An Introduction to Outsider Artist Henry Darger and His Bizarre 15,000-Page Illustrated Masterwork

The expression “Don’t quit your day job” is often used as an insult, implying that the recipient’s creative skills aren’t up to attracting a career-supporting audience. But it can also be practical advice in certain cases, especially those of artists possessed of a sensibility too particular and strange to bear direct exposure to the marketplace. So it was with Henry Darger, who deliberately passed his 81 years in near-absolute obscurity, working increasingly menial janitorial jobs by day and...