important only in terms of irony.

The older generation, unlike the younger one, clings to the Old World values of hard work and religious faith, and, as a result, survives rather than thrives in a New World where exploitation, brutality, and the “con” game seem necessary for success. Bruno’s mother, who is exploited in a small shop, cannot understand her son’s lack of concern about law and religion; Steffi’s mother ekes out a living in a poolroom, is apparently oblivious to her environment, and has values which make her raped daughter’s return impossible. Of the older generation, only Bonifacy adopts New World values, but only in what he considers, because of his paranoia, to be self-defense. Morally corrupt, he nevertheless pays lip service to Old World values while he projects his corruption onto his underlings.

Critical Context

Never Come Morning, Algren’s second novel, follows Somebody in Boots (1935), a “Depression” novel which it resembles in its economic determinism, its protrait of the lower classes, and its criticism of the American Dream. It is the novel which precedes The Man With the Golden Arm (1949), which won for Algren a National Book Award. Part of Never Come Morning, the second book in the novel, first appeared as “A Bottle of Milk for Mother,” a short story which was included in the annual O. Henry collection of outstanding short stories in 1941.

Algren’s novel, like James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan (1934), with which it is often compared, is rooted in the ghettos of Chicago and is best described as a city novel which does not allow the reader or its characters a glimpse of the world outside the city. As a result, Algren uses Chicago as a microcosm of the United States and even of the world as he sees it: as madhouse, prison, or brothel with their images of insanity, entrapment, and prostitution in its broadest sense.

In his emphasis on the interplay between environment and youth, Algren resembles not only Farrell but also Richard Wright and James Baldwin, whose characters’ tormented souls and physically afflicted bodies provide an indictment of the society in which they exist. Bruno is guilty of betrayal and exploitation, but his moral failure is linked inextricably to the code of his gang, which is but an exaggeration of the capitalistic code that fosters competition and callousness and that rewards only the victors. Algren offers his readers few victors because the rewards and successes are, as they are in Bruno’s case, illusory and transitory.

Algren’s subject, setting, and characters are squarely within the naturalistic school of fiction which originated at the turn of the century and which includes among its practitioners such writers as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, and Ernest Hemingway (who praised Algren’s work). In style, however, Algren is much more in the realistic school with its so-called slice-of-life emphasis on the sordid details in the lives of the lower classes. While the boxing matches at the beginning and end of the novel do offer a frame for the story, Algren has not taken the same care with the rest of the novel. The second book, as noted above, is adapted from the short story “A Bottle of Milk for Mother,” and the third book consists of case histories of prostitutes at Mama Tomek’s brothel. In effect, the novel grinds to a halt while Algren discusses the abuse of power by police and comments on conditions in jail, which serves as a place of refuge in Algren’s work; then, as he does in his later A Walk on the Wild Side, he sentimentally describes the prostitutes, whom he uses as a metaphor for the prostitution inherent in a materialistic society. Nevertheless, the digressions are interesting, and they do establish, if that has not been done adequately elsewhere, the climate that determines the outcome of the novel.

In Never Come Morning, Algren foreshadows Bruno’s failure and then proceeds to explain why the tragic outcome is inevitable. That he does this in a rather heavy-handed manner in no way diminishes the novel or subverts his message about the American Dream.

Bibliography

Beauvoir, Simone de. A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren. New York: New Press, 1998. Although Beauvoir’s letters do not specifically address Algren’s works, they do illuminate his character and personality.

Drew, Bettina. Nelson Algren: A Life on the Wild Side. New York: Putnam, 1989. Drew presents the first full-scale biography of Algren and offers critical perspectives on his novels. Includes bibliographical references.

Giles, James R. Confronting the Horror: The Novels of Nelson Algren. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1989. A collection of essays that focuses on the naturalism in Algren’s works. Includes a bibliography for further study.