2022 reads, #58. DID NOT FINISH. This is now the 15th book I've read through the Amazon Prime Reads program, which to remind you is when the company t2022 reads, #58. DID NOT FINISH. This is now the 15th book I've read through the Amazon Prime Reads program, which to remind you is when the company takes half a dozen underselling titles from their own in-house imprints and offers them up for free to every single member of Amazon Prime in an attempt to "increase engagement." I didn't last very long with this one at all, because even just a couple of chapters in, I could tell this was going to be a particularly egregious example of cookie-cutter genre writing, the main thing I complain about with these Prime Reads titles, that most of them have all the charm and sophistication of Law & Order season 17 episode 13 watched at half-attention on a Sunday afternoon while folding laundry. As I talked about in my last Prime Reads review, I just really hate it when quick cheap genre writers turn in a book that's absolutely the lowest quality possible to still justify receiving their paycheck, a problem I try to help my own clients combat in my work as a freelance book editor for these very same cheap quick genre melodramas; and here Tracy Clark is extra-generic in her crime stylings, giving us a flat and unentertaining start that made me immediately guess (correctly, it turns out) exactly how this book was going to end 300 pages later. That's a bummer as a genre fan, when I can already guess in the first chapter how the last chapter's going to read, which led to me giving this a quick pass and then an even quicker delete off my Kindle for good. Buyer beware....more
2022 reads, #43. It's summer, which means it's time for another of Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" urban fantasy novels! As long-time friends remember, I've been trying to add a certain amount of these genre-oriented, easy-to-read books to my summer reading list for about ten years now, ever since getting nostalgic once in my forties about how I would join my local library's Summer Reading Program every year when I was a kid and do basically the same exact thing, and now here in my fifties I make room every summer for another book by such notorious beach and airport authors as Butcher, Lee Child, Elin Hilderbrand and more. Unfortunately, though, Butcher's books more closely fit the derided stereotype of such summer genre easy-readers than the others do; for while the others often bounce back and forth between legitimate brilliance and Tommy Wiseau-style "so bad it's good," the two Dresden Files novels I've so far read just sort of tread the thin line between so-so and mediocre without ever really fluctuating above or below it, the kind of C+ fan-service stuff you might expect from someone who's been attending fantasy conventions just as an enthusiastic audience member all their life, and has finally decided after reading about 500 of these types of books to finally try writing one themselves.
And indeed, that's perhaps the biggest irony of the Dresden novels, that they first got the kind of outsized notice and popularity they wouldn't get now because he first started writing them way back at the tail end of the 1990s, the decade when urban fantasy first exploded in popularity due to such high-profile projects as Neil Gaiman's Sandman for DC's "edgy Generation X" imprint, Vertigo. There simply weren't that many urban fantasy novels around then, so Butcher was lucky to get a tremendous amount of coverage by publishing his when he did, the ongoing adventures of a hard-boiled Chicago private eye but with the twist being that he's an honest-to-God wizard, the only one of his kind in history to ever make themselves publicly known to the non-magic public, which works out just fine because most non-magicals think he's just an eccentric nutjob, making up the magic element as a way of generating easy publicity for his PI services (minus a few cops and reporters who instead take him very, very seriously).
It's a really genius concept for a franchise, very basic-cable in that respect, where he gets both the benefits of episodic storytelling that can be read in any order, but with a light mythology to Dresden and his life that we learn a little bit more of with each new book. (And indeed, it's no surprise that the cable network formerly known as the SciFi Channel produced a Dresden TV show in the mid-'00s, which not by coincidence is when the books really blew up in popularity for the first time too.) But also like basic cable, so far none of these specific stories have been much more than a breezy, forgettable way to painlessly pass a boring Sunday afternoon, not bad and not good but just sort of...there, the kind of clock-killing light pleasure that con-going genre fans love, because con-going genre fans read an entire book in their loved genre every single day of the week (or, well, at least every other day). It bugs me that Butcher's personal prose style is best described as Joss Whedon on a bad day; it bugs me that he's constantly getting basic facts about Chicago wrong despite his franchise being set here (in this book, for example, erroneously stating that the lakefront area of the Hyde Park neighborhood where I live is a run-down wasteland of abandoned crumbling warehouses, and that the highly urbanized Gold Coast neighborhood is instead filled with a small amount of Gilded Age mansions that are each surrounded by acres upon acres of fenced-in private forests). It bugs me that there's no stereotype that Butcher doesn't love, and it bugs me that he uses a novel filled with female werewolves as a lazy excuse to call them all "bitches" over and over, dozens of times (because they're female dogs, GET IT?!). Mostly, though, it bugs me that this book feels so filled with tired cliches at this point, 21 years after it was first published, for supposedly being such a pioneer in the genre.
I actually put together a list a few years ago which for better or for worse could be called an "Urban Fantasy Canon Primer," the most influential and popular titles in the relatively short 30 years this has been a mainstream genre; and reading this latest Dresden Files novel got me thinking about it again, and thinking about how my time would probably actually be better spent delving more and more into this larger list, and getting a greater diversity of story ideas and universe rules and prose quality under my belt, rather than just continuing to read these mediocre Dresden books again and again. (My full urban fantasy canon list is about 50 titles, which I've posted over at Twitter for anyone who wants to see them; but basically the first three after this are Cassandra Khaw's Food of the Gods, Seanan McGuire's Rosemary and Rue, and F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack, because they were all particularly recommended to me by an acquaintance whose taste I admire, horror author Richard Thomas.) So, you may see me take a step back in the coming years from these Dresden titles in order to explore the bigger world of urban fantasy in general, and eventually this author in my Great Completist Challenge may become abandoned altogether. (Hey, it happens..) But until then, I can give this second book in the series a solid "meh," fine for urban fantasy completists who don't need a whole lot to be happy, but not really anything outside a typical Tuesday night on the modern CW anymore in terms of overall entertainment value or quality level. Make your choice on whether or not to read this based on that.
