Writing in an Age of Silence

Sara Paretsky

Voice, Vision, Verve -- This brisk memoir by the insightful and skillful writer Sara Paretsky is part personal history (offering the autobiography of a woman finding her voice and of a writer chiseling her talent), part social commentary (offering reflections on the Women's Movement and other civil rights struggles) and part literary contemplation (offering varied musings on the creation and development of Paretsky's signature character, the private detective V.I. Warshawski.) That's enough material to sink most writers under the ponderous burdens of attempting to "say something Important." But Paretsky writes a page-turner that offers the intimacy of a hushed, good conversation over a shared bottle of fine wine.

How It Ended

Jay McInerney

Time Will Tell -- This U.S. edition expands upon the British edition of Jay McInerney's short stories under the same title from a few years ago and includes several gems -- and perhaps one masterpiece of the form. I've noted before that authenticity, innovation and influence are three hallmarks of great writing. In "The Madonna of Turkey Season," McInerney authentically depicts the bittersweet blend of rivalry and love that binds brothers and employs an inventive, engaging point of view to tell their story. It's deftly done; time will tell whether it carries the heft and influence of a master work.

CHICAGO VOICES: Tom Montgomery-Fate on Henry David Thoreau

The writer and teacher Tom Montgomery-Fate has been contemplating what Thoreau still teaches us. "The Art of Dying" is an essay that appeared in Orion magazine. Tom also recently offered some additional reflections on WBEZ's Eight Forty-Eight program.

The Crack-Up

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Edited by Edmund Wilson

Words to the Wise -- I seem to be re-reading "The Crack-Up" about every 18 months, which probably tells me more than I care to realize. This time I found myself drawn especially to the letters. A July 29, 1940 letter to Pie, Scott and Zelda's beloved daughter, Frances: "The chief fault in your style is its lack of distinction. You had distinction once -- there's some in your diary -- and the only way to increase it is to cultivate your own garden. And the only thing that will help you is poetry, which is the most concentrated form of style ..." And then there's Thomas Wolfe's July 26, 1937 letter replying to Fitzgerald: "I have read your letter several times and I've got to admit it doesn't seem to mean much ... And I don't think you can show me and I don't see what Flaubert and Zola have to do with it, or what I have to do with them. I wonder if you really think they have anything to do with it, or if this is just something you heard in college or read in a book somewhere. This either-or kind of criticism seems to me to be so meaningless. It looks so knowing and imposing but there is nothing in it." These exchanges remind me of the artist's commitment to telling the truth, even when it's hard and especially with people you love and respect; and brings to mind the words spoken now long ago to me by the writer Kevin Grandfield: "Are you trying to live your life without making enemies?" Telling the truth doesn't mean you have to make an enemy; but being an artist requires a sort of chiseled candor, with others and with yourself.

AN APPRECIATION: Leonard Cohen -- "Ain't No Cure For Love"

Leonard Cohen is the poet laureate of song. He turns 75 this coming fall and if his recent 3-hour show at the Chicago Theatre is any indication, he's showing no signs of letting up -- to which I say, Hallelujah. But, of course, Leonard has said it better and before:

Baby, I have been here before

I know this room, I've walked this floor

I used to live alone before I knew you.

I've seen your flag on the marble arch

Love is not a victory march

It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.

Our friend and mentor, the magician Eugene Burger, turned Robert Charles and me onto Leonard's music and it's been a joy "discovering" his 40-year body of work. This photo shows Benjamin Barnes, me, Robert and Eugene outside of the Chicago Theatre before Leonard Cohen's recent concert. The photo was taken by the filmmaker Michael Caplan; he and his wife Suzanne (no, not that Suzanne) are big fans as well. The photo and my memories of this wonderful evening of friendship and love bring to mind more of Leonard's lyrics:

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin

Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in

Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove

Dance with me to the end of love

Dance with me to the end of love

Mum and Pup and Me:
A New York Times Magazine article adapted from “Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir,” by Christopher Buckley

Amen – I believe people turn to religion for comfort, community and certitude – comfort to get through the rough patches; community to satisfy our primal and modern needs for togetherness; and certitude as a way to make sense in what can often be a senseless world. Benign reasons, I suppose; but what’s insidious about religion is the way in which viewpoints, practices and customs are brainwashed into people, starting at their earliest ages, most often fostered by their otherwise loving parents. What’s dangerous is gluttonous binging of dogmatic religious fundamentalism. In this quite touching article, Christopher Buckley touches on religion, politics and other subjects of which one doesn’t speak in polite company. His best line appears when he’s arrived at his dying Mother’s bedside, carrying a pocket copy of the book of Ecclesiastes: “I’m no longer a believer, but I haven’t quite reached the point of reading aloud from Christopher Hitchen’s ‘God Is Not Great’ at deathbeds of loved ones.”

P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening
Studs Terkel

Genius – Studs Terkel’s gifts as an interviewer were apparent to his readers; but it’s not until you read some of the interview transcripts that you begin to understand the level of technical skill Studs possessed to move a conversation forward, deeper. Much of the pure artistry of Studs’ interviews went unnoticed because he eliminated his portion of the conversation from his many published oral histories, graciously stepping off-stage to allow the person being interviewed to speak in pure poetic monologue. It was easy to miss the artistry even with a close listening to the old radio interviews because, often, Studs would employ only a few words to push the interview forward. “And white snow,” Studs interjects softly while James Baldwin is speaking in 1961 about a winter spent in Switzerland, which leads Baldwin to say, “And white snow, and white mountains, and white faces who really thought I was – I had been sent by the devil. It was very strange.” Or when Studs offers a single word, “Invisible –” which leads Baldwin to say, “You’re invisible. What they do see in you when they look at you is what they have invested you with. And what they have invested you with is all the agony, and the pain, and the danger, and the passion, and the torment, you know, sin, death, and hell, of which everyone in this country is terrified.” Reading Terkel and Baldwin is like listening to a great jazz duo play off one another, telling their story of America. Sometimes provocative, as when Baldwin observes, “And it’s one thing for Faulkner to deal with the Negro in his imagination where he can control him, and quite another one for him to deal with him in life, where he can’t control him.” Impatient, with Baldwin noting, “When people talk about time, therefore, you know, I really can’t help but be absolutely, not only impatient, but bewildered. Why should I wait any longer? And in any case, even if I were willing to – which I’m not – how?” And perceptive:

Baldwin: “You know, I’m not mad at this country anymore. I’m very worried about it. And I’m not worried about the Negroes in the country even so much as I’m worried about the country. The country doesn’t know what it’s done to Negroes. But the country has no notion whatever – and this is disastrous – about what it’s done to itself. They have yet to assess the price they paid, North and South, for keeping the Negro in his place. And, from my point of view, it shows in every single level of our lives, from the most public –”

Terkel: “Could you expand on this a little, Jim, on what the country has done to itself?”

Baldwin: “Well, one of the reasons, for example, I think that our youth is so badly educated – and it is inconceivably badly educated – is because education demands a certain daring, a certain independence of mind. You have to teach young people to think, and in order to teach young people to think, you have to teach them to think about everything. There mustn’t be something they cannot think about. If there’s one thing they can’t think about, then very shortly they can’t think about anything, you know.”

The Journals of Andre Gide
Volume One: 1889-1924

Old Friends and Art – My friend, the writer Kevin Grandfield, introduced me to Gide’s writing back in grad school in the fiction writing program at Columbia College Chicago. Re-reading the dog-eared pages and underlined passages in this well-studied volume brings back a flood of memories, filled with equal amounts of nostalgia and hope. “And at your feet, on the other side of your writing-table, all Paris,” I underlined at a time when I was just beginning to re-navigate my way in and around Chicago, returning as an adult to my childhood roots. “I suffer absurdly from the fact that everybody does not already know what I hope some day to be, what I shall be; that people cannot foretell the work to come just from the look in my eyes.” If that’s not graduate school yearning and ambition, what is? “Giving yourself your word to do something ought to be no less sacred than giving your word to others.” If that’s not sound advice for life, what is? “It’s not enough merely to create the event most likely to reveal character; rather the character itself must necessitate the event. (See Coriolanus, Hamlet.)” If that’s not sound advice for writing, what is? And the journal’s central, lasting piece of advice: “Dare to be yourself. I must underline that in my head, too.”

COMMENTARY: At Last

I always laugh when I hear people crying about "activist judges." This belly-aching usually comes from dolts who do not understand that, in the United States of America, we have three branches of government, that the judicial branch is specially designed to tip the balance toward justice and protect minorities from the many tyrannies of majorities.

So the progress on gay marriage in Iowa has been heartwarming. Iowa: that hot-bed of feisty liberalism! Iowa: that bastion of lefty conspiracies! Iowa: that Massachusetts, that Berkeley of the Midwest! ... Iowa?

Yes, the Iowa courts have joined judicial brethren in Massachusetts and Connecticut to make a strong statement for equality, specifically, gay equality. And, in Iowa, the statement has been voiced by a powerful unanimous decision of the state's Supreme Court. Days later, the progress in Vermont was even more heartwarming: an overwhelming vote (and votes) by state lawmakers -- actual elected representatives, accountable to their constituents -- voiced the same opinion.

Welcome to the 21st Century. As we near the end of the first decade, all I can say is, "At last," indeed.

The argument for gay marriage is simple: this is about making good on the great American promise of equal opportunity and ensuring every American's Constitutional right of equal protection. Some very smart friends argue that "marriage" is just a word and "we should give them the word" and turn our resources instead only toward fighting for civil unions. I disagree. Words matter. The Obama fever sweeping the nation (sweeping the world) demonstrates, if nothing else, that words matter. And the word "marriage" matters in at least two ways, as a tactic and as a principle.

As a tactic, arguing "marriage" sets an outer boundary that makes compromise on civil unions far more expedient in the political process. In other words, to count to five you have to count to four and once you reach four you're almost there. As a principle, we're talking about "equality of meaning and intent" as much as we're talking about "equal opportunity" and "equal protection" so marriage is the goal.

A final thought: Those who say there is no parallel between the Civil Rights Movement and the Gay Equality Movement are wrong. Simple as that. Their opposition -- perhaps partly rooted in their own fears, perhaps partly rooted in their own shame, perhaps partly rooted in their understandable (but incorrect) desire to "own" their own part of The Struggle -- is harmful, damaging and even deadly. There is only one movement. There is only one struggle. And it is called the perfection of the United States of America -- a more perfect Union.

"At last," indeed -- and the song "At Last," to which Mr. and Mrs. Obama danced so gracefully and lovingly at the President's Inaugural, should become the anthem for our shared march toward our perfection, together, as one nation.

POSTSCRIPT: Elizabeth Gilbert

Are you a TED addict yet? If not, it’s only a matter of time. Here is just one of the many thought-provoking speakers, Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, on creativity and creativity’s brother, fear.

The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Selection of Twenty-Eight Stories with an Introduction by Malcolm Crowley

Pertinence – The teacher and writer Mark Wukas gave me this book about 15 years ago and re-reading these superb stories during the past few weeks (as the stock market plummets, as dreams crash, as worries mount but life, as always, keeps marching forward with joy and zest and sorrow and pity) I have realized that “pertinence” is an essential ingredient in great writing. I don’t necessarily mean the pertinence of current events – though the relevance of these stories written a lifetime ago to what’s happening today is uncanny; rather, I am thinking of the role pertinence plays in choosing the telling gesture (in “The Lost Decade,” how Orrison “felt suddenly of the texture of his own coat and then he reached out and pressed his thumb against the granite of the building by his side”), the keen poetic observation (when John Andros in “The Baby Party” reflects, “The dark trumpets of oblivion were less loud at the patter of his child’s feet or at the sound of his child’s voice babbling mad non sequiturs to him over the telephone”) and the concrete detail (in “Crazy Sunday,” when Joel Coles “saw Stella’s fresh boyish face, with the tired eyelid that always drooped a little over one eye, moving about among her guests and he wanted to sit with her and talk a long time as if she were a girl instead of a name; he followed her to see if she paid anyone as much attention as she had paid him.”) The pertinence, too, of this wonderful gift Mark Wukas presented to me a while back remains strong, as well. We learn from our friendships, near and far, and we renew ourselves through our relationships and the stories we share.

