 Additionally, he championed many otherwise unnoticed newcomers of the 1950s such as Al Purdy, Milton Acorn, D. G. Jones and Alden Nowlan.Eli Mandel's book," The Family Romance" (1986), has been characterized by his quotations from essays on Hugh MacLennan and Northrop Frye’s The Great Code.Both excerpts exemplify Mandel’s questioning of whatever is viewed as orthodoxy.