Jim Butcher "Dresden Files" books being reviewed for this series: Storm Front (2000) | Fool Moon (2001) | Grave Peril (2001) | Summer Knight (2002) | Death Masks (2003) | Blood Rites (2004) | Dead Beat (2005) | Proven Guilty (2006) | White Night (2007) | Small Favor (2008) | Turn Coat (2009) | Changes (2010) | Ghost Story (2011) | Cold Days (2012) | Skin Game (2014) | Peace Talks (2020) | Battle Ground (2020)...more
2021 reads, #33. This newest book by Chicago author John Sibley is a short but pleasant and interesting read, in which this longtime activist uses a s2021 reads, #33. This newest book by Chicago author John Sibley is a short but pleasant and interesting read, in which this longtime activist uses a stroll through the city's Washington Park as an excuse to ruminate on a whole series of random subjects, from #BlackLivesMatter to the mathematics of goose manure, COVID and the pandemic, climate change, the history of Native American atrocities in the upper Midwest, and a lot more. (Plus, let me admit that I actually live right next to Washington Park myself, so this particularly struck a nice chord with me specifically.) As such, then, I don't have a lot to say about this slim 50-page volume, other than that I really enjoyed it and recommend it to others, although be aware that it constitutes not much more than an afternoon of an author thinking out loud, and so your expectations should be matched to this to avoid disappointment. That said, I encourage you to pick it up soon, especially if you are a fellow Chicagoan like Sibley and myself, and especially if you're a fellow southsider like Sibley and myself. ...more
This was my latest experiment in trying to embrace the Amazon First Reads program, in which the corporation pulls out about a dozen titles from their in-house publishing company each month and then offers all their Prime members a chance to read one of them for free. I've had a bad experience with nearly every book I've ever chosen to check out through the First Reads program, for exactly the same reason I've had so many disappointing experiences with the original movies and TV shows Amazon produces through their similar in-house Prime Video program; and that's because the end results feel like something that not even a single human being decided was worth Amazon's time and money, but rather that their thousands of programmers wrote a bunch of algorithms and the computer program spit out a list of items required to be in a "creative unit" in order to "maximize user enjoyment" and thus lead to "optimal ROI," and then some poor 27-year-old Oberlin fuck on the Amazon Publishing staff was put in charge of going out and finding a book with that exact combination of items, about the most depressing definition of a job in the arts I can possibly imagine.
Unfortunately, Ian K. Smith's The Unspoken is yet another example of the dispiriting "art by algorithm" construct that always feels like is the machine behind all of Amazon's depressingly forgettable First Reads titles. It's a crime novel, and it's set in Chicago, and it stars a private investigator; now imagine every single easy cliche and trope that immediately pops into your head when I mention "Chicago-set private investigator crime novel," and believe me when I say that every single one of them is in this book, a tale with all the charm of a random twenty-year-old episode of "Law & Order" that you watched at half-attention while laying on your couch on a Sunday afternoon, full from a big lunch and slowly dozing off every few minutes, yet somehow you still know exactly what's going on when you suddenly startle awake 15 minutes before it's over. It deserves neither a good score nor a bad score, because that's the entire point -- it's neither good nor bad, but just some bland, gray, formless blob of room-temperature gelatin sitting on a cracked plate in front of you, something to mindlessly shovel into your body before trudging off to your joyless job at a draconian Amazon warehouse, where you're forced to wear a microchip that records exactly how many seconds you spend in the bathroom each day, shitting that flavorless gray blob of gelatin back out again.
That's no way to run a publishing company, and this is no way to enjoy a novel, even one that aims to be nothing more than a little supermarket airport-read piece of fluff, which is why I get a little more despondent about the world every time I try to read another one of these First Reads books. I've been keeping at it because I keep hoping to be proven wrong; but I have to admit, at this point I'm just about ready to chuck it in for good, and to block the First Reads emails from even showing up in my inbox in the first place. I mean, kudos to Smith for raising his public profile yet a little more (for those who don't know, he's a "celebrity doctor" who regularly shows up on such racing-to-the-bottom fare as The View and The Rachael Ray Show, and is actually much better known for his nonfiction books on diet and nutrition); but Jesus Christ, dude, don't get to the end of your life and have nothing else to show for it but soul-killingly mediocre bullshit like this. Try at least a little bit harder next time, won't you? ...more
As I've mentioned here before, I made a major new bibliophilic discovery last year, when I learned that there are tons of authors out there whose entire oeuvres have been packaged up by fans and put out as BitTorrent streams; and with ebook files being so insanely small in size, this means that you can often download the entire career of an author in less than ten seconds with the click of a single button. Consequently, this has inspired me to branch out and sample a series of genre authors who I normally wouldn't, especially ones with franchises who release a title a year just in time for your next vacation to the beach, which has been hit-and-miss but always an interesting process. Take Jim Butcher, for example, whose 15 "Dresden Files" novels I knew not a single thing about before last week, besides that they're urban fantasy and that they're perennially showing up on the "New Releases" shelf of my neighborhood public library.
So on a whim I decided to read the first in the series, 2000's Storm Front; and I have to say, I liked it enough that I'm at least going to continue with them (as opposed to, say, Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" series, whose first title underwhelmed me so much that I'm not sure if I'm ever going to read book 2). I'm not actually that familiar with urban fantasy, but it feels to me as if this is an ur-example of what you might expect from the genre; it's the tale of a gritty private detective (Harry Dresden of the franchise's title) who happens to be an honest-to-God wizard as well, within an alternative reality where such things as magic, vampires, fairies and demons are supposed to actually exist, mingling in their own realm called "Nevernever" but up to now never revealing their presence to human mortals. Dresden is the first such magical creature to go public with this information; but since all the other magical creatures tend to hide their activities from humans, most mortals don't actually believe that Dresden is a real wizard, and most of his jobs tend to be of the "X-Files" variety, i.e. weird stuff is happening and the client thinks, "What the hell, maybe this weirdo who claims to be a wizard can figure it out."
Granted, I almost gave up on the book right in chapter 1, because of Butcher setting the novel in my hometown of Chicago but then making three major basic errors about the city in literally the first ten pages, never a good sign of a book's quality going forward. (For what it's worth, there is no 10th Street in Chicago [it's instead known as Taylor Street]; there is no such thing as "Midtown Chicago" [you're thinking of Manhattan, Butcher]; and no one would ever describe March in Chicago as "cool and windy" [it is instead still bitterly cold and miserable here in March].) Thankfully, though, the book gets a lot better as it continues, never exactly Pulitzer material but certainly much higher in quality than many genre franchises with annual beach-read releases. The secret here is that Butcher builds in a tremendous amount of natural conflict, which keeps the proceedings interesting and high-stakes -- there's the frisson between him and the rest of the supernatural world, between him and the world of mortals, between him and the skeptical police officers who must put up with him on a regular basis, between the different factions of Nevernever, not to mention between the actual characters involved in this particular crime and investigation -- and also because Butcher has such an expansive and fascinating sense of world-building right here in the first volume of the series, presenting a fully fleshed-out complex universe right from the get-go, with constant hints and references to past events that sound interesting enough to take up entire books unto themselves (and which I assume actually do take up entire books unto themselves later in the series).
