FROM ALGREN’S PEN: AUTHENTIC PASSION

NONCONFORMITY: Writing on Writing

By Nelson Algren

Seven Stories Press, 130 pages, $16

This lengthy essay was completed in 1952 but lay unpublished in an archive until recently. A screed on the lack of moral vision in America, Algren’s argument may be undeveloped and opaque and often tough reading, but it is authentic in his passion for “the secret multitudes who belong to no world” and as a rallying cry against the temptations of comfort.