AROUND TOWN: Story Week gets underway

A wonderful kick-off today to Story Week, the annual festival of edgy writers and edgy writing organized by the Columbia College Chicago Fiction Writing Department. The writer, teacher and filmmaker Jotham Burrello and I attended tonight's reception and readings at Martyrs', which also was part of 2nd Story's regular performance series blending storytelling and music. Sam Weller and Megan Stielstra hosted. The writers Doug Whippo, Deb R. Lewis, CP Chang and Molly Each read from their work, accompanied by the band Seeking Wonderland. The event was an impressive evening of Chicago-style writing: gritty, honest and big-shouldered.

Journal of Ordinary Thought

Mapmakers -- The latest issue of this impressive literary journal features fine poems from writers (mapmakers themselves, after all) throughout Chicago's many neighborhoods plus an added bonus: a variety of maps of Chicago, home-made to create very personal statements about our fair city. Examples include: "Stuff that northsiders generally aren't aware exist." "Homes of Iraq Veterans Against the War." "Map of Chicago from Memory." "Go here for a good view of the sunset." "Places where I lost valuable items." The maps have been created -- and you can create your own -- through Notes for a People's Atlas of Chicago, a project of AREA Chicago.

The New Yorker

Eustace Tilley, American Hero -- With signs that "print" is dying all around us, let us now pause to sing the praises of The New Yorker magazine. Just these past few issues remind me why The New Yorker is, fundamentally, important. Retrospective looks at John Updike, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag and Donald Barthelme. A profile of Ian McEwan. An essay by John McPhee. John Cheever said literature is, “the most serious and exalted dialogue that goes on between mature and well-informed men and women.” The New Yorker is one of the very few places where that dialogue itself is examined.

The Discomfort Zone

Jonathan Franzen

Third Wednesday

Edited by Laurence W. Thomas

Submit: The Unofficial All-Genre Multimedia Guide to Submitting Short Prose

Produced by Jotham Burrello

Change We Can Believe In, In The Literary Sense -- When I finally abandoned Jonathan Franzen's essay collection, The Discomfort Zone, I recalled an inspired moment in Jotham Burrello's film, Submit, when C. Michael Curtis, of The Atlantic Monthly, glances a bit off-camera, sighs heavily and says, "We're interested chiefly in dynamic stories, stories in which something happens." Curtis' observation pops the pomposity balloon of our literary age, in which so much triteness passes for hip, ironic meaning. I was just about to toss the Franzen essays completely aside when the new issue of the literary journal, Third Wednesday, arrived, featuring my short story "Alamo." The story was accepted and published -- reason enough to rejoice in any writer's life -- but the story was accepted with a telling note from editor Laurence W. Thomas: "Short fiction is difficult, but your story has a beginning, middle, and end, things that too often don't appear so concisely in less than 1500 words. Plus that, the story has sex (hetero and gay), abuse, escapism, panhandling, survival, petty crime, and religion. One editor pointed out that change in the main character is missing, but another sees religious conversion as a possibility, though tempered with pragmatism. We'll see what the readers find." I now think of this helpful note much as I recall Curtis' sigh or my vague dissatisfaction with Franzen's essays: yes, "change" is what adds richness in writing, "change" is what adds hues to the colors, "change" is what drives any good story. And I (like other, better writers such as Franzen in these particular essays) run the risk of too often relying upon the detached flatness of irony as a literary crutch to activate a story rather than doing the bloody, artistic surgery necessary to reveal real change.

POSTSCRIPT: Change we can believe in?

Robert Charles and I supported Barack Obama early in his U.S. Senate primary in Illinois. I regret to say I am increasingly disappointed in him. While others might feel like the next JFK is taking office, I can't help but feel like Bill Clinton is taking office instead -- only this time, gay people like Robert and me are being thrown under the bus even before the President-Elect takes the oath. This is not the hope we believe in. This is not the change we want. And the old "we-won't-agree-on-everything" b.s. doesn't work here because this is about the fundamental struggle for making good on the basic American promise of equal opportunity. Barack has not been a "fierce" advocate on our behalf; he should never say that again. He has been a steady, welcomed voice -- that's true and much appreciated. But if he's not willing to spend political capital now, when he's at the absolute height of greatest political strength, it's clear the future for gays and lesbians will only grow gloomier with each passing day. A few years ago, during that U.S. Senate primary, Barack wrote to Robert and me, advising us, in so many words, to "go slow" -- and to avoid playing into the "Karl Rove playbook." Well, it's no longer the Karl Rove playbook that sets the game; it's the Barack Obama playbook. And, sadly, the pages regarding gays and lesbians appear to be too tragically similar. I know Barack and Michelle celebrated their 16th wedding anniversary this year. Robert and I will celebrate our 16th anniversary just a few months from now -- but, of course, ours' is not a "wedding" anniversary because that is against the law. Let me say that again: "Against the law." If the President-Elect doesn't stand for changing this, he stands for nothing. In the wake of Proposition 8, the President-Elect's choice of the bigoted Rick Warren is a slap in our face with the back of his hand.

The Vicious Circle: Mystery and Crime Stories by Members of The Algonquin Roundtable
Edited by Otto Penzler

Bon mot – The A-List author line-up here includes Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman, Howard Dietz, Robert Benchley, Alexander Wollcott, S.J. Perlman, Edna Ferber, Ring Lardner and Marc Connelly. The work inside isn’t always “A” material, though Mrs. Parker’s “Big Blonde” and Perlman’s “Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer” are gems. Most important, there’s always great joy in reading writers who prize “voice” – and sound very much like themselves.

Equality’s Winding Path
New York Times editorial writers

No, we can’t – Today’s New York Times features a thoughtful editorial on our country’s march toward equality. As a fan of Barack Obama since his tenure in the Illinois State Senate and as a staunch supporter of his U.S. Senate and Presidential campaigns, I couldn’t be more elated with his decisive victory Tuesday. The outcome sends a resounding message about what’s possible in America. But this week’s historic election also delivered another message: “Anything is possible – except for equal opportunity and equal rights for gays and lesbians.” As a nation, we took a big step this week toward equality; but the bans on same-sex marriage in California, Florida and Arizona show we are still far from the finish line.

Let America Be America Again

Langston Hughes

November 5, 2008 -- Barack Obama's election as U.S. President says to the world, "America is back." Today, the poets are smiling.

Hunting Nighthawks: On the Road with Edward Hopper

Kevin Grandfield

From on the road to online -- Kevin Grandfield visited 47 U.S. cities where Edward Hopper paintings hung in public museums and asked people, "Do you feel Americans are isolated as Hopper portrayed us?" Kevin, a friend for years, is now sharing what he heard, learned and experienced on his blog, Hunting Nighthawks. His blog is an online book -- part art biography, part travelogue, part sociology study, entirely entertaining and insightful.

How Not to Write a Play
Walter Kerr
The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway
William Goldman
Mis-Directing the Play
Terry McCabe

Stage Directions – The magician, writer and teacher Eugene Burger advises students to read a book on magic written before they were born for every newly published book on magic they tackle. This is a clever, practical way to overcome the tyranny of “the new” and Eugene’s wise words steered me toward devouring three different books on theater published at three very different times: The mid-50s, the very late 1960s and 2001.

Walter Kerr’s book from 1955 is a master class on paper: “The theater is a somewhat ruder place than this. It is, and we are appalled to discover the fact, quite a primitive place. A great many seats have been lashed together in an outsized building so that a great many people can come together for a robust and companionable outside experience. The audience is not confused about the kind of experience it is looking for. When it wishes a private experience, it makes suitable arrangements. Intending to pore quietly over a delicately wrought character sketch, it snaps on one light in the living room, settles into the most comfortable armchair, murmurs a silent prayer that the telephone won’t ring, and shuts out all thought of company. When it comes to the theater, it comes looking for company. It comes looking for noise – it takes a loud play to fill a large building. It comes looking for color – it takes bold hues to hit the top of the second balcony. It comes looking for activity – it takes a lot of activity to spellbind this on-the-town and out-for-the-evening band. An arena has been erected so that an event may take place. Whatever is uneventful dies peacefully in the arena. Whatever is soft or slow or small shivers and expires in this busy barn.”

Kerr: “What has crippled the drama descended from Chekhov is its calculated inertia. We have made ennui almost a point of honor. The ennui originates, naturally enough, in our model. Chekhov was specifically concerned, as he clearly announced, with ‘disappointment, apathy, nervous limpness and exhaustion.’ What we forget is that these special characteristics were derived from, and intended to mirror, a given time, place, and state of mind: the moribund Russia of the nineteenth century. Russia itself has long since thrown off Russia inertia; only we continue to cling to it.”

Kerr: “A comparative study of the successes and failures of theatrical history would, I think, indicate that narrative strength is required not only in thundering tragedy and flamboyant farce but in the most fanciful and featherweight flights of wit … In practice, we are not confused about the necessity for narrative tension. We are bored by a book, and we put it down, when tension is not present. In the theater we sit back, glance at our watches, hope for an intermission, and remind ourselves not to bother coming the next time. But our boredom is not – as it is often said to be – the boredom of the spoiled child peevishly demanding spectacular new distractions. It is not the boredom of the foolish in the presence of the first-rate. It is the boredom of the experienced adult who has found life itself to be more complex, colorful, contrary and challenging than the pale and passive literary artifice that is presently set before him.”

Kerr: “Put it this way: there can be neither change without action nor action without change. (We are surely badgering the obvious here, but the distressed state of modern drama stems largely from its defiant denial of the obvious.) … Completeness – beginning, middle and end – requires only that that change which is essential to the nature of drama should actually have taken place … There are different kinds of changes. Aristotle, studying the practice of Greek dramatists, laid emphasis upon two: reversals and discoveries.”

Kerr: “Julius Caesar covers, quite coherently and without a lapse of tension, a period of two years. The average contemporary play covers: ACT ONE: An afternoon in early spring. ACT TWO: Late that evening. ACT THREE: The next morning.”

Kerr: “… the play that is most certain to fail is the play that announces itself as follows: ACT ONE: Anywhere. The day the hydrogen bomb fell. ACT TWO: That evening.”

Kerr: “Musical comedy is the form that makes the most extensive use of theatrical convention in our time, and something of its theatrical vitality must stem from the fact. The form is eager to please its audiences, and to explore the theater as theater – two things that the serious drama has not thought of doing in quite a long while. We generally regard the popularity of musicals as a sign of public illiteracy; it may actually be a response to creative joy.”

Kerr: “Every one of us, for instance, likes stories … Every one of us likes to watch things that go faster than we can go: horses, trains, plays … Every one of us has a great big appetite for experience … Every one of us is interested in interesting people. That is to say, we don’t feel responsible for the rehabilitation of bores. In life, we avoid them … Every one of us is fascinated by language. This doesn’t seem so obvious until we think about it. But listen to a man repeating a joke he has heard, and being careful that he gets it right … Adlai Stevenson rocketed out of nowhere to national prominence in an incredibly short time largely because he made listening a pleasure … Words are thrilling – when we take the trouble to make them thrilling.”

Kerr: “The theater was not created by a minority for a minority. It was created – in its Greek, Roman and medieval beginnings – by a crowd for a crowd. It has, since these beginnings, been at its healthiest when it was closest to the crowd. There is a favorable chance, with the crowd, of arriving at serious art.”

William Goldman’s book from 1969 bristles with archaic misunderstandings of homosexuality, written with a sort of breezy clumsiness in an apparent attempt to be hip; but the big book captures the entire 1967-1968 Broadway season – the business as well as the art of theater – and Goldman is a writer with uncanny talent to spin yarns by spotlighting just the right telling details. No other writer ever seems so present.