Now add a decent sense of humor, consistent rules about magic that are easily understood by the reader, and a dedication to the fundamentals of procedural crime-fiction writing, and you're left with a book that could've been better but is still pretty great as it is. That's why I'm officially adding Butcher today to my always expanding list of authors in this Great Completist Challenge; and I look forward to taking on the next title in the series, 2001's Fool Moon, later this summer while I'm lounging around Chicago's 10th Street Beach. This won't be for everyone; but if you like either fantasy novels or crime ones, there's a lot in Storm Front for you to enjoy.
To make my biases known right away, Don Evans is a good friend of mine, and is also the man who very nicely asked me this year to join the Chicago LitTo make my biases known right away, Don Evans is a good friend of mine, and is also the man who very nicely asked me this year to join the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, so there's not really any way to see my write-up of his latest book as somehow an objective and disinterested critical review. I wanted to bring it to your attention anyway, though, because I just finished it myself and really loved it, and wanted to make sure it found more of its natural audience here this holiday season.
A series of stories about families of all types as they each enter the holidays, the tales here range from the sentimental to the bleak, strongly reflecting Evans' natural love for our city's strong history of gritty social realism. My personally favorite story of the collection, for example, "Tiny Flakes of Bone," is an ur-example of this, as two former school chums celebrate Christmas with a sybaritic gambling binge in Las Vegas, their hazy 48 straight hours at the casino slowly revealing the fractures that initially drove the two apart, and how one has been able in middle-age to shed himself of his addictive demons, the other lost in a permanent wallowing in them.
To one degree or another, all the stories in An Off-White Christmas share this intense character-building quality, although certainly many of them have much happier endings; each of them, though, are surprisingly deep dives into the dynamics that make up a family (whether biological or otherwise), Evans cleverly using Christmas as a gimmick off which to hang a whole series of diverse tales with diverse tones. I would've really enjoyed the book whether or not I was already friends with him, and I'd like to strongly encourage you to pick up a copy yourself as soon as you have the chance. ...more
[Earlier this year, I had the honor of being asked to join the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, specifically to help choose the honoree eac[Earlier this year, I had the honor of being asked to join the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, specifically to help choose the honoree each year of the organization's Fuller Award for Lifetime Achievement. 2018's recipient was Stuart Dybek, and I was asked to write a critical overview of his work for the accompanying program. I'm reprinting it in full below.]
It’s been a fascinating thing this month to read through the entire prose oeuvre of Stuart Dybek in chronological order for the first time, as we here on the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame have been making plans for tonight’s ceremony, and have been gathering in the effusive praise from his friends and colleagues you’re reading in this program. Like many, I had read his most famous book, 1990’s The Coast of Chicago, in my twenties soon after it had come out; like many, it was at the urging of a woman I was trying to make into my latest romantic partner, a slam poet and former student of his who told me that "everything I needed to know about her" could be gleaned from the book; and like many, once I did read the book, Dybek’s unforgettable prose took on a life of its own with me, apart from the six bittersweet weeks said woman and I ended up together. (And strangely, like Dybek’s story “Córdoba,” said woman just happened to live at the corner of Buena Avenue and Marine Drive, which made me feel like one of the sweet but hapless male heroes of his pieces when coming across this fact last week.)
But still, I had never explored the rest of his fictional work before this month, so I decided to start with his first, 1980’s Childhood and Other Neighborhoods. Even 38 years later, it’s easy to see with this book why Dybek started gaining a feverish cult following from his very start, because the writing on display is startlingly unique; the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, the gritty urbanism of Nelson Algren, the sweet nostalgia of the Saturday Evening Post, but with the naughty subversion of the Countercultural era. (Also, what an astounding historical record of a Chicago that no longer exists, as best typified by the very first story of the book, "The Palatski Man," in which alley-going knife sharpeners on horse-drawn carriages still live in a wild rural wonderland, right in the middle of the city.)
Next came The Coast of Chicago, deservedly now known as a modern classic, one of those magical moments in literary history when everything came together perfectly. An expansion of Dybek’s look back at his childhood as a Polish-American in the Little Village neighborhood (in a post-war time when the area was undergoing a transition into a mostly Mexican neighborhood), it’s also a thoroughly contemporary collection of pieces about masculinity, sexuality, and experience-hungry youth, containing many of the most indelible and heartbreaking stories of his career, such as the aching "Chopin in Winter" where we watch the twin fates of a dying immigrant grandfather and an illegitimately pregnant teenage neighbor. (Also, for those keeping score, this is the book that contains the notorious "Pet Milk," mentioned over and over by his admirers in this program.)
A decade later saw Dybek’s so-far only novel, 2003’s I Sailed with Magellan, although this technically comes with an asterisk for being a "novel in stories," the literary length that he’s destined to be mostly remembered for. A non-linear look at the life of the sometimes infuriating, always engaging Perry Katzek, this is Dybek doing a deep dive into his checkered youth within a rough-and-tumble, pre-gentrification Chicago -- a world of mobsters and viaducts, dead disabled boys turned into Catholic martyrs, broke but striving social workers living in rundown northside SROs, and as always the women beside them who propelled them along, messy mistakes and all. To me, it was my favorite of all his books, and one I know I’ll be coming back to again and again for the rest of my life.
And finally, a decade after that, Dybek gave the world the remarkable gift of 59 new stories in a single year, with the twinned 2014 publications of Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern. A reflection of Dybek’s years of honing his craft in the academic world, as both a beloved professor and working artist, these pieces are mostly tiny little diamonds from a now master of his craft, fiction that often approaches flash-fiction but that packs all the wallop of stories ten times the size. Split between general stories (Cahoots) and specific love stories (Lantern), these books see Dybek at the absolute top of his game, a crowning achievement to a busy and award-packed career that is about to celebrate its half-century anniversary.
