The copyright record for the novel A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren says it was copyrighted on May 18, 1956.
Traditionally, back then, the copyright date was also a book’s official publication date.
In addition to popularizing the phrase “walk on the wild side” (made even more famous by musician Lou Reed’s 1972 song), Algren’s novel includes what became a very famous quotation about certain things you should never do:
“Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.”
These memorable rules are imparted to the novel’s central character, Dove Linkhorn, by a career criminal named “Cross-Country” Kline, while the two are spending time in jail together.
Kline also shared other life lessons he’d learned with Dove. Here’s a longer excerpt from A Walk on the Wild Side in which he tells Dove about several others:
“But blow wise to this, buddy, blow wise to this: Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own. Never let nobody talk you into shaking another man’s jolt. And never you cop another man’s plea. I’ve tried ‘em all and I know. They don’t work.
“Life is hard by the yard, son. But you don’t have to do it by the yard. By the inch it’s a cinch. And money can’t buy everything. For example: poverty.”
Not long after A Walk on the Wild Side was published, the first three rules mentioned by Cross-Country Kline in that excerpt began to be cited as a famous quote by Algren.
With slight wording changes, Algren often cited them himself in speaking engagements and interviews. He also used them in an essay titled “What Every Young man Should Know.”
They are included in many books of quotations.
Quote mavens like Ralph Keyes and Barry Popik have pointed out that Algren probably didn’t coin the three famous rules himself.
An actor friend of Algren named Dave Peltz claimed that he told Algren the three rules.
Algren told biographer H. E. F. Donohue he got them from “a nice old Negro lady.”
In the foreword to the 1964 book Conversations with Nelson Algren, Donohue wrote:
“He [Algren] shunts aside all rules regulations and dicta except for three laws he says a nice old Negro lady once taught him: Never play cards with any man named ‘Doc’. Never eat at any place called ‘Mom’s’. And never ever, no matter what else you do in your whole life, never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.”
A couple of years ago, in a post on his “Black Cracker” blog, writer and musician Josh Alan Friedman
Josh is the son of the novelist and playwright Bruce Jay Friedman
In July of 1964, Nelson Algren spent a week with the Friedman family at their rented summer house on Fire Island.
Josh recalled:
“Algren went apeshit over our elderly nanny, Mrs. Sullivan (the ‘Mrs. O’Leary’ character in my book, Black Cracker). She would break into a put-on Irish brogue to his delight. For years afterward, whenever Algren called my father and Mrs. Sullivan answered the phone, he’d chat with Mrs. Sullivan for an hour...Another other thing I recall from that week with Nelson in the house: He advised us that the pot handles be turned inward on the stove, rather than sticking out where they could be knocked over.”
So, there you have it: one more simple Nelson Algren rule of life to remember — while you avoid playing cards with anyone named Doc, eating at a place called Mom’s and sleeping with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.
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(2008), by Andy Strasberg, Robert Thompson and Tim Wiles and 
(2009), by Amy Whorf McGuiggan.
