Nonconformity (10 page)

I had heard about a speech by the great jurist Learned Hand that had been reprinted in the
Saturday
Review
in November 1952, just when Algren would have been working on the essay. I went to the text of that speech, which was widely discussed at the time, and found the exact source of the long passage Algren quoted from Hand.

As O’Brien and I began to find the quotes, one by one, we discovered that Algren was rarely letter perfect. Even his favorite quotes tended to be slight misquotes. As the passing months turned into years, I developed a pet theory. It is that Algren must have had an extremely good memory, nearly eidetic, or photographic, in fact. So many of his quotes were near perfect, but a little off here or there; it seemed that, at least in some cases, he must have been going from memory. Had he been copying from a text as he was looking at it, the errors would have been more of a typographical nature, whereas in fact his misquotes were more often creative rewrites. He had a peculiar way of making sure his sources came out speaking Algrenese.

Part of our work entailed restoring the correct wording where possible. For example, Algren has F. Scott Fitzgerald asking, “Why was I identified with the very objects of my horror and compassion?” But this is more shorthand than quotation. Fitzgerald actually wrote, “I only wanted absolute quiet to think out why I had developed a sad attitude toward sadness, a melancholy attitude toward melancholy and a tragic attitude toward tragedy—why I had become identified with the objects of my horror or compassion.” I emended Algren’s version so that it now
reads, “I only wanted absolute quiet to think out … why I had become identified with the objects of my horror or compassion.” And the full text of the passage is given in an endnote. In our finished version there is, as I believe there should be, more of a mingling of distinct voices than there was in the manuscript, and only Algren now speaks pure Algrenese.

There were, however, exceptions to this rule. The majority of the quotes we were able to track down were restored to their original form, as in the case of the Fitzgerald passage noted above. But sometimes I came across source material that seemed to carry the same idea as what Algren had put between quotes, but without Algren’s scent on it. A few of these I left in Algren’s words, in effect misquoting, and supplied the original text in an endnote, since in these passages, knowingly or unknowingly, Algren seemed to have made the text his own. In these cases I couldn’t simply restore the passage without taking something away from what he’d written. In one such example he quotes de Beauvoir this way: “It isn’t that young Americans don’t wish to do great things, but that they don’t know there are great things to be done.” She had written something along the same line, which in the English translation read: “Ambitions for greatness are often the source of many deceptions, and indicted by faults Americans do not Know.… In order to lose themselves in the pursuit of an object, they find themselves without an object at all.” To
have restored her wording in this case would have been to change his meaning.

If his near-perfect memory was a curse of sorts for us, another habit that became apparent was a blessing. I noticed that very often Algren would quote from either the beginning or the end of a book; in our research this was a tic of his for which we were grateful, since we could sometimes find what we were looking for soon after we’d located the right volume. I am sure that Algren read novels he liked from cover to cover, but I have come to believe that when it came to works of nonfiction, his mind was so sure of itself, his curiosity so absorbed in the things of the real world and his own perception of them, that he rarely read non-fiction books to the end, with the possible exception of de Beauvoir’s
The Second Sex
, where his broken heart may have forced the issue.

Algren was a novelist with training as a journalist, not a scholar or essayist, and he wasn’t adept at weaving quotes into the stream of his own thought. And yet the abundant quotes in
Nonconformity
were well chosen and are essential to the effectiveness of the essay; they served, and served well, as a kind of chorus of assenting voices speaking to an historical moment, when elsewhere the loudest noise-makers, like Senator Joe McCarthy, were drowning out such voices. I had neither the desire nor the right to edit them out, but could not in good conscience simply leave them in either. I chose to resolve the issue by dividing the essay into sections, into which it fell naturally and to good
effect, to reduce within each section any unacceptably long quotes, and then to present between the sections the full and accurate quote in its entirety. In this way the body of the essay could be professionally edited as it would have been were Algren still alive, and the quotes could be saved as interludes intersplicing his text.

