[In the following excerpt, Geismar comments on Algren's focus on character development in The Neon Wilderness.]

The stories in The Neon Wilderness (1948) are in a softer vein [than Algren's other books]. For the first time women appear here, not only as credible human beings, but as a source of comfort and aid, however briefly, in the fast run between the womb and the grave. There is the sketch, reminiscent of Sherwood Anderson's Midwestern vein, of the workingman who gambles and drinks his week's pay away on Saturday night because his wife had not been home to meet him; but she comforts him with her flesh at the end. "So nothing important has been lost after all." There is the stupid miserable creature who calls herself "the girl that men forgot awright," but there is also Wilma who gave all her love to another of Algren's boxers, and kept him straight, until her past caught up with her. There is the gambler who believes in "lucky bucks, fast money, and good women"—this glittering vista of Algren's Chicago slum world at its highest peak. And there is the tale of Railroad Shorty—a "halfy" or legless man—who clubs a young bartender to death in a casual brawl.

Algren's powerful effects are usually in his big scenes rather than in the portrayal or development of character. He is almost at his best in this volume of short stories where he can suggest the whole contour of a human life in a few terse pages. There is more warmth and humor here, too, than in the earlier books. It is, all in all, an excellent collection of short stories, perhaps one of the best we had in the 1940's.