Political Views and FBI Surveillance
Algren friend Stuart McCarrell described him as a "gut radical," who generally sided with the downtrodden but was uninterested in ideological debates and politically inactive for most of his life. McCarrell states that Algren's heroes were the "prairie radicals" Theodore Dreiser, John Peter Altgeld, Clarence Darrow and Eugene V. Debs. Algren references all of these men—as well as Big Bill Haywood, the Haymarket defendants and the Memorial Day Massacre victims--in Chicago: City on the Make.
Despite its appeal to artists and intellectuals during the Great Depression, Algren told McCarrell that he never joined the Communist Party. Among other reasons, he cited negative experiences both he and Richard Wright had with party members. However, his involvement in groups deemed "subversive" during the McCarthy years drew the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Among his affiliations, he was a participant in the John Reed Club in the 1930s and later an honorary co-chair of the "Save Ethel and Julius Rosenberg Committee" in Chicago. According to Herbert Mitgang, the FBI suspected Algren's political views and kept a dossier on him amounting to more than 500 pages but identified nothing concretely subversive.
During the 1950s, Algren wished to travel to Paris with his romantic companion, Simone de Beauvoir, but due to government surveillance his passport applications were denied. When he finally did get a passport in 1960, McCarrell concludes that "it was too late. By then the relationship had changed subtly but decisively."
Read more about this topic: Nelson Algren
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