In two cases, the new format required long quotations where Algren had none, and I chose passages that would not have been appropriate had the essay been published in 1953, as Algren had intended. One is de Beauvoir’s description of her first meeting Algren in 1947, the second is Algren’s answer to the question “What is American literature?” taken from H. E. F. Donohue’s
Conversations with Nelson Algren
. Since the essay is seeing its first publication only now, nearly half a century later, I believe both these additions are fitting.

The archive held two slightly variant typescripts of almost the same length, which were largely identical. They must have been roughly contemporaneous, and the discrepancy was probably the result of final retyping in June 1953. There was no way of telling which of the two came later, and even had I been able to tell, this alone would not have been decisive; the later version might well have reflected Algren’s deflated mood at the time, his increasing doubts about Doubleday’s commitment, and displayed more second-guessing than improvement. In the end I followed one of the two almost in its entirety, introducing
versions of less than identical passages from the other in only a few places where there seemed to be something worth saving that did not appear in both.

Since Algren eventually borrowed his own original title,
A Walk on the Wild Side
, for his 1956 novel, the essay needed to be renamed. I didn’t much like Doubleday’s choice, “The State of Literature,” and neither had Algren. Other titles he came up with over the years tended to be self-mocking, reflecting, I think, his frustration and bitterness over the fact that the book was never published. I chose
Nonconformity
because it was the word by which Algren most often referred to the book, in conversation and in writing, because I like it, and because it hasn’t become any less provocative over the years.

With thanks to Robert A. Tibbetts, former Curator of Special Collections at Ohio State University, Columbus, which, along with the Newberry Library in Chicago, holds Algren’s papers. Mr. Tibbetts received me warmly when I visited, and with humor and great warmth left me to my devices. Thanks to Stephen Deutch, for his marvelous pictures and who introduced me to Algren’s old neighborhood, the first time he had returned there since his friend’s death; to Bettina Drew, for keeping the facts of Algren’s life and work alive; to James Giles for keeping us thinking about Algren in new ways; to Art Shay, Algren’s other photographer-friend, from whose book,
Nelson Algren’s Chicago
, came our cover images; and to Studs
Terkel, who has also remained Algren’s friend all these years. Special thanks to Kurt Vonnegut, who initially challenged the viability of publishing
Nonconformity
at all and then never stopped asking me how work on it was progressing; and to Victor Navasky for helping sort out several points of fact regarding the period we now call the McCarthy era.

Two writers literally volunteered to work with me, at times when we could not afford to pay them, because of my association with Algren. They are Tom Downs and C. S. O’Brien. O’Brien became my sounding board. It was O’Brien who fought for keeping Algren’s opening section (now the appendix) on the basis of its being the nearest parallel to Fitzgerald’s
The Crack-Up
. And it was O’Brien as well who tracked down Algren’s references to the inimitable Mr. Dooley, a character I had never heard of.

When I first contacted Algren’s friend, and still his agent, Candida Donadio, in 1984, I had not yet published a book. And yet her agency, then as now, treated me with the respect they accorded anyone passionate about Algren. Over the years Candida, Ruth Sherman who as Algren’s surviving relative is executor of his estate, Eric Ashworth and Neil Olson have been gracious and helpful and always convey to me the palpable sense that Nelson is nearby.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Elinor Nauen for her inspired copyediting of
Nonconformity;
to Cynthia Cameros and Moyra Davey for sharing the journey of the past year at Seven Stories Press, to Brendamichelle Morris for her help
securing permissions for
Nonconformity
, and to my wife, Adriana Scopino, without whose help this work could not have been completed.

To H. E. F. Donohue, whose
Conversations with Nelson Algren
preceded this book and led the way, I am particularly thankful. Every serious reader of Algren knows
Conversations
. In its pages Algren’s personality lives like an eternal flame. Several passages from
Conversations
appear in
Nonconformity
because they are illuminations of Algren’s work and his spirit. My hope for
Nonconformity
is that it may help readers of Algren continue on that road, in that spirit.

—D. S.