With all the wonderful anecdotes in this program from long-time friends who are intimately acquainted with his work, I’m proud to be one of the few to say that it’s perfectly all right if you’re not familiar yet with all of Stuart Dybek’s books. It is in fact a perfect time to become so, with all of his titles still in print and with a brand-new greatest-hits collection that was just recently published by Jonathan Cape/Vintage. Still as relevant as ever, still as powerful as ever, he is truly one of America’s greatest living authors, and a bright star in the annals of Chicago’s literary history. ...more
[Earlier this year, I had the honor of being asked to join the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, specifically to help choose the honoree eac[Earlier this year, I had the honor of being asked to join the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, specifically to help choose the honoree each year of the organization's Fuller Award for Lifetime Achievement. 2018's recipient was Stuart Dybek, and I was asked to write a critical overview of his work for the accompanying program. I'm reprinting it in full below.]
It’s been a fascinating thing this month to read through the entire prose oeuvre of Stuart Dybek in chronological order for the first time, as we here on the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame have been making plans for tonight’s ceremony, and have been gathering in the effusive praise from his friends and colleagues you’re reading in this program. Like many, I had read his most famous book, 1990’s The Coast of Chicago, in my twenties soon after it had come out; like many, it was at the urging of a woman I was trying to make into my latest romantic partner, a slam poet and former student of his who told me that "everything I needed to know about her" could be gleaned from the book; and like many, once I did read the book, Dybek’s unforgettable prose took on a life of its own with me, apart from the six bittersweet weeks said woman and I ended up together. (And strangely, like Dybek’s story “Córdoba,” said woman just happened to live at the corner of Buena Avenue and Marine Drive, which made me feel like one of the sweet but hapless male heroes of his pieces when coming across this fact last week.)
But still, I had never explored the rest of his fictional work before this month, so I decided to start with his first, 1980’s Childhood and Other Neighborhoods. Even 38 years later, it’s easy to see with this book why Dybek started gaining a feverish cult following from his very start, because the writing on display is startlingly unique; the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, the gritty urbanism of Nelson Algren, the sweet nostalgia of the Saturday Evening Post, but with the naughty subversion of the Countercultural era. (Also, what an astounding historical record of a Chicago that no longer exists, as best typified by the very first story of the book, "The Palatski Man," in which alley-going knife sharpeners on horse-drawn carriages still live in a wild rural wonderland, right in the middle of the city.)
Next came The Coast of Chicago, deservedly now known as a modern classic, one of those magical moments in literary history when everything came together perfectly. An expansion of Dybek’s look back at his childhood as a Polish-American in the Little Village neighborhood (in a post-war time when the area was undergoing a transition into a mostly Mexican neighborhood), it’s also a thoroughly contemporary collection of pieces about masculinity, sexuality, and experience-hungry youth, containing many of the most indelible and heartbreaking stories of his career, such as the aching "Chopin in Winter" where we watch the twin fates of a dying immigrant grandfather and an illegitimately pregnant teenage neighbor. (Also, for those keeping score, this is the book that contains the notorious "Pet Milk," mentioned over and over by his admirers in this program.)
A decade later saw Dybek’s so-far only novel, 2003’s I Sailed with Magellan, although this technically comes with an asterisk for being a "novel in stories," the literary length that he’s destined to be mostly remembered for. A non-linear look at the life of the sometimes infuriating, always engaging Perry Katzek, this is Dybek doing a deep dive into his checkered youth within a rough-and-tumble, pre-gentrification Chicago -- a world of mobsters and viaducts, dead disabled boys turned into Catholic martyrs, broke but striving social workers living in rundown northside SROs, and as always the women beside them who propelled them along, messy mistakes and all. To me, it was my favorite of all his books, and one I know I’ll be coming back to again and again for the rest of my life.
And finally, a decade after that, Dybek gave the world the remarkable gift of 59 new stories in a single year, with the twinned 2014 publications of Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern. A reflection of Dybek’s years of honing his craft in the academic world, as both a beloved professor and working artist, these pieces are mostly tiny little diamonds from a now master of his craft, fiction that often approaches flash-fiction but that packs all the wallop of stories ten times the size. Split between general stories (Cahoots) and specific love stories (Lantern), these books see Dybek at the absolute top of his game, a crowning achievement to a busy and award-packed career that is about to celebrate its half-century anniversary.
With all the wonderful anecdotes in this program from long-time friends who are intimately acquainted with his work, I’m proud to be one of the few to say that it’s perfectly all right if you’re not familiar yet with all of Stuart Dybek’s books. It is in fact a perfect time to become so, with all of his titles still in print and with a brand-new greatest-hits collection that was just recently published by Jonathan Cape/Vintage. Still as relevant as ever, still as powerful as ever, he is truly one of America’s greatest living authors, and a bright star in the annals of Chicago’s literary history. ...more
[Earlier this year, I had the honor of being asked to join the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, specifically to help choose the honoree eac[Earlier this year, I had the honor of being asked to join the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, specifically to help choose the honoree each year of the organization's Fuller Award for Lifetime Achievement. 2018's recipient was Stuart Dybek, and I was asked to write a critical overview of his work for the accompanying program. I'm reprinting it in full below.]
It’s been a fascinating thing this month to read through the entire prose oeuvre of Stuart Dybek in chronological order for the first time, as we here on the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame have been making plans for tonight’s ceremony, and have been gathering in the effusive praise from his friends and colleagues you’re reading in this program. Like many, I had read his most famous book, 1990’s The Coast of Chicago, in my twenties soon after it had come out; like many, it was at the urging of a woman I was trying to make into my latest romantic partner, a slam poet and former student of his who told me that "everything I needed to know about her" could be gleaned from the book; and like many, once I did read the book, Dybek’s unforgettable prose took on a life of its own with me, apart from the six bittersweet weeks said woman and I ended up together. (And strangely, like Dybek’s story “Córdoba,” said woman just happened to live at the corner of Buena Avenue and Marine Drive, which made me feel like one of the sweet but hapless male heroes of his pieces when coming across this fact last week.)