Terry McCabe’s book from 2001 is another master class disguised as a slim volume: “The myth of the theater director is that he or she is the auteur of what happens on the stage, just as the film director is the auteur of what we see on the screen. The myth is not true – cannot be true – and belief in the myth leads to bad directing and is therefore destructive of good theater.”

McCabe: “A good play doesn’t make statements, it asks questions to which it seeks answers.”

McCabe: “An actor was rehearsing for a London production of John Logan’s Never the Sinner. ‘I see this scene,’ his director told him at one difficult point, ‘in terms of the way the sunlight looks when it comes through the windows at Westminster Abbey.’ ‘Fine,’ the actor replied. ‘What do you want me to do?’ … The way for a director to be helpful to an actor is to talk in verbs: conceal, persuade, protect, seduce, resist, destroy, expose and so on. What the actor needs to know is what the character is trying to do from moment to moment. The answer is always a verb … Designers, on the other hand, specialize in metaphor. A set design is more than just an environment for the action. The physical world of a play is a metaphor for its theme.”

McCabe: “Good directing requires that you subordinate yourself to the play in a way that transcends mere familiarity with it … Your job as a director is to present the play as a unity, to bring the various elements of the production into one clear focus that expresses your best judgment of the playwright’s intentions … Tell the story you were given.”

POSTSCRIPT: Studs Terkel, 1912-2008

One of the all-time great rabble-rousers, Studs Terkel, passed away this afternoon, at the age of 96. Thom Clark, Nick Delgado and Hank DeZutter -- my friends and colleagues at the Community Media Workshop -- have posted a moving statement well-worth reading. We'll surely miss Studs. When I learned the news, I couldn't help but recall the lyrics from This Land is Your Land, which several hundred people always sing together at the end of the Workshop's annual Studs Terkel Awards event:

"I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
to the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me."

Studs devoted his life to helping all of us hear those voices sounding. And so, what now? We carry on. As Studs used to sign-off on his radio broadcasts: "Take it easy -- but take it."

COMMENTARY: High Crimes and Hypocrisies

The news, such as it was, that the Emperor of Capitalism (also known as: the United States of America) is wearing no clothes has been greeted this past week with a lot of hooting and hollering. The Bush Administration, of course, is acting completely in line with their usual M.O.: first, ignore all of the warning signs; second, deny you ever ignored all of the warning signs; and third, scare the American people into paralysis – and start stealing with both hands. This was Bush’s modus operandi before, during and after 9/11 – through the Iraq invasion, through the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and on through today. Bush’s reckless warnings this week that “our entire economy is in danger” sound just like his equally trumped-up lies regarding Iraq’s possession of “weapons of mass destruction.” The only thing this administration does efficiently is crank up the fear machine; in fact, George W. Bush is not just the worst President in our nation’s history, he’s also the worst terrorist our nation has ever encountered. His newest demand that taxpayers hand over $700 billion to Henry Paulson (I half-expected to hear “by midnight Friday – and, preferably, in small, unmarked bills”) is yet another outrageous, criminal act by Bush and his bandits who now add extortion to their crimes of murder, thievery and obstruction of justice.

This latest Wall Street bailout – as of this writing, still to be negotiated, but surely to reach well beyond $1 trillion dollars of taxpayer money given the $30 billion already committed to Bear Stearns, the $200 billion already committed to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and the $85 billion already committed to AIG – spotlights an even more fundamental problem for our country: namely, the conservative hypocrisy rampant among Republicans. The very same conservative hypocrites who look you in the eye and say “Well, you can’t solve social problems just by throwing money at them” – and remember: the only money ever spent on any social problem in America is comparative budget dust – are now, yet again, on bended knee begging for a blank check to cover their failures and fraudulent behaviors.

To put some context around the $1 trillion or more you and I will end up paying to bail out the Wall Street millionaires and Republican hypocrites, here are five basic comparisons:

• First, compare the $1 trillion bailout to the total U.S. economy. Measured as our Gross Domestic Product, the total U.S. economy is about $13.8 trillion. So, the additional $1 trillion you and I will pay really is a lot of money.


• Second, the total U.S. national debt, which is a staggering number by itself, is about $9 trillion.


• Third, in 2008, the U.S. government will collect about $2.66 trillion in income taxes, Social Security taxes, corporate taxes, excise taxes, custom duties, estate and gift taxes and other revenues. So this new $1 trillion dollars you and I will pay is an unprecedented move by Uncle Sam to put his big, allegedly conservative but truly hypocritical hand more deeply into our pockets than ever before – and all for the sake of “rescuing” the Wall Street greed merchants. (By the way, corporate taxes total about $314.9 billion – that’s “billion” with a “b” – compared to $1.25 trillion – that’s “trillion” with a “t” – you and I pay in individual income taxes.)


• Fourth, in 2008, the U.S. government will spend about $1.79 trillion on Social Security payments, Medicare, Medicaid, children’s health insurance, unemployment and welfare benefits, and interest on the national debt. So the new $1 trillion you and I will pay to bail out Wall Street could otherwise cover all of these “bills” for about half of the year.


• Finally, in 2008, the U.S. government’s total discretionary spending – everything from the defense budget’s $481.4 billion and the $145.2 billion for the so-called “Global War on Terror” (which is really just another way to funnel even more of our tax dollars to America’s corporations and executives) and the $34.3 billion for Homeland Security to all of the federal spending for health and human services, education, veteran’s benefits, housing, justice and so on – totals about $1.114 trillion. So the $1 trillion or more you and I will pay to bail out Wall Street would cover all of these “bills” for an entire year. (By the way, spending for the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war are not included in the defense budget.)

If you are not angry about all of this, you are either not paying attention or you stand to benefit from having working people across America pay for all of these crimes and hypocrisies. Enough is enough.

COMMENTARY: Judgment, Leadership, Obama

And so, after more than 19 long months, we are finally at the beginning. The 2008 U.S. Presidential election is a contest pitting Barack Obama and Joe Biden versus John McCain and Sarah Palin. The unfolding campaign offers a stark choice between tomorrow and yesterday – and it really calls to question matters of judgment and leadership.

McCain’s selection of Palin is not only a crass political play (the two of them have only met once or twice?) but a shockingly unpatriotic and irresponsible decision as well (she would be, after all, second in command to a 72-year-old President of the United States of America who does not enjoy the best of health). McCain is not a "maverick;" he's reckless. We have endured eight years of crassly political and shockingly irresponsible decisions from a U.S. President who has subjugated the country’s best interests to personal spoils for himself and his cronies. George W. Bush has given America the perfect storm of Christian stupidity, big corruption and federal ineptitude – all fired up with fear. Enough is enough.

How many more times will John McCain’s phony political pandering be given a pass by the so-called journalists being taken for a ride on McCain’s B.S. Express? How many more times will John McCain's trials as a P.O.W. be used as his excuse for his own corruption, his own stupidity, his own ineptitude? How many more times will the American people fall victim to fear and eat up the lies?

As Barack Obama proclaimed in his Denver speech, “America, we are better than these last eight years.”

Our choice is clear. We need a leader who will inspire us to tackle the hard work of: renewing the American economy, returning our troops, restoring America’s moral leadership, fighting the right war, and beginning to reinvent Washington by reclaiming “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

History is on the march. Tomorrow is calling.

Widow’s Walk
Robert B. Parker

Solving the Mystery – My friend Mike Lynch says baseball is America’s game because it often provides fathers and sons with the common ground upon which they can communicate, safe territory upon which they can agree or disagree (and, in the process, get to know one another) while sharing something they love. My Dad and I have never had baseball in common; but my Father did get me started nearly 20 years ago on my kick with Robert B. Parker mystery novels – “Crimson Joy,” “Pale Kings and Princes,” “A Catskill Eagle,” “Taming a Sea-Horse” and others – about a Boston-based private detective named Spenser. My Dad also used to clip Mike Royko and Bill Granger columns out of the local newspapers and mail them to me after I moved out of the house. I think it was all his way of saying, “The world can be a dangerous place – and it’s especially tough if you’re trying to do the right thing. Keep an eye on others but don’t forget to look out for yourself.” That’s something he’s never told me explicitly, but it’s certainly a lesson I’ve learned from him. In part, I’ve learned it from “reading” my Dad’s life and actions. In part, I’ve learned it from reading Royko, Granger and Parker, too.

A Chicago Tavern:
A Goat, A Curse, And the American Dream
Rick Kogan

Nitty-Gritty Pub Crawl – Picture an evening more than 20 years ago. The Billy Goat Tavern on Hubbard Street beneath Michigan Avenue is crowded shoulder-to-shoulder with newspapermen and newspaperwomen, young journalism students and old journalism teachers from Northern Illinois University, others. I do not recall the occasion. I do recall having downed more than a few beers and feeling well-cheered from that as well as from the camaraderie of being a part of this loud, boozy crowd with my two good friends, Jim Slonoff and Ed Underhill. At some point during the festivities – that’s the way many stories go at the Goat (that’s why they’re stories and that’s frequently what happens when you combine beer and crowds and a cramped downstairs space) the evening took a turn. First, to entertain an attractive, young female stranger, I for some reason began doing my impression of a former NIU professor, Tony Scanlon. “When I worked at the Kansas City Star,” I began, expertly mimicking Tony’s distinctive voice and vocal pattern (to my ear, at least). Then I began riffing into some winding, now long-forgotten patter that was hilarious (to my ear, at least). The young woman’s smile vanished. “I’m Tony’s wife,” she interrupted. “Oh,” I said. Then – “Sorry,” I said, switching back to my real voice. “I didn’t mean to …” Slonoff and Underhill, standing beside me, burst out laughing the way only the best of friends can. At that moment, the Chicago Tribune’s no-nonsense investigative reporter Ray Gibson stepped in front of Slonoff and used his bony index finger to poke Slonoff’s hand-written name sticker. To be witty, instead of writing “Jim Slonoff” on his sticky name tag, Slonoff thought it would be amusing to write, “Roy G. Campbell” and slap it onto his own lapel. Roy G. Campbell was the much-beloved but now-deceased faculty advisor to our old student newspaper, The Northern Star. “I buried Roy Campbell,” Ray Gibson snarled at Slonoff. He poked Slonoff’s lapel again. “I found him after he died and I buried him.” A third, fourth and final poke punctuated with: “That’s. Not. Funny.” Jim sheepishly peeled the sticker from his sports jacket. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to …” Underhill and I burst out laughing. A more recent recollection from just three or four weeks ago: Slonoff and I are back at the Billy Goat Tavern. He is now a newspaper publisher – The Hinsdalean, which he and his business partner, Pamela Lannom, founded about a year ago despite the sad fact that the newspaper industry is convulsing. Slonoff and Pam started the newspaper because, simply, they love newspapers – which, strangely, is not a sentiment shared by many newspaper publishers. We’re drinking beer, again, surrounded by newspaperwomen and newspapermen: our friend from The Northern Star, Colin O’Donnell, who now works at The Daily Herald; Colin’s colleague, Pete Nenni; Benji Feldheim, from the DeKalb Daily Chronicle; the Chicago Sun-Times’ Mark Brown and Tom McNamee; Monroe Anderson and his wife, artist Joyce Owens. We’ve all just retired to the Goat after a Chicago Headline Club panel discussion, which, like every conversation these days when newspaper people get together, sounded like dinosaurs talking to other dinosaurs bemoaning the icy chill in the air. There are, however, occasional bright spots in these conversations: Slonoff’s newspaper is thriving thanks to its focus on local news; Monroe’s blog broke the story a few weeks earlier that Barack Obama was leaving Trinity Church; the general consensus is that “journalism” will survive even as printed newspapers wither and disappear as quickly as the smile of an un-amused young woman. The sense of mourning that accompanies each of these conversations runs deeper than just the lament that newspapers are dying; it’s a way of life that’s dying, too – and it’s a slow, painful death to witness. I was back in the Billy Goat Tavern three nights ago to help kick-off the Nitty-Gritty Pub Crawl celebrating the Community Media Workshop’s 20th anniversary. The Workshop connects reporters with people in Chicago’s communities to tell stories that matter. Robert Charles, my old friend Ed Underhill, Karen McCarten and about 60 others joined us. Chicago newspaperman Rick Kogan was generous enough to offer a handful of recollections and ruminations – about the Goat, about newspapers, about men and women who love newspapers. Rick also was kind enough to supply copies of this excellent brief history of the Billy Goat Tavern and all of its many accompanying legends connected to journalism, politics and, of course, the Cubs. Rick ended his remarks with a toast to the young students present. “You’re the future,” he said, lifting his glass. From the Billy Goat, the gang of us stumbled up Hubbard Street to the old Ricardo’s where Don Rose shared some recollections and, finally, to Andy’s Jazz Club, where Workshop Executive Director Thom Clark noted our organization held its first-ever Studs Terkel Awards for Journalistic Excellence. The next afternoon, I found myself inside Wrigley Field, sitting in a field box along the third-base line, soaking up a sky-full of hot sunshine, gulping a beer. I was shoulder-to-shoulder with three pals from the Community Media Workshop – Thom Clark and two fellow Board members, Mike Roach (our longest-serving Board member) and Nick Delgado (our new Board chair). The four of us had all pub-crawled the night before and we were now enjoying what can only be described as a perfect summer afternoon in Chicago – laughing, drinking, gobbling hot dogs, telling stories, sharing memories, wiping sweat from our faces, cheering the Cubs, talking politics, confident of all good things to come. At one point, Mike Roach, the world’s biggest Cubs’ fan, tells a couple from Connecticut sitting in front of us the tale of the famous Billy Goat and the curse. A few hours later, after saying good-bye to my friends and walking home from the game, I picked up Rick Kogan’s book and began reading. And I realized we each search for a sense of community, a sense of belonging, in many different places, in many different ways. For some, it’s in a church pew. For some, it’s through political affiliation. For some, it's in the inky pages of a hometown newspaper. And for some, "community" is found in a neighborhood tavern, a chosen profession and joking with buddies at the ballpark on an afternoon when the sun is high in the sky and blazing white into your eyes and it feels good to roll back your head and sigh, to feel a long drop of sweat slip down your right cheek, to squint and to bless the glory of the day by saying aloud: “These are the good days. These are the best days. Things change and come what may.”

