Negative Space: slums
- Ask the Dust
- A sort of an ur-Algren or ur-Bukowski, this is a simple read but a hard book about a young writer newly emigrated to Los Angeles from Boulder, Colorado in the late thirties.
- Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday
- These are the stories of cannery workers at their self-made “Palace Flophouse and Grill” in Monterey, magical stories full of adventure and nobility.
- Never Come Morning
- Nelson Algren’s Never Come Morning goes beyond being a story about Chicago corruption. This is a story of the corruption of the soul of the poorest poor in the land where, when opportunity knocks, you spit out your teeth and a stream of blood follows.
- Tortilla Flat
- The first of Steinbeck’s novels to be set in the Monterey area, Tortilla Flat follows Danny, a paisano, from his inheritance of two houses through his “mystic end”.