But still, I had never explored the rest of his fictional work before this month, so I decided to start with his first, 1980’s Childhood and Other Neighborhoods. Even 38 years later, it’s easy to see with this book why Dybek started gaining a feverish cult following from his very start, because the writing on display is startlingly unique; the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, the gritty urbanism of Nelson Algren, the sweet nostalgia of the Saturday Evening Post, but with the naughty subversion of the Countercultural era. (Also, what an astounding historical record of a Chicago that no longer exists, as best typified by the very first story of the book, "The Palatski Man," in which alley-going knife sharpeners on horse-drawn carriages still live in a wild rural wonderland, right in the middle of the city.)
Next came The Coast of Chicago, deservedly now known as a modern classic, one of those magical moments in literary history when everything came together perfectly. An expansion of Dybek’s look back at his childhood as a Polish-American in the Little Village neighborhood (in a post-war time when the area was undergoing a transition into a mostly Mexican neighborhood), it’s also a thoroughly contemporary collection of pieces about masculinity, sexuality, and experience-hungry youth, containing many of the most indelible and heartbreaking stories of his career, such as the aching "Chopin in Winter" where we watch the twin fates of a dying immigrant grandfather and an illegitimately pregnant teenage neighbor. (Also, for those keeping score, this is the book that contains the notorious "Pet Milk," mentioned over and over by his admirers in this program.)
A decade later saw Dybek’s so-far only novel, 2003’s I Sailed with Magellan, although this technically comes with an asterisk for being a "novel in stories," the literary length that he’s destined to be mostly remembered for. A non-linear look at the life of the sometimes infuriating, always engaging Perry Katzek, this is Dybek doing a deep dive into his checkered youth within a rough-and-tumble, pre-gentrification Chicago -- a world of mobsters and viaducts, dead disabled boys turned into Catholic martyrs, broke but striving social workers living in rundown northside SROs, and as always the women beside them who propelled them along, messy mistakes and all. To me, it was my favorite of all his books, and one I know I’ll be coming back to again and again for the rest of my life.
And finally, a decade after that, Dybek gave the world the remarkable gift of 59 new stories in a single year, with the twinned 2014 publications of Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern. A reflection of Dybek’s years of honing his craft in the academic world, as both a beloved professor and working artist, these pieces are mostly tiny little diamonds from a now master of his craft, fiction that often approaches flash-fiction but that packs all the wallop of stories ten times the size. Split between general stories (Cahoots) and specific love stories (Lantern), these books see Dybek at the absolute top of his game, a crowning achievement to a busy and award-packed career that is about to celebrate its half-century anniversary.
With all the wonderful anecdotes in this program from long-time friends who are intimately acquainted with his work, I’m proud to be one of the few to say that it’s perfectly all right if you’re not familiar yet with all of Stuart Dybek’s books. It is in fact a perfect time to become so, with all of his titles still in print and with a brand-new greatest-hits collection that was just recently published by Jonathan Cape/Vintage. Still as relevant as ever, still as powerful as ever, he is truly one of America’s greatest living authors, and a bright star in the annals of Chicago’s literary history. ...more
[Earlier this year, I had the honor of being asked to join the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, specifically to help choose the honoree eac[Earlier this year, I had the honor of being asked to join the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, specifically to help choose the honoree each year of the organization's Fuller Award for Lifetime Achievement. 2018's recipient was Stuart Dybek, and I was asked to write a critical overview of his work for the accompanying program. I'm reprinting it in full below.]
It’s been a fascinating thing this month to read through the entire prose oeuvre of Stuart Dybek in chronological order for the first time, as we here on the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame have been making plans for tonight’s ceremony, and have been gathering in the effusive praise from his friends and colleagues you’re reading in this program. Like many, I had read his most famous book, 1990’s The Coast of Chicago, in my twenties soon after it had come out; like many, it was at the urging of a woman I was trying to make into my latest romantic partner, a slam poet and former student of his who told me that "everything I needed to know about her" could be gleaned from the book; and like many, once I did read the book, Dybek’s unforgettable prose took on a life of its own with me, apart from the six bittersweet weeks said woman and I ended up together. (And strangely, like Dybek’s story “Córdoba,” said woman just happened to live at the corner of Buena Avenue and Marine Drive, which made me feel like one of the sweet but hapless male heroes of his pieces when coming across this fact last week.)
But still, I had never explored the rest of his fictional work before this month, so I decided to start with his first, 1980’s Childhood and Other Neighborhoods. Even 38 years later, it’s easy to see with this book why Dybek started gaining a feverish cult following from his very start, because the writing on display is startlingly unique; the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, the gritty urbanism of Nelson Algren, the sweet nostalgia of the Saturday Evening Post, but with the naughty subversion of the Countercultural era. (Also, what an astounding historical record of a Chicago that no longer exists, as best typified by the very first story of the book, "The Palatski Man," in which alley-going knife sharpeners on horse-drawn carriages still live in a wild rural wonderland, right in the middle of the city.)
Next came The Coast of Chicago, deservedly now known as a modern classic, one of those magical moments in literary history when everything came together perfectly. An expansion of Dybek’s look back at his childhood as a Polish-American in the Little Village neighborhood (in a post-war time when the area was undergoing a transition into a mostly Mexican neighborhood), it’s also a thoroughly contemporary collection of pieces about masculinity, sexuality, and experience-hungry youth, containing many of the most indelible and heartbreaking stories of his career, such as the aching "Chopin in Winter" where we watch the twin fates of a dying immigrant grandfather and an illegitimately pregnant teenage neighbor. (Also, for those keeping score, this is the book that contains the notorious "Pet Milk," mentioned over and over by his admirers in this program.)
A decade later saw Dybek’s so-far only novel, 2003’s I Sailed with Magellan, although this technically comes with an asterisk for being a "novel in stories," the literary length that he’s destined to be mostly remembered for. A non-linear look at the life of the sometimes infuriating, always engaging Perry Katzek, this is Dybek doing a deep dive into his checkered youth within a rough-and-tumble, pre-gentrification Chicago -- a world of mobsters and viaducts, dead disabled boys turned into Catholic martyrs, broke but striving social workers living in rundown northside SROs, and as always the women beside them who propelled them along, messy mistakes and all. To me, it was my favorite of all his books, and one I know I’ll be coming back to again and again for the rest of my life.
And finally, a decade after that, Dybek gave the world the remarkable gift of 59 new stories in a single year, with the twinned 2014 publications of Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern. A reflection of Dybek’s years of honing his craft in the academic world, as both a beloved professor and working artist, these pieces are mostly tiny little diamonds from a now master of his craft, fiction that often approaches flash-fiction but that packs all the wallop of stories ten times the size. Split between general stories (Cahoots) and specific love stories (Lantern), these books see Dybek at the absolute top of his game, a crowning achievement to a busy and award-packed career that is about to celebrate its half-century anniversary.
With all the wonderful anecdotes in this program from long-time friends who are intimately acquainted with his work, I’m proud to be one of the few to say that it’s perfectly all right if you’re not familiar yet with all of Stuart Dybek’s books. It is in fact a perfect time to become so, with all of his titles still in print and with a brand-new greatest-hits collection that was just recently published by Jonathan Cape/Vintage. Still as relevant as ever, still as powerful as ever, he is truly one of America’s greatest living authors, and a bright star in the annals of Chicago’s literary history. ...more
[Earlier this year, I had the honor of being asked to join the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, specifically to help choose the honoree eac[Earlier this year, I had the honor of being asked to join the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, specifically to help choose the honoree each year of the organization's Fuller Award for Lifetime Achievement. 2018's recipient was Stuart Dybek, and I was asked to write a critical overview of his work for the accompanying program. I'm reprinting it in full below.]
It’s been a fascinating thing this month to read through the entire prose oeuvre of Stuart Dybek in chronological order for the first time, as we here on the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame have been making plans for tonight’s ceremony, and have been gathering in the effusive praise from his friends and colleagues you’re reading in this program. Like many, I had read his most famous book, 1990’s The Coast of Chicago, in my twenties soon after it had come out; like many, it was at the urging of a woman I was trying to make into my latest romantic partner, a slam poet and former student of his who told me that "everything I needed to know about her" could be gleaned from the book; and like many, once I did read the book, Dybek’s unforgettable prose took on a life of its own with me, apart from the six bittersweet weeks said woman and I ended up together. (And strangely, like Dybek’s story “Córdoba,” said woman just happened to live at the corner of Buena Avenue and Marine Drive, which made me feel like one of the sweet but hapless male heroes of his pieces when coming across this fact last week.)
But still, I had never explored the rest of his fictional work before this month, so I decided to start with his first, 1980’s Childhood and Other Neighborhoods. Even 38 years later, it’s easy to see with this book why Dybek started gaining a feverish cult following from his very start, because the writing on display is startlingly unique; the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, the gritty urbanism of Nelson Algren, the sweet nostalgia of the Saturday Evening Post, but with the naughty subversion of the Countercultural era. (Also, what an astounding historical record of a Chicago that no longer exists, as best typified by the very first story of the book, "The Palatski Man," in which alley-going knife sharpeners on horse-drawn carriages still live in a wild rural wonderland, right in the middle of the city.)
Next came The Coast of Chicago, deservedly now known as a modern classic, one of those magical moments in literary history when everything came together perfectly. An expansion of Dybek’s look back at his childhood as a Polish-American in the Little Village neighborhood (in a post-war time when the area was undergoing a transition into a mostly Mexican neighborhood), it’s also a thoroughly contemporary collection of pieces about masculinity, sexuality, and experience-hungry youth, containing many of the most indelible and heartbreaking stories of his career, such as the aching "Chopin in Winter" where we watch the twin fates of a dying immigrant grandfather and an illegitimately pregnant teenage neighbor. (Also, for those keeping score, this is the book that contains the notorious "Pet Milk," mentioned over and over by his admirers in this program.)
A decade later saw Dybek’s so-far only novel, 2003’s I Sailed with Magellan, although this technically comes with an asterisk for being a "novel in stories," the literary length that he’s destined to be mostly remembered for. A non-linear look at the life of the sometimes infuriating, always engaging Perry Katzek, this is Dybek doing a deep dive into his checkered youth within a rough-and-tumble, pre-gentrification Chicago -- a world of mobsters and viaducts, dead disabled boys turned into Catholic martyrs, broke but striving social workers living in rundown northside SROs, and as always the women beside them who propelled them along, messy mistakes and all. To me, it was my favorite of all his books, and one I know I’ll be coming back to again and again for the rest of my life.
And finally, a decade after that, Dybek gave the world the remarkable gift of 59 new stories in a single year, with the twinned 2014 publications of Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern. A reflection of Dybek’s years of honing his craft in the academic world, as both a beloved professor and working artist, these pieces are mostly tiny little diamonds from a now master of his craft, fiction that often approaches flash-fiction but that packs all the wallop of stories ten times the size. Split between general stories (Cahoots) and specific love stories (Lantern), these books see Dybek at the absolute top of his game, a crowning achievement to a busy and award-packed career that is about to celebrate its half-century anniversary.
With all the wonderful anecdotes in this program from long-time friends who are intimately acquainted with his work, I’m proud to be one of the few to say that it’s perfectly all right if you’re not familiar yet with all of Stuart Dybek’s books. It is in fact a perfect time to become so, with all of his titles still in print and with a brand-new greatest-hits collection that was just recently published by Jonathan Cape/Vintage. Still as relevant as ever, still as powerful as ever, he is truly one of America’s greatest living authors, and a bright star in the annals of Chicago’s literary history. ...more
I've never read Bettina Drew's 1991 biography of Nelson Algren, so I can't say how it compares to this new one; but certainly this second-ever biograpI've never read Bettina Drew's 1991 biography of Nelson Algren, so I can't say how it compares to this new one; but certainly this second-ever biography of the famed Chicago-based social realist writer is a delight, both informative and chummy while written in a wry, conversational style that makes you feel like you're hearing gossip out of school around a bar table. And there's a good reason for that -- a veteran of the blue-collar Chicago journalism industry herself, Wisniewski is friends in real life with most of the people still alive who were friends of Algren, giving this biography a kind of authenticity that a lot of books of this type don't have.
It's hard to deny that Algren's story is ultimately a pretty heartbreaking one. A sympathetic chronicler of the real ins-and-outs of working-class Great Depression Chicago, including the petty crimes and drug addictions such people would regularly find themselves embroiled in, he eventually won the very first National Book Award ever given out, just to be rejected by the exact Polish-Americans he championed in his books (for daring to suggest that not every poor immigrant is a flower-selling paragon of holy virtue), aided by a resentful, conservative Chicago Tribune that spent literally thirty years taking a dump on every book Algren ever published (making it the height of irony that this same newspaper now gives out an annual literary award named in Algren's honor); then in the 1950s his work started getting rejected by the public at large, the shiny youth of Mid-Century Modernism having no time or patience for the grimy, lumpen-worshipping work of the dour, aging Communist sympathizers of the Rooseveltian era, leaving Algren a penniless, forgotten refugee from his own hometown by the time of his 1981 death, his entire body of work out of print for another twenty years until finally undergoing a career reassessment in the late 1990s.
Wisniewski covers all of this in her lively, fast-reading book, including the psychological troubles that came with this turmoil, his famous affair with French feminist pioneer Simone du Beauvoir, his checkered relationship with Hollywood, and an unvarnished acknowledgement of Algren's sometimes ugly side, a warts-and-all biography that does a much greater service to Algren than a hagiography would've. A must-read for anyone interested in the literary history of Chicago, or for those like me who are fascinated with the ugly, sometimes violent transition from Early Modernism to Mid-Century Modernism this country's artistic community went through in the years after World War Two. ...more
Not much to say about this one, because it has a very simple premise -- it's simply a list of 111 interesting places in Chicago and the surrounding suNot much to say about this one, because it has a very simple premise -- it's simply a list of 111 interesting places in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, some of them more famous and some of them less. A publication that firmly fits in the "tourist books for locals" category, it makes a great gift for any Chicagoan in your life; although if you're buying it for yourself, better to simply check it out of the library and take 15 minutes to type the list into a Word document. ...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
I'll admit, although the premise of Steve Wiley's The Fairytale Chicago of Francesca Finnegan is a really clever one that will immediately appeal to locals -- basically, that there's an entire urban-fantasy secret history of the city, including an underwater "lavender line" el train that runs through a submerged east side of Chicago -- I had been half-expecting the actual book itself to be only subpar, because it's written with the deliberately flowery simplicity of a fairytale, and in general I have had bad luck in the past with self-published urban-fantasy novels written in the style of fairytales. So it was a welcome surprise, then, that Wiley's take on the genre turns out to be quite delightful while still maintaining a dark, mature tone, a book that successfully straddles that fine line between whimsical and treacly.
Chock-full of wonderfully twisted references that only locals will get -- a personal favorite, for example, are the drunk elves enjoying an absinthe-style ritualized round of Malort, which according to the narrator tastes like it does because it's been infused with the evil dead spirit of Al Capone -- this is exactly the kind of book for people who hear a term like "The Green Mill" and picture a literal mill painted green out in the wilds of the city edges, a novel that quite ingeniously incorporates all manner of actual local landmarks and legends then blows them up to the level of high fantasy. I love having a chance to recommend tiny press runs like these that would normally escape your attention, so do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of this short, fast-reading novel soon.
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
It's no secret that I've been losing my patience a lot this year with many of the self-published and basement-press books that have been sent to us for review, which mostly has to do with the circumstances CCLaP finds itself in here in 2016; namely, for about two years now we've been in a constant state of being around 75 books behind in this endless to-be-read pile, with new titles coming in just as fast as we can read the old ones and get them checked off the list, and with the wait time between submission and printed review being a ridiculous nine months as of last Christmas, a situation so dire that we eventually decided to just stop accepting submissions altogether in 2016, which basically screws over every author who's publishing a book this year. Given, then, how much work and stress is going into getting these books reviewed and out the door these days, and given how many authors are unfairly not going to have a chance to send us their book at all because of this massive backlist, it is just so profoundly disappointing and anger-inducing to then pick up one of these books just to learn that it's some unreadably subpar piece of genre crap that should've never been sent to a professional review organization like ours in the first place, but that we must read and review because of the open promise we've had up to this year to read and review any book that any person spent the time and trouble to send us, a policy we're changing next year specifically to try to avoid these kinds of situations in the first place. (Heads up, authors -- the first change in this policy is that we're no longer going to accept any books from third-party publicists, originators of 95 percent of the crap books we receive; so if you want your book to be reviewed by us starting in 2017, make sure to send it to us directly yourself even if you've hired one of these PR firms.)
Given all this, then, it's fair to ask why we bother accepting self-published and basement-press books in the first place; and the answer is that it occasionally produces a hidden gem that would've otherwise gotten overlooked by the world at large, a fact I was happily reminded of again this week when reading through Felicia Schneiderhan's engaging and delightful memoir Newlyweds Afloat. A self-professed big-city hipster who has struggled in the past with addiction issues and sleeping around, Schneiderhan was shocked a few years ago to find herself falling in love with a religiously conservative man who literally lives full-time on his 38-foot trawler parked at the forgotten River City pier down on the city's near south side; and this witty yet thought-provoking book is her record of that burgeoning relationship, as well as a series of anecdotes about river-living and a well-researched journalistic account of the city's entire history of such subjects. Now, it helps that Schneiderhan is an MFA-holder who also writes novels and teaches literary workshops down at Columbia College; but as we all know, an MFA degree is not necessarily a guarantee of an entertaining book, and a lot of credit must be given to Schneiderhan for her efforts to make her book both erudite and easily readable, a memoir that digs underneath the surface level of the events being relayed in order to tell a deeper and more poetic story about aging, mid-life surprises, and the unexpected pleasures of living in a radically different way than what the rest of society considers "normal."
I would've never gotten a chance to read this pleasurable and strongly recommended book if we didn't have the policy about open submissions that we do; and while it's become obvious that the scope of self-publishing has so expanded in recent years that we simply must make some changes to this long-time open policy of ours, we will be doing so in a way so that deserving authors will still have a chance to send us titles like these, because I frankly like the fact that CCLaP will often be the one and only professional review organization on the planet to cover a deserving book like this, something I consider a main reason for coming by and reading our blog in the first place. It's my real pleasure to champion a tiny book like Newlyweds Afloat that has been overlooked by nearly everyone else, and it's my hope that you will pick up a copy in this same spirit.
