Nonconformity Read online

  68. Nelson Algren quoted in Daily Worker, March 3, 1952, p. 3.

  69. Donohue, p. 73

  70. Introduction by Tom Carson, in The Neon Wilderness: Stories by Nelson Algren (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1986). Adapted from an essay originally published in the Village Voice.

  71. Donohue, p. 163.

  72. Never Come Morning, by Nelson Algren (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1941, 1942, 1963), p. xiii.

  73 This account is based on the description of the genesis of Never Come Morning in Drew, pp. 134-5.

  74. Confronting the Horror: The Novels of Nelson Algren, by James R. Giles (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1989).

  75. Drew, p. 197.

  76. See Giles, p. 6.

  77. Donohue, pp. 158, 160-61.

  78. The two sentences dictated, signed and dated by Algren are attached to Bradley’s memorandum, along with the following handwritten note signed by Bradley: “I wrote the above notation in Nelson’s presence and at his dictation, whereupon he signed it.” Courtesy of the Ohio University Libraries.

  79. From a memorandum by Van Allen Bradley on Chicago Daily News stationery dated January 2, 1960, which Bradley attached to the carbon of Algren’s essay. Courtesy of the Ohio University Libraries.

  80. Nelson Algren: A Descriptive Bibliography, by Matthew J. Bruccoli with the assistance of Judith Baughman (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985), pp. 112-13.

  81. The Nation published their excerpt as “American Christmas, 1952” in the December 27 issue that year, another sample that summer as “Hollywood Djinn with a Dash of Bitters” (25 July 1953) and another version in the October 17, 1953, issue under the title “Eggheads Are Rolling: The Rush to Conform.”

  82. The quotes and historical account in this and the preceding paragraph are drawn from Bradley’s prefatory note, which he appended to the carbon, presumably when he delivered it into the Algren Archive. Courtesy of the Ohio University Libraries. Bradley’s account may not be perfectly factual, in that the essay and the lecture seem to have been roughly identical from the start, and may have existed prior to Bradley’s request that Algren contribute something to the Christmas book section of the Chicago Daily News.

  83. Drew, pp. 244-45.

  84. Drew, pp. 245-46.

  85. Drew, p. 252.

  86. Ibid.

  87. From Mark Twain: A Biography, by Albert Bigelow Paine (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1912). Reprinted in The War Prayer, by Mark Twain with drawings by John Groth (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1970), frontis.

  88. Bradley probably wrote his explanatory memorandum, dated January 2, 1960, as part of the preparations for placing these documents with the archive.

  NOTES TO APPENDIX:

  89. The Garden of Allah bungalow court and hotel was a famed and fashionable residence of writers in the film industry, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Robert Benchley. Situated on Sunset Boulevard at Crescent Heights in Hollywood, it was razed in 1960.

  90. John Collier, a British-born American writer, was best known for satiric and grotesque fiction including His Monkey Wife (1930, a novel) and Fancies and Goodnights (1951, short stories).

  91. Laird Cregar was a Hollywood actor who died in 1944.

  92. Howard Fast, an American novelist and story writer, espoused activist politics in books like Citizen Tom Paine (1943) and Freedom Road (1944). He later abandoned the Communist Party, revealing in The Naked God (1957) his bitterness with it.

  Nelson Algren (1909-1981) published his first novel, Somebody in Boots, in 1935. In 1945 came the novel Never Come Morning, which was widely praised, eventually selling over a million copies, and claiming the distinction of a French translation by Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1947 Algren published his classic story collection, The Neon Wilderness. In 1949 came the book that is generally considered to be his best novel, The Man with the Golden Arm, which in 1950 won the first National Book Award. In 1951 came Chicago: City on the Make, his prose-poem paean to Chicago. In 1956 he published the novel A Walk on the Wild Side. In the 1960s Algren published two travel books, Who Lost an American? and Notes from a Sea Voyage. In 1973 came The Last Carousel, collecting Algren’s short fiction and reportage of that period. In 1981, days before his death, Algren was named a Fellow of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His last novel, The Devil’s Stocking, based on the life of Hurricane Carter, was published in 1983. Nonconformity: Writing on Writing, an essay on the state of literature, saw its first publication in 1996.

  Daniel Simon is founder and publisher at Seven Stories Press. He is co-author, with Jack Hoffman, of Run Run Run: The Lives of Abbie Hoffman and translator of Van Gogh: Self Portraits.

  C.S. O’Brien is a writer and editor based in New York.