Nonconformity: Writing on Writing

by Nelson Algren

Book Overview

The struggle to write with deep emotion is the subject of this extraordinary book, the previously unpublished credo of one of America's greatest 20th-century writers.
"You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich," writes Nelson Algren in his only longer work of nonfiction, adding: "A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1888363622
• ISBN13: 9781888363623
• Release Date: November 1997
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Only pretentious dweebs title their online reviews

I've been writing for ten years and this book has become a bible for me. I planned on reading one chapter one night before going to bed, and instead stayed up until dawn reading it and thinking about what the author's compelling essays. It's the best book I've ever read about the art of writing and the responsibility of writers.It used to be much easier to submit reviews. These days every company pretends like its website is the only one people will ever visit on the web. Gack.

Brilliance Cooked To Critical Mass

This book stalks sure footed through the dense thicket of modern American literature, with The Novel and Nelson Algren firmly at its center. It is at once entirely personal and, sonehow, universal at the same time. What it has to say about about writing evokes the kindred spirit shared by all great writiers, vastlty differing though thier style and temperments might be. Each exquisitely realized chapter is peppered with excerpts of their prose in such a way that it fairly leaps off the page, providing a critical mass of context and vibrancy to the very difficult subject of what it is that writers do and do best. Get it. Read it. Love it. I certainly did.