Literary Las Vegas: The Best Writing About America's Most Fabulous City
Edited by Mike Tronnes

Cha-Ching -- Visiting Las Vegas always reminds me of its fraternal twin, Washington, D.C., because the nation's playground and the nation's capitol have much in common. For starters, both cities are fakes, frauds -- nowhere, phony, made-up towns that, together, constitute the two sides of the American coin: freedom and the pursuit of happiness. But the coin really is a coin, after all, and that's the bottom-line when it comes to Las Vegas and Washington, D.C.: despite their differing outward appearances -- stodgy domes, monuments and museums in one; a gaudy, flashy Strip of brightly lit gambling palaces in another -- and despite the apparently differing pretensions of what each city "represents," both towns are in the same exact business. Namely, taking away your money. Of the two, Las Vegas is simply more upfront about its intentions.

A Moveable Feast
Ernest Hemingway

Moveable Meaning – You know you’re in the hands of a great writer when you finish re-reading a book and find yourself with an enriched or entirely new understanding. This is the way it almost always is for me with Hemingway. The words don’t change. The sentences don’t change. But I’ve changed over the decades and I’ve always found something deeper or different in his work. Hadley and Bumby. Sylvia Beach. Gertrude Stein. Ford Maddox Ford. Ezra Pound. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Hemingway’s stories about them and others (some no doubt true; others undoubtedly fabricated) are all here on these pages as they have been for 40 years or more. There is, too, the romance of Paris:

There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.

And there is the romance of writing and struggle of making art, as well:

When they said, “It’s great, Ernest. Truly it’s great. You cannot know the thing it has,” I wagged my tail in pleasure and plunged into the fiesta concept of life to see if I could not bring some fine attractive stick back, instead of thinking, “If these bastards like it what is wrong with it?” That was what I would think if I had been functioning as a professional although, if I had been functioning as a professional, I would never have read it to them.

None of this has changed. But non sum quails eram – I am not what I used to be. And so, with this reading, I find myself contemplating the necessity of perseverance and the sheer beauty of storytelling. And I find myself, now with several years behind me as well, pondering the treats and tricks of memory.

Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson

Gore Vidal

An American's History -- My friend and colleague Judy Bertacchi once gave me a great piece of advice: "You always have to get the birth story," she said. We had been speaking about designing effective early childhood programs; but we could just have easily been discussing organizational theory or U.S. history. The birth story always offers clues to what's happening today, though, as with all stories, you have to know who is telling the story. Which, for better and for worse -- but mostly always for the better -- brings us to Gore Vidal.

... By the end of the Revolution, a great many Hessians had married American girls and settled down as contented farmers in the German sections of Pennsylvania and Delaware, their lubricious descendants to this day magically peopling the novels of Mr. John Updike.

Meanwhile, back in Philadelphia, John Adams had made the union between the two great revolutionary states, Massachusetts and Virginia, by pushing for the selection of the Virginian George Washington as commander of the American army. Washington's steady presence and regal confidence more than compensated for his poor performance in the field against British generals, themselves every bit as striking in their mediocrity as he. Congress chose to ignore the fact that Colonel Washington's one campaign against the French during the Seven Years' War ended with his capture by the French -- who were, nevertheless, so impressed by his dignity (and height) that they gave him an escort from Pittsburgh back to his home on the Potomac.

After a while, you get the sense that this book about the founders is really a book about Gore Vidal with an occasional passing reference to the founders -- but that's more than half the fun.

Chicago's Monuments, Markers and Memorials

John Graf and Steve Skorpad

Stone, Steel and Judgment -- My judgment. The most disastrous: Jack Brickhouse statue on Freedom Plaza because of its "Jack-in-the-box" rendering of the famous Cubs' announcer. The most fitting: Stephan A. Douglas, at 35th and Cottage Grove, high above and far away as if ashamed and running. The most well-traveled: The Haymarket Riot Monument of a cop, relocated "as a security precaution" from its original spot in the old Haymarket Square on Randolph Street to its present location safe inside the courtyard of the Chicago Police Academy. The most dominant: The two steel-sculptured Puerto Rican flags draping Paseo Boricua signaling a nearly mile-long stretch of Division Street. The best foursome: Pioneers, Discoverers, Defense and Regeneration on the four pylons of the Michigan Avenue bridge. The best eight-some: the eight bronze busts constituting the Merchandise Mart Hall of Fame along the Chicago River (featuring Field, Filene, Huntington Hartford, Rosenwald, Wanamaker, Ward, Wood and Woolworth). The most iconic (before Millennium Park): the Picasso sculpture in Daley Center. The most exquisite: Bowman and Spearman, two Native Americans on horses marking the Congress Boulevard entrance to Grant Park. The most thrilling: Buckingham Fountain. The most poised: On the Prowl and Attitude of Defiance, the two lions standing guard at the Art Institute of Chicago. The most fun: the Cows on Parade memorial outside of the Chicago Cultural Center. The most impressive: Standing Lincoln, in the park behind the Chicago History Museum. The most curious: The Couch burial vault, the sole survivor of the cemetery that once sprawled throughout what is now Lincoln Park. The most, well, statuesque: Ulysses S. Grant in Lincoln Park. The spookiest: Eternal Silence, by Lorado Taft, in Graceland Cemetery and The Fountain of Time, by Lorado Taft, in Washington Park. The most serene: the granite boulder accompanied by a simply bronze tablet marking the small island grave site of the great Daniel Burnham in Graceland Cemetery.

Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere

Christopher Hitchens

Poets as Policymakers -- Among these 38 essays are tributes and eulogies to various literary Gods, including: Oscar Wilde, Gore Vidal, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Orwell and F. Scott Fitzgerald. At turns mournful and scornful (always the way with Hitchens), the collection is a powerful, swift read that left me contemplating the thousands of words scribbled by thousands of writers in thousands of books -- and wondering whether we have achieved any greater clarity on life over the centuries. Perhaps we should best heed the advice quoted here by the artist Andy Warhol: "You should write less, and tape record more. It's more modern."

The Journal of Ordinary Thought
Starting Now (Spring 2008 volume)
Round About (Winter 2008 volume)

Hoy te escribo a ti -- "Today I write to you" begins a poem by Patricia Aguilar. This literary journal celebrates the uncelebrated, ordinary Chicagoans sharing stories with other ordinary people, their voices filled with dreams and disappointments, sweetness and sorrow. I hear Chicago singing.

POSTSCRIPT: Tim Russert, 1950-2008

Political journalists in America frequently fail to ask informed and pointed questions. Tim Russert was an exception. Now, at a time when serious inquiry is more than ever needed in our country, many questions will be left unasked -- and unanswered.

CHICAGO VOICES: An excerpt from Michael Burke’s introduction of Michael Caplan, director-producer of the new documentary, “A Magical Vision.”

"I am delighted to welcome you to Columbia College's Film Row Cinema and to this preview screening of 'A Magical Vision' ... Tonight, we are really celebrating storytelling and some amazing storytellers.

"When three of Michael Caplan’s early videos featuring the master magician Eugene Burger were repackaged and reissued as a DVD set in 2004, Eugene Burger said this in an accompanying interview: 'I think stories are important for humans generally because that’s how we tell people who we are and where we come from and how all of this happened … Without stories,' Eugene concluded, 'we would have no self-definition and I think we would probably go crazy.'

"For those of you who know Eugene, you can imagine how that sounds even more profound in his barritone voice. Eugene can be seated at a restaurant table, look up at a waiter and say, 'I’ll have a Cosmo' – and make it sound like a religious experience.

"Michael Caplan uses film for the same end. His documentaries tell us who we are, where we come from, how all of this happened – and his work also keeps us from going crazy. Please join me in welcoming Michael Caplan."

New Plays from Chicago
Edited by Russ Tutterow and Ann Filmer

The Play's the Thing -- One of the best things about having your play produced or your story published is that, suddenly, someone important, a director or an editor, is treating you seriously as an artist. Suddenly, the world is different. Your struggle ceases (at least for a moment). Your self-doubts are quieted (at least for a minute). And it all seems worth it (at least for an hour and, often, longer). It's not easy being a writer, inventing people and their lives, creating something from nothing -- and all the time clinging to the audacious feeling that you actually have something credible and even critical to say. "New Plays from Chicago" offers sample plays from a handful of contemporary local playwrights who all have something credible and critical to say. The collection is a master class -- and a reminder about the value of validation, something the book's publisher, Chicago Dramatists, has recognized and offered since 1979.

POSTSCRIPT: Orhan Pamuk

A few words from the 2006 Nobel Laureate in literature:

The angel of inspiration (who pays regular visits to some and rarely calls on others) favors the hopeful and the confident, and it is when a writer feels most lonely, when he feels most doubtful about his efforts, his dreams, and the value of his writing -- when he thinks his story is only his story -- it is at such moments that the angel chooses to reveal to him stories, images and dreams that will draw out the world he wishes to build.

The writer who shuts himself up in a room and first goes on a journey inside himself will, over the years, discover literature's eternal rule: he must have the artistry to tell his own stories as if they were other people's stories, and to tell other people's stories as if they were his own, for this is what literature is.

For Pamuk's complete remarks, visit http://nobelprize.org/.

Pentimento
Scoundrel Time
Maybe
Lillian Hellman

A Measure of Madness
Gordon Merrick

Lions at Night
Richard Himmel

The Old Man and the Sea
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway

Pentimento, Indeed – Bagging books amidst some spring cleaning, I have been more relentless than ever in clearing my shelves of longtime keepsakes. The most difficult volumes to part with have been my collections of Carver and Hemingway. I’ve hauled these books from place to place throughout my life like an ancient religious zealot secreting sacred scripture from cave to cave – wanting to preserve The Word while continually returning to the well-turned pages for clues to salvation. But now I am apparently ready to part company with all but two: The Old Man and The Sea, a near-perfect story near perfectly told, and A Farewell to Arms, which I have somehow never read. Over the years, I have been sentimentally attached to many other authors and books, including Lillian Hellman, an early favorite, whose self-aggrandized moralistic tales suited my budding gay desire for diva-hero worship with far too much ease. For the longest time, I thoroughly romanticized Hellman, her life, her writing, and – as embarrassing as this is to admit – imagined a similar life of artist-activist for myself. Of course, from imagination springs reality and I have, indeed, sculpted some sort of life as part-activist, part-artist, and still to this day strive to hone my skills and talents on both fronts. I have been attached to the Himmel and Merrick books for years, too; not for any special artistic value but, I see now, out of a similar sense of carving self-identity: both books were early finds for me of writing that depicted men having sex with other men. Beyond the titillating sex scenes, the novels were confirmation of attraction – a validation found all too infrequently back then. In short, the Hellman, Himmel and Merrick books, even with their variations in artistic achievement, helped me learn who I was and who I wanted to become. So have I become that person? I’ll quote Hellman in response:

Old paint on canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman’s dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter “repented,” changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again.

AN APPRECIATION: Turning to poet Lucien Stryk for comfort upon the tragedy at Northern Illinois University – an excerpt from his “Death of a Zen Poet: Shinkichi Takahasi (1901-1987)"

It was one of those moments one stands outside one’s body, staring at the silhouette, dumbstruck, not wanting to believe words coming in. The phoned message from Japan was that the greatest modern Zen poet had died. I waited for the eulogies, a voice to cry out at the passing of a man who made fresh visions of the world, made wild and powerful music out of any thing: shells, knitting, peaches, an airplane passing between his legs, the sweet-sour smell coming from a cemetery of unknown soldiers, the crab of memory crawling up a woman’s thigh, a sparrow whose stir can move the universe. A man who showed that things loved or despised were, when all’s said and done, as important and unimportant as each other. But all was silence as I looked out, hoping for a cloud of his beloved sparrows bearing his karma wheel around earth.

Lucien Stryk is an American Zen poet, translator and former English professor at Northern Illinois University, where he taught from 1958 to 1991. He was born in Poland and moved to Chicago at a very young age. This is excerpted from “Zen, Poetry, the Art of Lucien Stryk,” by Susan Porterfield, published by Swallow Press.

Brave Men
Ernie Pyle

Honoring the Honored – Printed in two columns per page because paper was being rationed, Brave Men features Ernie Pyle’s war reporting in 1943 and 1944 from Italy, England and France. In light of The New York Times’ recent reporting on the tragedies occurring when so many of today's veterans return home from Iraq and Afghanistan – the hundreds committing homicide or suicide in addition to the thousands recovering from physical and emotional wounds – the great war correspondent’s closing words ring truer than ever:

Thousands of our men will be returning to you after Europe. They have been gone a long time and they have seen and done and felt things you cannot know. They will be changed. They will have to learn how to adjust themselves to peace. Last night we had a violent electrical storm around our countryside. The storm was half over before we realized that the flashes and the crashings around us were not artillery but plain old-fashioned thunder and lightning. It will be odd to hear only thunder again. You must remember that such little things as that are in our souls, and it will take time.

And all of us together will have to learn how to reassemble our broken world into a pattern so firm and so fair that another great war cannot soon be possible. To tell the simple truth, most of us over in France don’t pretend to know the right answer. Submersion in war does not necessarily qualify a man to be the master of the peace. All we can do is fumble and try once more – try out of the memory of our anguish – and be as tolerant with each other as we can.

CHICAGO VOICES: An excerpt from “A Rejection of Risk” by Brett Neveu

We are told as playwrights to focus on our own unique style and voice, but when theaters need certain “commercially viable” plays in order to stay in business, do style and voice suffer? Is theater doomed to be an enterprise that, like film, leaves it experimentation and risk-taking to those spending the least amount of money? Or will theater step up and lead the way, knowing that its future lies in the support of writers longing to define and reflect what it means to be alive in our present moment?

This essay appears in the Winter 2008 issue of Chicago Life. Brett Neveu is a playwright whose work regularly debuts and appears in Chicago.

Fragments
Jean Baudrillard, interviewed by Francois L’Yvonnet
Translated by Chris Turner

Say What? – I don’t mind admitting I can be an awfully slow learner. For example, it took me four different readings, between my late teens and late twenties, to recognize, appreciate and ultimately revel in the genius of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. (“The horror, the horror,” indeed.) So maybe I just need another three readings as well as another decade of intellectual growth and life experience to begin to understand Baudrillard or any of the post-modern philosophers. For now, it’s nothing but a word salad to me.

Touch and Go: A Memoir
Studs Terkel

The One, The Only – The best party of any year is the Community Media Workshop’s annual Studs Terkel Awards for Journalistic Excellence. The venue has shifted over the years as the gathering crowd has grown – from Andy’s Jazz Club to the Cliff Dwellers Club to the swanky Arts Club before its current location in the Chicago Cultural Center’s breathtaking G.A.R. Hall and Claudia Cassidy Theater – but the basic evening has remained the same: rabble-rousers mix with the rabble itself, three or four local journalists are honored for working in the Terkel tradition of spotlighting the so-called “ordinary,” and Studs Himself rises to the podium, even now when he's just a few years shy of his 100th birthday, to offer the evening’s closing stem-winder. Touch and Go is a stem-winder itself, filled with nearly a century of stories and complete with the rogue charm of my most vivid memory of Studs. This occurred a handful of years ago so Studs was perhaps 90 years old; the Community Media Workshop had hosted the awards ceremony at the Arts Club and it was late enough now that the speeches were finished, the buffet dinner was eaten, desert plates were cleared and the jazz trio was wrapping up. Cane in hand, Studs charged toward one of the bar tables and ordered cognac. The bartender politely told Studs there was no cognac available. Studs, even then near-deaf, leaned closer and asked again, in a louder voice, for a nightcap of cognac. When the bartender shouted his reply, Studs’ red face lit with a wide grin. “What’dya mean you don’t have cognac?” Studs roared. “For Christ’s sake, this is the Arts Club!”

Vintage Baldwin
James Baldwin

Master Class – Featuring samples and excerpts from James Baldwin’s writing published between 1954 and 1968, Vintage Baldwin packs a mighty punch. From a letter in The Fire Next Time to Baldwin’s nephew written on the hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation:

You know, and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of
freedom one hundred years too soon.

From Nobody Knows My Name:

People are continually pointing out to me the wretchedness of white people in
order to console me for the wretchedness of blacks. But an itemized account
of American failure does not console me and it should not console anyone
else.

The people, however, who believe that this democratic anguish has some consoling value are always pointing out that So-and-So, white, and So-and-So, black, rose from the slums into the big time. The existence – the public existence – of say, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr., proves to them that America is still the land of opportunity and that inequities vanish before the determined will. It proves nothing of the sort. The determined will is rare – at the moment, in this country, it is unspeakably rare – and the inequalities suffered by the many are in no way justified by the rise of a few. A few have always risen – in every country, every era, and in the teeth of regimes which can by no stretch of the imagination be thought of as free. Not all of these people, it is worth remembering, left the world better than they found it. The determined will is rare, but it is not invariably benevolent.

The country will not change until it re-examines itself and discovers what it really means by freedom. In the meantime, generations keep being born, bitterness is increased by incompetence, pride and folly, and the world shrinks around us.

… the great American illusion that our state is a state to be envied by other people: we are powerful, and we are rich. But our power makes us comfortable and we handle it very ineptly. The principal effect of our material well-being has been to set the children’s teeth on edge. It we ourselves were not so found of this illusion, we might understand ourselves and other peoples better than we do, and be enabled to help them understand us. I am very often tempted to believe that this illusion is all that is left of the great dream that was to have become America; whether this is so or not, this illusion certainly prevents us from making America what we say we want it to be.

The American writer, in Europe, is released, first of all, from the necessity of apologizing for himself. It is not until he is released from the habit of flexing his muscles and proving that he is just a “regular guy” that he realizes how crippling this habit has been. It is not necessary for him, there, to pretend to be something he is not, for the artist does not encounter in Europe the same suspicion he encounters here. Whatever the Europeans may actually think of artists, they have killed enough of them off by not to know that they are as real – and as persistent – as rain, snow, taxes, or businessmen.

… it is the writer, not the statesman, who is our strongest arm. Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.

Never a City So Real:
A Walk in Chicago
Alex Kotlowitz

My Kind of Town – From Carl Sandburg’s city of the big shoulders to Nelson Algren’s city on the make, writers are always trying to distill Chicago’s essence. Alex Kotlowitz is a thoughtful scribe who wields a patient ear and a civil pen – two rare tools in the toolbox of today’s writing. In Never a City So Real, Kotlowitz spotlights ordinary people and ordinary places, present and past, and ultimately sings the song of Chicago’s neighborhoods with defense attorney Andrea Lyon striding the halls of 26th and California, with Milton Reed painting murals in Stateway Gardens and the Robert Taylor Homes, with neighborhood godmothers Brenda Stephenson and Millie Wortham plotting over lunch at Manny’s and Edna’s restaurants, with South Chicago’s Ed Sadlowski recalling working men, working women and the value of hard work, and others. Recounting the injustice of the 1886 Haymarket incident and the 1969 and 1970 dynamiting of a bronze statue erected as a monument for the police officers killed nearly a hundred years earlier, Kotlowitz chooses a perfect quote from William Faulkner to summarize the story of Chicago and perhaps all towns: “The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.”

CHICAGO VOICES: A reprint of a 1982 essay by Michael Burke

The names and faces of the two-bit co-conspirators change over the years – paging Mr. Libby, paging Mr. Gonzales, paging Mr. Rove – but their crimes and profiteering just keep marching on. Some 25 years later, this op-ed piece still hits the mark, I’m sorry to say. The essay was originally published in The Northern Star on November 11, 1982 beneath the headline, “Liddy selling himself by selling fans short.”

DeKalb, Illinois – For 24 hours this week, G. Gordon Liddy was in town, and the world turned upside down.

The convicted Watergate co-conspirator and disciple of devilish politics spoke to more than 2,000 people Monday night about how good U.S. citizens have fallen prey to a most wicked enemy: illusion.

According to Liddy, you and I are victims of the Holiday Inn version of reality – with “a strip of paper around it, sanitized for your protection.”

Indeed, Liddy is an intelligent and clever man; an entertaining speaker. And for several hours Monday night, a great and frightening many hung to each of his words. These “Liddies” enthusiastically applauded each of his putdowns and passionately embraced his every philosophy as gospel.

Too bad their respect for Liddy is misguided.

Now don’t expect me to say the Liddies are misguided for cheering a convicted criminal. Don’t expect me to provide a long list of Liddy’s crimes as supporting evidence why the audience Liddy commands is undeserved. Liddy proudly admits his shady record; in fact, he brags about his crooked past.

I contend the Liddies are mistaken because they don’t recognize that G. Gordon Liddy is himself a keen master and sly practitioner of illusion. In short, he’s a fake. Consider:

• The highlight of his career, the Watergate break in, failed – Liddy got caught.


• His congressional campaign failed – Liddy lost.


• Comical stories were related in Newsweek magazine about how, as a crack FBI agent, Liddy inadvertently locked himself in the trunk of a car for two hours and how, as a top-notch assistant district attorney, Liddy had to pay court fines for breaking a two-by-four across the jury box during the middle of a trial.

Yet, the world has turned upside down. Liddy has risen dramatically from failure, and today sits at the top.

Today we hear Liddy speaking about Liddy on the college lecture circuit. We wake up to see Liddy talking about Liddy on Good Morning America. We fall asleep after seeing Liddy talk about Liddy on David Letterman’s show. We find Liddy signing autographs to the Liddy autobiography.

Today, Liddy is finally successful – at promoting Tough Guy Liddy.

So he strides around wearing his leather aviator jacket, calling himself “meaner than cat shit,” boasting of plots to murder people and telling hard-boiled stories just as long as they in some way regard G. Gordon Liddy. On top of this, he makes a good buck being Tough Guy Liddy … his NIU appearance cost students $5,000.

The sorry side of all this is not, however, that Liddy makes money by visiting universities and talking about himself. This is, after all, America. Liddy is neither the first nor the last college-circuit con man.

The shameful, sorry side of all this is the poor Liddies – those who waited in half-hour lines for the G. Gordon Liddy autograph, those who hugged Liddy close to share the same photograph, those who tape-recorded his speech for posterity, those who rooted for his put-down of a foreign student in the audience Monday night, those who attacked the peaceful protestors who gathered before Liddy’s speech, those who swallowed Liddy’s argument that – at least – Liddy is no hypocrite, that – at least – he admits what he’s done.

This is sad because, for some time now, Liddy has been selling himself as a tough guy who offers sound advice and meaningful perceptions of life.

But what Liddy truly has been selling truly is not worth buying.

There Will Be Wonderful Surprises
Avrom Karl Surath

Le Grand Story – Robert Charles, Eugene Burger and I have made it a Thanksgiving tradition to head to Massachusetts for a long weekend of magic, good food, swell company and plenty of laughs. We stay at the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, which is situated beside the town commons and this year afforded breathtaking views of autumn trees still colored burnt orange, flaming yellow, brown and gold. We met up again with our good friends from Arizona, Bryce Kuhlman and Jenny Pauls. The five of us were joined by two other couples, the Dymonds, from Las Vegas, and Sarlot and Eyde, from Tucson. Believe me: You haven’t vacationed until you’ve traveled with eight magical performers. The highlights of our excursions to the Boston area always include a visit with Ray Goulet at his Magic Art Studio in Watertown and two performances, at two different theaters, of Le Grand David, a stage spectacle now in its 32nd consecutive year in Beverly. There Will Be Wonderful Surprises tells the remarkable story of Cesareo Palaez, a Cuban refugee who came to America, studied with Abraham Maslow at Brandeis University and founded a stage magic company centered around David Bull (Le Grand David himself), Cesareo (performing as Marco the Magi) and an ensemble of merry performers who inspire you to feel a sense of wonder as if for the first time. I had the opportunity to speak near the end of our stay with Henry Lewis, the curator emeritus of London’s famed Magic Circle who we also saw perform over the weekend. Henry observed that one difference between Le Grand David and other magic shows is that Le Grand David is about “conjuring” while other shows are just about “magic.” A keen observation. At several moments during Le Grand David I always find myself with the smallest tears slipping from the corners of my eyes; and even after all of these visits, my tears of sheer joy always come as a surprise.

POSTSCRIPT: Norman Mailer

Another old lion is now at rest. Here's Mailer from a recent interview with The Paris Review (n. 181): "One of my basic notions for a long, long time is that there is this mysterious mountain out there called reality. We novelists are always trying to climb it. We are mountaineers, and the question is, Which face do you attack? Different faces call for different approaches, and some demand a knotty and convoluted interior style. Others demand great simplicity. The point is that style is an attack on the nature of reality."

Why I Write
George Orwell

So, You Wanna be a Writer, Eh? – When Little George Orwell was growing up, he enjoyed a “facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.” In his adolescence, he discovered the “the joy of mere words, i.e., the sounds and associations of words.” After sharing this bit of autobiography, the great writer uses this concise, compelling essay to outline reasons why people write – ranging from the “need to earn a living” and “sheer egotism” to “aesthetic enthusiasm,” “historical impulse” and “political purpose.” Orwell writes, he says, “because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.” While acknowledging that “every book is a failure” in attempting to “fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole,” Orwell concludes with a sobering reflection: “And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.”

No Ordinary Time:
Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II
Doris Kearns Goodwin

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow – Let’s talk about challenges. And let’s talk about leadership. In 1940, the U.S. military ranked 18th in the world. We would rise to 17th only after Hitler’s Nazis captured Holland. In 1940, America was suffering its 11th consecutive year of economic depression, with about 17 percent of the workforce (roughly 10 million people) unemployed. Nearly a third (35 million) of the country’s homes and apartments did not have running water or indoor toilets. Of 74 million Americans 25 years or older only 2 of every 5 had continued their education beyond the 8th grade. One in 4 had graduated from high school. One in 20 had completed college. The United States has nearly tripled its population since Franklin Delano Roosevelt was President and Eleanor Roosevelt was First Lady; today, we are a nation of about 301 million people. Our military is the most powerful in the world. Our economy is productive. Our people are better educated, with about 84 percent of those 25 years or older having graduated high school and about 3 in 10 having earned bachelor’s degrees. But is today’s United States of America truly a “better” nation? Is a country that fails to capture Bin Laden, invades the wrong nation, condones torture, runs secret prisons, fails to rebuild American towns devastated by storms, ignores basic science, fails to provide even basic protections for American consumers, and bathes in the sleaze of moral hypocrisy a “better” country? No. We once elected the kind of leaders who buoyed America by telling us, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Today, George Bush deliberately instills fear at every turn by shrieking, “We must fight them over there so we won’t have to fight them over here.” Enough is enough … or is it? Americans are clearly eager for new leadership, but that won’t come from blood thirsty fear-mongers in the Republican party or spineless panderers in the Democratic party. Bold, hopeful leadership will only arise when the American people themselves rise up – and how unlikely is that? This is no ordinary time, indeed: Despite decades of progress and gains (and, perhaps, in part, because of such “gains”), America has never been more asleep or ineptly led. We’ve been knocked to the mat by the one-two punch of over-exposure (i.e., to scare tactics, lies and half-truths) and over-indulgence (i.e., too much TV, too much diversionary consumerism, too many anti-depressants and painkillers that effectively blind us from facing the truth). No leader is standing in our corner, cheering from ringside for us to come to our senses, get up, get back on our feet and get back into the fight. That courage must come from within.

Meet Me in the Bar:
Classic Drinks from America’s Historic Hotels
Thomas Connors, with photography by Ericka McConnell

Happy Hours, Indeed – Years ago I wrote a short story titled, “Happy Hours,” which began:

The idea, like all of his good ideas lately, came while he was drinking. A book, Dick Sullivan thought. A coffee table book with heavy, white paper and rich, textured photographs of the best hotel bars in America. The Round Robin at the Willard in Washington, D.C. The Bookstore Bar at the Alexis in Seattle. The lobby of the Algonquin in New York. The bar in the Pump Room at the Ambassador East in Chicago. Yes. And, woven throughout, a winding, wistful essay – his words – examining the decisive role hotel bars have played in the unfolding American drama.

In the story, twice-divorced, down-on-his-luck salesman Dick Sullivan fantasizes about illustrating his book with photographs made by his neighbor back home in Milwaukee, Mary Kelly. The good news is Meet Me in the Bar is a much better book than Dick and Mary would ever publish; but, of course, the book in my story, like Dick’s love for Mary, would never be consummated. Meet Me in the Bar features many examples, minor and major, of the convergence of fact-and-fiction, of the coming together of real-life, dream-life and out-and-out fiction, which, of course, is the story of every hotel and every hotel bar everywhere in the world.

Dr. Night Life’s Chicago:
An Intimate & Informative Guide to the City’s Best Entertainment
Rick Kogan

Staying Alive – Why read a guidebook that’s nearly 30 years old? Because if it’s written by raconteur Rick Kogan, it remains endlessly entertaining. Kogan, a journalist who today interviews seemingly ordinary people for the Chicago Tribune Sunday magazine as well as his own radio and cable television shows, walks us through an Odyssean journey of countless Windy City watering holes, saloons, discos, taverns and lounges. Some are long-gone, such as the Blue Max, Faces and Riccardo’s. Others remain Chicago classics: the Pump Room, Twin Anchors, the Billy Goat Tavern. Still others have hung on despite – well, despite everything. A few months ago, Robert Charles and I found ourselves with time on our hands at O’Hare International Airport while waiting for the magician Eugene Burger’s return flight from Las Vegas. I began feeling a wee bit of the thirst so Robert and I soon found ourselves in the Gaslight Club at the O’Hare Hilton. Writing about the place in Dr. Night Life’s Chicago, Kogan noted: “The waitress is all smiles and skin and I am also impressed by her surroundings – an opulent outpouring of red velvet. ‘I’ve been here for two years,’ says the waitress, named Kathy. ‘I go to cosmetology school but I’ll keep working here when I get out. It’s like family.’” At the Gaslight Club today, you’ll meet a different Kathy and maybe the same Kathy, too. Plus, the red velvet hasn’t changed a bit. Welcome to 1979.

The Good Life
Jay McInerney

Trauma Drama – About a dozen years ago, my friend Gaylord Gieseke was the first (or, at least, among the first, but, certainly, I recall her lasting influence) to open my eyes to the implications of the facts that babies are learning from their earliest moments, days, weeks and months – and that healthy social-emotional development is as important as cognitive development. A few weeks ago, Gaylord and I enjoyed another lively conversation; this time she got me thinking about the profound, widespread, massive trauma we are experiencing together as a nation: the compound trauma of terror attacks, followed by brutal vengeance; wars, criminal in intent and ineptly managed; torture, masterminded by our alleged leaders and condoned by a shell-shocked populace; and Hurricane Katrina, managed equally ineptly ‘til this very day by every level of government, a continuing crime also condoned by a shaken citizenry. In other words, we have been traumatized and brutalized – and told by our politicians to pretend as if nothing is wrong or unacceptable. Dr. Jack Shonkoff, at the Harvard Center on Children, talks about children who experience prolonged “toxic stress” and their inability to develop appropriately as human beings. We – all of us, each of us – are still suffering the high toxicity of prolonged, compounded national trauma and we leave it unacknowledged. A part of each of us is deadened and, to some extent, we have become emotional zombies, wandering the streets, day and night, shuffling along with little other purpose than to merely survive. And that’s us surviving in relatively peaceful surroundings; imagine the day-to-day of war zone living. The Good Life focuses on a handful of New Yorkers surviving in the aftermath of 9/11. Jay McInerney does an impressive job of conveying the lingering numbness, loss and confusion. McInerney is keenly observant (here, he summarizes the American way of life as “live to spend, dress to kill, shop and fuck your way to happiness”), wickedly funny (here, he has one character telling Paul Auster to read John Grisham "to bone up on plotting,") and often poetic (here writing, “Remembering, dimly, that the night was never long enough when you were falling in love.”) Can fiction writers be successful where fact writers and policymakers have demonstrated such tragic failure, namely, in telling the truth? Yes.

For the Love of Books:
115 Celebrated Writers on the Books They Love Most
Edited by Ronald B. Shwartz

Scene Stealer – When you’re in the company of Updike, Talese, Mailer, Strand, Paley, Ozick, Richard A. Posner, William Manchester, Robert Coover, Stanley Fish, Nicholson Baker, Nadine Gordimer and nearly 100 others acknowledging and honoring the profound influences of Shakespeare, Joyce, Ovid, Dostoevsky, Ibsen, Chekhov and Proust, there is only one way to steal the show and Christopher Buckley does it: “Well,” his testimonial begins, “if you’re looking for recondite works in say, lesbian studies from the early seventeenth century, you’re shit out of luck with me.”

Stretching My Mind
Edward Albee

The Play’s The Thing – “But then you learn, very early in your career, that not only is life not fair, life is a lot fairer than theater.” That’s the master Himself, from a 2005 interview with Stephen Bottoms. And here again is Edward Albee referring to Samuel Beckett: “Well, you know what Sam said when somebody asked him why he kept on writing all these pessimistic plays? ‘If I were a pessimist, I wouldn’t write plays.’ He made the assumption that there was communication possible. We all make that assumption when we write something. A whole set of assumptions: (a) that we have something to say, (b) that we have the ability to say it, and (c) that somebody will listen. Now, it could break down anywhere, but we make the assumption, because we are trying to change people’s perceptions. That’s what art is about – all art.”

Here But Not Here: My Life with William Shawn and The New Yorker
Lillian Ross

Alas – Somewhere about 20 words into the winding first line of a piece in the front of The New Yorker I find myself feeling a sense of electricity – it’s an actual buzz – and the sensation lifts a knowing smile to my face and lowers my eyes to the byline: Lillian Ross. “I knew it.” Miss Ross is perhaps the sharpest observer, with eye and ear, to grace the pages of an American magazine. She offers a uniquely “subjective objectivity” no other writer can match. So it’s with disappointment that I found this memoir lacking the same angle of repose on its subject when the subject is herself and her beloved Bill Shawn. Still, how can you not enjoy a breezy read in which you open to any three pages and find stories about Hemingway and Dietrich, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein and Joshua Logan, Rachel Carson and Ingmar Bergman and Tina Brown?

At the Same Time: Essays & Speeches
Susan Sontag

An Opinion about Opinions -- From "The Conscience of Words," Susan Sontag's May 2000 speech upon receiving The Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society:

The wisdom of literature is quite antithetical to having opinions. "Nothing is my last word about anything," said Henry James. Furnishing opinions, even correct opinions -- whenever asked -- cheapens what novelists and poets do best, which is to sponsor reflectiveness, to pursue complexity.

Information will never replace illumination. But something that sounds like, except that it's better than, information -- I mean the condition of being informed; I mean concrete, specific, detailed, historically dense, first-hand knowledge -- is the indispensable prerequisite for a writer to express opinions in public.

Let the others, the celebrities and the politicians, talk down to us; lie. If being both a writer and a public voice could stand for anything better, it would be that writers would consider the formulation of opinions and judgments to be a difficult responsibility.

Poetry
September 2004, October 2004, February 2005, March 2005 issues

Survival -- W.S. DiPero on Philip Larkin. Stephen Dobyns on Robert Frost. J.D. McClatchy on Rainer Maria Rilke. Kay Ryan on Walt Whitman. Other poets debating the "greatness" of Derek Walcott and Czeslaw Milosz. Arguments about poetry fill me with hope for our future.

AROUND TOWN:
10 Favorite Bookstores

Each of these is independently owned and offers a distinct personality. Feel like doing a little gold-digging? Pick through the cluttered stacks of used-books at Ravenswood Books. Care for a glass of Pinot Grigio to accompany your book buying? Visit the Book Cellar. Want to feel smarter just by visiting a bookstore? Head downstairs to the Seminary Co-op at the University of Chicago. Want to check out some good-looking gay men while checking out the newest bestsellers? Unabridged Books. Feel like visiting a rambling apartment filled with books and literary artifacts? Stop by Bookman's Alley.

• Ravenswood Books, 4626 N. Lincoln Avenue (in Lincoln Square) 773-593-9166. That's owner Jim Mall in the photo.


• The Book Cellar, 4736-38 N. Lincoln Avenue (in Lincoln Square) 773-293-2665 http://www.bookcellarinc.com/


• Seminary Cooperative Bookstore at the Chicago Theological Seminary, 5757 S. University Avenue (in Hyde Park). 773-752-1959. http://www.semcoop.com/


• Unabridged Books, 3251 N. Broadway (in Boystown) 773-883-9119 http://www.unabridgedbookstore.com/


• Afterwords Books, 23 E Illinois (in Streeterville) 312-464-1110


• Bookworks, 3444 N Clark (in Lakeview) 773-871-5318


• 57th Street Bookstore, 1301 E. 57th Street (in Hyde Park) 773-684-1300


• Women and Children First, 5233 N. Clark (in Andersonville) 773-769-9299 http://www.womenandchildrenfirst.com/


• Transitions Bookplace, 1000 W. North Avenue (near North and Clybourn). 312-951-7323 http://www.transitionsbookplace.com/


• Bookman's Alley, in the alley (of course) at the rear of 1712 Sherman Avenue in Evanston. 847-869-6999

What bookstores are your favorites -- and why do you like them?

Reading Like a Writer:
A Guide for People Who Love Books and For Those Who Want To Write Them
Francine Prose

Required Reading – Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer joins Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style and David Lodge’s The Art of Fiction on the syllabus for any master class teaching the nuts-and-bolts – the essentials – of writing well. Like its siblings, Prose’s work is easily digestible and highly entertaining. Using well-selected examples from a century of great writing, Prose argues for slow, close reading and then begins a chapter-by-chapter exploration of the basic tools every wordsmith uses – words, sentences, paragraphs, narration, character, dialogue, details, gesture – to construct a sound story. Prose concludes by plunging into Chekhov and courage – the “deep end” of creative writing, indeed.

About Alice
Calvin Trillin

Love Letter – I’ve attended three funerals in the past six weeks: 89-year-old Carl Marx Shier, union organizer and beloved rabble-rouser, buried with a Socialist flag draped inside his coffin and saluted by a crowd singing “Solidarity Forever;” 82-year-old Hugo Underhill, ex-Marine and phone company retiree whose service was presided over by a Baptist preacher and a Marine Color Guard unit that played "Taps" and presented a crisply folded U.S. flag at gravesite to Hugo’s widow; and 92-year-old Tom Ayers, former CEO of Commonwealth Edison, a giant of Chicago industry, a pillar of our town’s civic life and the patriarch among a huge family of activists and reformers. Mr. Ayers’ life achievements were commemorated at The Thorne Auditorium of Northwestern University’s downtown campus. Funeral as rally. Funeral as ritual. Funeral as celebration. Each of these three men – different in so many ways yet similar in several fundamental traits – lived long, good lives and, in the end, crowds gathered to say, quite simply, I love you. Calvin Trillin’s slim, good book celebrates the joy of his life, his deceased wife, Alice, by saying, quite simply, I love you. Memoir as love letter. Memoir as tribute. Memoir as an epistle of devotion. When someone dies, we say I love you as a way of saying good-bye – and, yes, as a way of hanging on, for another moment more.

Gruba Fiction
4 Short Stories by David Gruba
Cover art by Kurt Mitchell

The ’Zine Scene – For decades now, a few critics have bemoaned the State of Literature – and I do mean Literature with a capital “L” – while simultaneously predicting the demise of the printed book. This, of course, is a double-barrelled death wish, often delivered in strangely gleeful tones considering it’s the critics’ very own pronouncements that constitute murder by a thousand cuts while hoards of readers do their best to continue buying old-fashioned books every day. At the same time, old-fashioned writers are doing their best to see their words and stories in old-fashioned published form. Gruba Fiction is an excellent example of the reader and the writer’s shared, age-old need to hear-and-tell stories – taut, pulpy stories that keep you turning from page-to-page until the very end despite the weary cries of tiresome critics. (www.comicspace.com/grubbmaster)

AROUND TOWN:
2007 Bloomsday Reading at The Cliff Dwellers Club

Is there anything more sublime than Mary Nell Murphy's reading of Molly's Yes? More hilarious -- and true -- than Robert Reidy's narration of Paddy Dignam's funeral? More bawdy than Claudia Traudt's take on Gerty MacDowell at the fireworks? More mesmerizing than Kevin Grandfield's performance of Stephen Dedalus' walk along Sandymount Strand? More authentic than Rory Childers? I was again humbled to stand among their company -- and the company of the wonderfully talented Larry McCauley, Gene Smith and Pat McCaughy -- to celebrate James Joyce's Ulysses. I was also left thinking there is nothing more hallucinatory than Steve Diedrich's reveling in Nighttown, save perhaps for the times when other readers were at the podium and Steve, our ringleader and emcee for this good, long evening, sat with eyes closed, faced flushed and lips moving in silent echo, reciting nearly each passage to himself from memory.

AROUND TOWN:
An interview with Cheryl Hagedorn, author of Park Ridge: A Senior Center Murder

I recently received the most wonderful email: “Bedraggled sixty-year old local (Des Plaines) author looking for an interview on your blog the first week in June as part of a I-put-it-together-all-by-myself virtual book tour. Any chance? We can even keep it to 5 questions -- such as, ‘What are you doing here?’ Cheryl Hagedorn, Author, Park Ridge: A Senior Center Murder, http://murder.booklocker.com” What followed was a delightful email exchange – and the start of a new ChicagoWriter feature: Around Town interviews. Thank you, Cheryl, for getting us started!

Michael Burke: Tell us about your new book, Park Ridge: A Senior Center Murder.
Cheryl Hagedorn: Four elderly pinochle players at the neighborhood drop-in center decide to whack the overzealous activity boosters. It's based on real-life observations. Some folks do genealogy, trips, book discussions, folk dancing or square dancing at the senior centers. Some folks play cards and do some of the other, but mostly they just play cards. There's a real dichotomy here. Not between the haves and the have-nots, but between the doers and the don'ts. As the silver tsunami crests, I think you're going to find the divide widens between relatively active seniors and those described as passive. What I think that most people who are concerned that seniors need to "get off their whats-its and do something," are missing is that to play cards at the center involves getting out of the house and getting to the facility. That's not something to be sneezed at when you're a geezer. Second, playing pinochle or bridge exercises the brain to the point where I get exhausted thinking about it. Lastly, why on earth can't these people -- at their age -- do what they want to do without being demeaned for it? Let's get real. In Park Ridge the constant in-your-face verbal assaults (that's the way the killers see it) are finally too much. One of the guys, Jack -- there's two men and two women who play together -- kills a booster in a fit. The other three card players agree to cover it up. Then they indulge in fantasizing the murders of their own particular nemesis. Before you know it, fantasy becomes fact. Unfortunately, the reviews are mixed - not bad, but mixed! "Human nature drives her plot, and one can imagine the seething resentments, even in a place that should be completely non-threatening. But there's the rub. Take a seemingly neutral environment and add passion and cruelty, and one has an excellent plot" (Midwest Book Review). On the other hand, "I really enjoyed your book. The characters were funny. It wasn't a slap you in the face humor. Perhaps because I have a nursing home ministry that I found the humor. The people at the card table reminded me of my husband's grandmother. She said exactly what she was thinking. She considered it wisdom. [I love the idea of] the people sitting there playing cards and nonchalantly talking about murder and in their minds plotting one. I guess I'm weird but I found it ironic and funny" (Reader Views). What else can I say?

MB: What's the most surprising reaction you've received to your book?
CH: Can I give you one in several categories? Most surprising reaction under the Pleasant Category: Shelley Glodowski at Midwest Book Reviews thought Park Ridge "could easily convert to an enticing television movie.” Most surprising reaction under Astounding: Debra Gaynor at Reader Views wrote on Amazon, "This book is uproarious!" She went on to call it "delightful" and "extremely funny." Most surprising reaction under People Who Know Me (I quote from a conversation with a friend of 40 years): "You said that the book deals with moral issues, particularly about the way people treat other people, and I clearly see what you mean. I was reading more for entertainment than for deep insights into the ethical behavior of people. Light reading is the way I unwind at the end of the day. I work hard, am always with people, and don't want to have to dig for deep meanings when I read a mystery. I want to be entertained.”

MB: Besides Park Ridge: A Senior Center Murder, what two or three good books have you read recently that you'd recommend?
CH: Ancestors Brocades by Millicent Todd Bingham gives an incredible account of her mother's involvement in what Elizabeth Horan has called "The [Emily] Dickinson Copyright Wars." Austin and Mabel: The Amherst Affair and Love Letters of Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd by Polly Longsworth. Believe me when I tell you how tempted I am to write a play based on this book! The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin disturbed me and satisfied me as well. Laskin's explanations of the meteorology behind the freak blizzard were not overwhelming and his use of diaries, letters and newspaper accounts to forge a narrative was extraordinary. On the lighter side, The Poet And The Murderer by Simon Worrall is a fascinating true-crime reconstruction of the discovery of a "new" Emily Dickinson poem.

MB: You're in the midst of creating your own virtual book tour. How's it going?
CH: Actually this is one of my last stops. But let me tell you what I've learned. One, not everybody can write interview questions. When an author is lining up a virtual tour and scouting for an interviewer, he/she really needs to think about that. I've spent hours filling in answers to questions that I thought were frivolous and sometimes redundant. On my blog where I often do interviews, even if I haven't read the book, I read every scrap of info I can get my hands on to craft decent questions. Two, I've met the most fantastic people. Several times I almost wished that they weren't interviewing me because I wanted to interview them! Three, good intentions aren't enough to get you gigs. My ability to find a clever angle or an unusual approach seemed to be the deciding factor in several cases. It's a lot like querying agents and publishers :-)

MB: Why do you write?
CH: Mainly for pleasure. I think I also write to make sense of what I see and what I know.

MB: Why do you think human beings need to tell and hear stories?
CH: To make sense of what happens to them, to people that they care about, to make sense of life itself, I guess. It's a way to explore violent impulses without anyone getting hurt. To imagine a different way of living your life or discovering possible explanations for seemingly inexplicable behavior.

MB: How has your writing changed since you first began writing seriously?
CH: I'm more focused on the heart of the story. Especially after grad school, I thought that a narrative "had to have ..." whatever. I trust myself more now. I once read a piece to a class for critiquing. In the story a female character sat down on a tree root near the bank of a river, had an alarming experience, and escaped. The instructor hammered on the fact that the audience knew nothing about the character. What did she look like? How was she dressed? How old was she? Then we moved on to setting. How wide was the river? Where was the river? Shall I tell you what I did not dare to tell her? The female in question had no age - not in the story, nor in my mind. She was me as a very young child, as a teenager, as the sixty-year-old woman that I am now. All at the same time. Because that is who in fact we are -- all those ages we have ever been -- simultaneously. I could have said that her body was that of a twelve-year-old, but how to say that she saw with the eyes of the sixty-year-old and responded like a teen?

MB: What's the best and worst advice you've received as a writer?
CH: Professor Lucy Rinehart told me to trust my own voice, bless her. S.L. Wisenberg pretty much forced me to personalize an essay that eventually blew my mind when I finished. I wrote an author whose work I respected asking him to write a blurb that I could use in promoting my book. He offered to do so if I would send him a chapter. I did. He essentially rewrote it according to his style and his lights. I think he may have been miffed when I wrote back, thanked him for his comments, and then told him it was already in print.

MB: How can people order Park Ridge: A Senior Center Murder?
CH: They can order it directly from BookLocker. While they're there, they can read about the hoohah over the murder by banana. They can also order it from any online bookseller or request that their local brick-and-mortar store order it for them.

On War
Carl von Clausewitz

It’s Over, Over There – When will the troops come home? Apparently, not until Bush, Cheney and the other war criminals have their fill. The most oft-quoted quip from von Clausewitz’s textbook is, “War is merely the continuation of policy by other means.” But Americans would be wise to pay greater attention to an earlier observation from this staff officer and military historian who served during the Napoleonic campaigns. “In war, the result is never final,” Clausewitz observes. That's something the "mission accomplished" crowd will never understand.

Rumble, Young Man, Rumble
Benjamin Cavell

Tough Guy – Benjamin Cavell employs a one-two punch of paranoia and machismo to explore modern manhood in this debut collection of nine short stories. The pugnacious prose keeps things moving along, creating mood and feeling rather than sights and sounds, all of which left me dizzy but still standing.

Gidget
Frederick Kohner

Hanging 10 – For more than 27 seasons, City Lit Theater has routinely mounted Chicago’s smartest stage adaptations. But even with the great respect I have for City Lit’s work – including Holmes and Watson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and an earlier work based on Raymond Carver’s writing – it was difficult for me to ever imagine enjoying Terry McCabe and Marissa McKown’s production of Gidget. Turns out I loved the show. Through the combination of McCabe and McKown’s skillful adaptation of Frederick Kohner’s book and the zest Sabrina Kramnich, Phillip Marino, Carrie Hardin, Brian Pastor and other actors bring to their performances, the show is a buoyant hint of summer. Played with just the right integrity, the whole show skims gently over the waters of innocence without seeming trifle or foolish. Plus, the audience enjoyed a special treat the evening Robert Charles and I attended: Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, Frederick’s daughter and the real-life Gidget, joined us in the audience and autographed copies of her father’s book at intermission.

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
Kurt Vonnegut

Ta-ta -- Kurt is up in Heaven now.

AROUND TOWN:
The Literary Life, Indeed

My friend Joe Wade explains that our "two-person book club" works so well because we read different books. He's reading a new book, on Nixon and Mao. I'm reading an old book, Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy."

My sister-in-law, Colleen, and her sister, Doreen, are the co-conspirators who arrange a family outing to "Flanagan's Wake," the long-running, interactive, rowdy improv comedy by the Noble Fool crowd at the Pheasant Run Resort. A wonderful night of beer, bellowing and bawdy laughter.

Kevin Grandfield announces he's setting aside his big work -- an account of his travels across America to visit four dozen Edward Hopper paintings while interviewing people along the way whether they feel as isolated as the characters within Hopper's paintings (http://hopperguy.blogspot.com/.) We're sitting in my living room -- Kevin, me, my partner, the magician Robert Charles, and our friends and fellow writers Ed Underhill and Jotham Burrello. Candles are lit, glasses of red wine are poured. Kevin begins reading from the manuscript of a new work, a novel. At the end of the evening, I'm left contemplating how detours often inform the best journeys.

A week later, Jotham reads three new essays as part of the Oyez Review reading at The Heartland Cafe in the Rogers Park neighborhood. At the end of the good reading, Jotham asks if I'd like to stick around for another beer but I beg off. I'm left contemplating how age is, indeed, slowing me down.

Age has made its mark on Studs Terkel, as well, but the man is fast approaching 95 and he's just finished a new book, a memoir. Studs was in fine form at this year's Studs Terkel Media Awards benefiting the Community Media Workshop. Why am I involved with the Community Media Workshop? In part, because the Workshop connects community residents with journalists to promote news that matters. In part, because this group of rabble rousers is committed to widening the circle of opportunity, deepening our shared understanding of "community," and inspiring ever more hope for those whose voices are not heard nearly enough. But I also love the Community Media Workshop because the Studs Terkel Media Awards is always the best party of the year. (For a wonderful description, see Micki Leventhal's recent article from DEMO, a Columbia College magazine: http://www2.colum.edu/cps/demo/hearusnow.php.)

The next evening, Robert Charles and I see "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" at the new LaSalle Bank Theater. Edward Albee's masterpiece is a powerhouse, especially with this electrified cast: Kathleen Turner, Bill Irwin, David Furr and Kathleen Early. I cannot imagine the toll it takes to perform this play, but I relish the moment in Act Two -- a seemingly throw-away moment in this rich play with absolutely no throw-away moments, a true actor's moment -- when three different characters ostensibly talk about "ice." Watching Turner, Irwin and Furr in this exchange is like watching pro tennis players volley back-and-forth. And I ended this evening contemplating the joy of watching players play, pretending to be someone else as they make us see indisputable truths about ourselves.

CHICAGO VOICES: An excerpt from "Immigrant Buffet," by Jotham Burrello

I spent the morning dicing yellow onions because I am the only one in the kitchen who doesn't cry. Pedro stabbed a sharpened knife into each bushel. After staff lunch I sliced off the tip of my left pinky. The blood soaked into the spiraling rings of onions splayed open on the chopping block. Chef Martin smelled blood. He unfurled five hundred-dollar bills from his wallet and tucked the wad into Pedro's breast pocket. He said if we weren't back from the hospital in time to prep the salmon and tilapia, then don't bother coming back. He wanted a receipt. In the alley behind the kitchen, Santiago, a busboy, inspected the pinky. He said he'd seen worse.

Jotham Burrello teaches fiction writing at Columbia College Chicago. His stories and poems have appeared in Cymbals, Sudden Stories, Pennsylvania English and The Christian Science Monitor. His video production company, Elephant Rock Productions (http://www.erpmedia.net/), produces videos for writers and educators. His story, "Immigrant Buffet," appears in the spring 2007 volume of Oyez Review, published by Roosevelt University.

Poems 4 a.m.
Susan Minot

Second Thoughts -- In my younger and more vulnerable years, I co-founded a writer's group called GLiCKMA, which stood for Gordon Lish Can Kiss My Ass, which is a whole other story. But in the ad calling for submissions from potential new members, my co-founder and I stated: "Poets need not apply." I remember that we readily welcomed the membership of one young writer who ended her cover letter by noting, "Poets can eat glass." Mercifully, GLiCKMA only met twice before disbanding. With an equal measure of mercy, I shall refrain from revealing my co-founder's identity; but I am happy to report we both have done a lot of growing up since those long-ago days when disdain came so quickly, so easily -- well, at least as it regards poetry and Gordon Lish. Today, I relish the refined and rare ability of a narrow volume of poetry to compel me to take a second look -- and even a third or fourth look -- at the world and myself.

AROUND TOWN:
Life in the Big City, circa July 1995

Monday night. Lakeview.

Female cop crosses a quiet residential street corner, strolls once around a parked beater, flips open her ticket pad, starts scribbling. Pauses only to wave a now-approaching tow truck into position.

Before the truck can reverse, a heavy-set, barefooted woman trudges off the sidewalk and plants herself between the tow and the car, Tiananmen-style. Tow driver lumbers out, barks, "You gotta move." Cop is busy scribbling. Tow driver fishes a cigarette from the pocket of his stained blue shirt and when the barefooted woman asks for a smoke, he hands her one. Even lights it. Then barks again: "You gotta move."

A big guy, wearing a white shirt and dark tie, shuffles onto the scene, walks smack into the hood of the parked tow truck. Briefcase flaps open, sheets of paper cascade onto Paulina. Big guy yells, "You hit me!" Tow driver growls, "I was parked!"

Third guy, a younger guy, almost a kid, hurries down from some apartment building, scrambles into the old beater. Cop presents him with the finished ticket through the driver's side window, explains about not parking on baseball nights.

Big guy restuffs his briefcase, staggers on. Barefooted woman, still smoking, wanders off. Cop climbs up beside tow driver. Kid in the parked car cranks his engine, waits for the tow truck to rattle away down the street, then cuts his motor and runs back upstairs, leaving the car parked right at the corner.

Double Lives: American Writers’ Friendships
Richard Lingeman

Friends, Indeed – The writer Vicki Ruzicka sent me this book during the end-of-year holidays – right when I needed it. Any artist’s life is filled with too much rejection and self-doubt. There is a strange encouragement derived from reading about the professional and personal ups-and-downs of masters like Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James and Edith Wharton, Mark Twain and William Dean Howells, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. You realize even the Great Writers have capsized in the raging waters of angst and failure – and you learn again to keep rowing as you cross the deep, mighty river of creation. (That’s the kind of flowery overstatement you find even the best writers succumbing to; but it’s true.) A week or two after finishing this good book and feeling once-again refreshed by my friend Vicki’s touching gift, I received another gift, a postcard, from another writer-friend, Jotham Burrello. “Yesterday I attended the live reading of Moby-Dick at the New Bedford Whaling Museum [in Massachusetts]," Jotham wrote. "It takes 25 hours, with two short food breaks, to complete. You would have enjoyed it.” Friends reaching out to friends. