Nonconformity by Nelson Algren Page B

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 beingaccorded 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.
    It was, of course, the producer himself. And we were off to Romanoff’s. I dined with him unaccompanied that first evening, a bit self-conscious of my closed-in toes. The next, I took the liberty of inviting a newfound friend. The next I took two liberties and by the time we made the Brown Derby we were blocking traffic. With my senses by now so awhirl with the wonder and hurry of it all that I had no time for gratitude.
    In the faint hope of fanning some sort of spark in that direction, the djinn inquired softly, during the course of some feverish carryings-on at the Beverly-Wilshire, and the wind whisking every which way, whether I’d care to meet Miss Sylvia Sidney. The entire course of my life having been determined by the 1931 version of
An American Tragedy
, that damned near did it. That an introduction so long sought should