Originally published in 1956, A Walk on the Wild Side follows Dove Linkhorn, a poor Texas drifter who heads for New Orleans during the Depression slams into the underside of the American promise. 

Algren writes about poverty without cleaning it up; the novel is coarse, funny, mournful, but it's really attentive to the language of people rarely allowed literary centrality. It is also a savage inversion of the American road novel. Dove moves, but movement does not equal progress; the farther he travels into the country, the more obvious its exclusions become.

Algren’s prose shifts between hard vernacular and sudden lyricism, giving the book a tenderness in its lilt, beneath all the grime. This Rebel Inc. edition includes an introduction by Russell Banks and belongs to the late-1990s series that republished neglected and countercultural modern classics. 

Rebel Inc. / Canongate Books, Edinburgh, 1999. First edition thus, first printing. Paperback. Moderate shelf wear and creasing to covers, including a pronounced crease to the upper front corner and light surface marking. Internally clean; binding firm. Good condition.