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
Whenever I'm in a bookstore, I'm always tempted by those giant sections filled with unending short titles on local history by a handful of small presses devoted to cranking out such cheap and fast paperbacks as quickly as they possibly can; but I almost always end up stopping myself, because I'm always afraid that they're going to turn out to be just exactly like what Patrick Butler's recent Hidden History of Lincoln Park ended up exactly being, just good enough to justify their existence but not exactly what you could call a well-organized, well-planned or well-written nonfiction book. Butler sounds like less of a historian here and more like just some dude who's lived in the neighborhood forever, is always sitting next to you at the local watering hole, and has an endless amount of small random anecdotes about the area to always dish up, but not in any particular order and with none of those stories having particularly anything to do with the story before or after it (exacerbated in the book version by there also regularly being photographs on certain pages that have nothing to do with anything being mentioned in the text next to it). And while that's great for a pub atmosphere, or as the Royko-like newspaper columnist Butler actually used to be when younger, it makes for a pretty frustrating local history guide; for an important part of one is to follow some kind of pattern, either chronologically or through a map or based on topic, so that we're gaining a bigger and grander understanding about that subject by the time we're done, not just a jumble of pre-prepared bar tales being told to us by the aging lonely guy on the corner stool. There's nothing particularly wrong with Hidden History of Lincoln Park, which is why it's getting a decent score; I'm just always left at the end of books like these wishing it had been better, that's all.
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
It's funny that so much of my time as a reviewer in the last few months has been centered around authors who wanted to write a character-heavy novel with a loose and light plot, but largely failed at making those novels entertaining in any way whatsoever; because Alexsandar Hemon's latest, originally released last spring but that I just got a chance to read this month, is actually a really charming and wonderful example of exactly that, and now makes me want to buy a dozen copies, hand them out to most of the authors I've reviewed in the last three or four months, and say to them, "For the love of God, please read this freaking book before you inflict the world on any more books of your own."
A big departure for the academically revered and usually quite serious Chicagoan and former Yugoslavian immigrant (I say it that way because he immigrated before the Balkan Civil War), The Making of The Zombie Wars is actually a light-hearted comedy about a young male fuck-up, written in the style of Elmore Leonard (or for local lit fans, closely reminiscent of Joseph G. Peterson's Gideon's Confession), the story of a frustrated screenwriter who regularly falls ass-backwards into easy sex, is dealing unsuccessfully with his elderly Jewish father (and even more unsuccessfully with his overbearing sister), has a strange relationship with the PTSD-suffering Desert Storm vet who serves as his quasi-legal landlord, and who stumbles into a series of random, violent adventures because of teaching English as a Second Language to a series of fresh immigrants from eastern Europe (including a former KGB officer from Russia who views the entirety of America with "this is what won the Cold War?" contempt, a great example of the darkly hilarious tone Hemon maintains throughout the entire book).
Make no mistake, though, there's definitely a serious point to be had here; set in the years right after 9/11, a big focus of the novel is the fresh Bosnian immigrants from the ESL class who have literally just escaped the horrors of the war in their homeland, and the ways those experiences have scarred them from ever being able to have normal, non-violence-tinged relationships, likely ever again. But in the meanwhile, Hemon has great fun looking at the foibles of learning a new language, and the eternal capacity of young white males to screw up any situation they're in, even getting in a subtle homage to John Irving's The World According to Garp (each chapter starts with a few pages from our hero's perpetually unfinished zombie thriller Hollywood screenplay, in which it becomes clear that it's being heavily influenced by the real events happening in his life). An especially great treat for residents like me of Chicago's Uptown neighborhood where this novel is set (including an opening scene that takes place literally three blocks from my apartment), you certainly do not need to be a local to enjoy this funny, outrageous, and sometimes very thought-provoking book; and the only reason it's not getting a better score is that this is not going to be everyone's cup of tea, especially for Hemon's existing fans who were expecting yet another NPR-fetish dirge about the immigrant experience. Other than that, it comes highly recommended to one and all.
(DISCLOSURE: I am the owner of the publishing company that published this book.)
"This...this is the one they'll remember me for." When it comes to thi(DISCLOSURE: I am the owner of the publishing company that published this book.)
"This...this is the one they'll remember me for." When it comes to this old cliche from the creative world, I wouldn't necessarily mind being remembered as an editor and publisher primarily for Gint Aras' haunting, complex and poetic novel, a good early example of what I think CCLaP is capable of as an indie press when all our cylinders are firing at once. A daunting 500-page saga set within the blue-collar Chicago neighborhood of Cicero, spanning three generations of four families and lasting over 50 years in plot, this manuscript had already been floating around the small-press world for ten years before I saw it, where it was adored by a number of editors but everyone was too intimidated by the marketing challenges to put it out. This is what an indie press does best, release such adored but challenging novels without having to worry about making a gazillion dollars and keeping up with our rivals in the movie and music divisions of the giant multinational corporation we all work for, and I'm proud to be the one to give this fascinating, page-turning epic a public release finally. Weaving in and out of multiple interpretations of the book's title, this is a literary novel for those who love literary novels, and we will be pushing it heavily for next year's awards season. I encourage you to order a pre-release copy, or after December 7th to start downloading the free ebook version, at [cclapcenter.com/thefugue]....more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
So first, let me get my biases out of the way, and admit that this is not the kind of book I usually voluntarily choose to read -- a piece of historical fiction set within the dual 1920s worlds of baseball and organized crime, you're simply going to find it difficult to enjoy this novel if this setting doesn't naturally appeal to you to begin with. But that said, Burwell certainly does an excellent job at what he's going for here, with a nicely real and well-researched sense of history, and a fine-tuned aping of the actual slang that was used back then among the drug-taking jazz musicians and muscled-up heavies of this milieu. Much of it set in Chicago, a fine tie-in for local readers here, this short book doesn't wear out its welcome, like it would've if the hepcat-quoting dialogue had gone on longer, and it comes specifically recommended to those who enjoy the Early Modernist era and especially historical actioners set within that time period.
(DISCLOSURE: I am the owner of the publishing company that published this book.)
I'm happy to announce that CCLaP's second annual "city all-star" stude(DISCLOSURE: I am the owner of the publishing company that published this book.)
I'm happy to announce that CCLaP's second annual "city all-star" student anthology is now out, this year concentrating on the subject of Chicago neighborhoods. Featuring almost two dozen contributors from nearly a dozen schools and other teaching institutions across the city and suburbs, this is a really fascinating look at all the various far-flung corners of Chicago, with a heavy concentration this year on nonfiction because of that being the forte of this year's editor, Columbia College student JH Palmer. As always, the ebook version is completely free to download at our website, so I encourage you to stop by [cclapcenter.com/viewfromhere] this moment and pick up a copy for yourself....more
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