“A handbook for tough, truth-telling outsiders who are proud, as was Algren, to damn well stay that way.” –Kurt Vonnegut
“In the never-before-published, book-length essay Nonconformity … [Algren] articulates an American literary world view that should guide the generations of writers to follow him—a quest so ambitious it is hard to think of any other American writer who attempted it since, perhaps, Ralph Waldo Emerson in Self-Reliance.” –Gerald Nicosia, Chicago Sun-Times
“A passionate defense of the writer … Angry and funny as Algren usually is.” –Kirkus Reviews
“This extended essay on what it takes to be a writer—and by extension a man—provides a corrosive antidote to any fin de siecle sentimentalizing of the American midcentury.” –The Boston Globe
“Nonconformity underscores the beliefs of Algren, Dreiser and an army of intellectuals that it is the duty of the serious writer to serve as society’s moral conscience … Simon has done a great service in bringing this book into print.” –Bettina Drew, Chicago Tribune
“Wise, courageous and humane.” –Publishers Weekly