[In October 1949, the actor John Garfield decided he’d like to star as Frankie Machine in a movie version of Algren’s harsh and brilliant new novel
, The Man with the Golden Arm.
Garfield sent his producer, Bob Roberts, to Chicago, where he struck a deal with the writer. In early 1950 Algren and a friend, an addict named Acker, who Algren thought could serve as a technical adviser on the film, traveled on the stylish Super Chief train to Hollywood. Once there, things got off to a bad start. Garfield only swept in and out between games of tennis; Algren kept talking about renegotiating the deal. Within days communication had broken down to the point where Roberts had Algren served with summonses. Algren felt Hollywood was mistreating him, and it only made sense to him to treat Hollywood with equal scorn and loathing in return. In the end a better deal was struck, and Algren returned to Chicago, somewhat mollified, to work on the screenplay, which he completed in three months. For the next two years, as the pervasive persecution of leftists and liberals intensified and as the number of blacklisted actors, writers and directors increased, the film project foundered. Then, in May 1952, under threat of
perjury prosecution for refusing to name Communists by claiming he didn’t know any, Garfield, aged 39, died of a sudden heart attack
.

Several years later, and after Algren spent another disastrous episode in Hollywood, the film of
The Man with the Golden Arm
was finally made by Otto Preminger, to Algren’s intense and everlasting dissatisfaction. He would come to refer to his Hollywood experience as “my war with the United States as represented by Kim Novak” (who co-starred, alongside Frank Sinatra). The hurt of it stayed with him, partly because he made very little money from it, and partly, perhaps, because he understood it to be emblematic of his larger conflict with the whole country
.

Originally, Algren had placed his satiric account of his Hollywood experience as the opening scene of this essay. Since both its tone and its substance set it apart from the rest of
Nonconformity,
it is included here as an appendix, of interest to the reader
of Nonconformity
as vintage Algren and as what triggered him to write the book
.—D.S.]

L
ife, Peer Gynt decided, is a matter of passing safe and dry-shod down the rushing stream of time. When, not long past, I discovered myself to be passing not only safe and snugly shod, but downright lavishly set up, I felt, though there was no Anitra near, that I agreed with Peer at last. The downright lavish setup was called, exotically enough, the Garden of Allah.
⁸⁹
But the only exotic thing about it was that the rent was free. Free because I was being
accorded the Ten-Day-Hollywood-Hospitality Treatment, an operation predicated upon the assumption that half a grand allotted from a producer’s budget toward the comfort and entertainment of any writer from the hinterland is certain, with the help of that Yogi sun, to arouse such slavering gratitude in said hinterlander that he’ll sign for any price the producer deigns to name. And if he doesn’t so deign, said hinterlander will ultimately feel so guilty about the advantage he is taking of the helpless that he’ll plead for permission to sign
anything
. That he’ll sign blind just to feel clean once more. The producer can fill in the figures later.

“Don’t worry about price,” I had been comforted by long distance. “Trust me to take care of you. I like writers. I
want
to take care of you.”

It sounded fine. I had not yet felt that sun. Driving from the station, the producer’s flunky assured me that the apartment I was to occupy had been vacated by a name-star only a matter of hours past. “You’ll be sleeping in his bed tonight,” he promised. Lucky me, I thought, that the train was late. But took the hint nonetheless that living in such a place, rent or no rent, was in itself enough to make a trip from Chicago worth any said hinterlander’s while.

But didn’t really feel it to be worth that much until the flunky appointed the name-star’s pantry with a case of good scotch, a case of fair rye and a case of cheap bourbon; then lowered his lids to indicate we weren’t to talk about money. “Don’t mention it,” he reassured me. I chose to mention it all the same. What I mentioned specifically was
“Where’s the gin, for God’s sake? He must have thought I said “Djinn,” for in only a matter of moments there appeared—precisely as in a story by John Collier
⁹⁰
and all of it stuffed inside a castoff tattersall of the late Laird Cregar’s
⁹¹
—a real Hollywood djinn. An honest-to-God Guru. He was fresh up from Malibu Beach and his toes stuck out of his sandals like amputated thumbs. He looked like he’d slept in a bottle with the cork in it.