Nonconformity

Nelson Algren''s only longer work of nonfiction, this acclaimed 1953 booklength essay, canceled by Doubleday under pressure from J. Edgar Hoover himself, then lost for decades, and first published in 1996, is about twentieth-century America: ''Never on the earth of man has he lived so tidily as here amidst such psychological disorder.'' And it is about the trouble writers ask for when they try to describe America: ''Our myths are so many, our vision so dim, our self-deception so deep and our smugness so gross that scarcely any way now remains of reporting the American Century except from behind the billboards.'' In Nonconformity, Algren identifies the essential nature of the writer''s relation to society, drawing examples from Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Twain, and Fitzgerald, as well as utility infielder Leo Durocher and legendary barkeep Martin Dooley. In a philosophical reckoning with his status as a writer in an America that stifles and censors, he shares his deepest beliefs about the state of literature and its role in society, along the way painting a chilling portrait of 1950s McCarthyism when many American writers were blacklisted for sharing radical and creative reflections akin to what Algren posits. Written soon after the publication of his great novel, The Man with the Golden Arm, Nonconformity is one of the toughest, truest, and most quotable books in Algren''s repertoire.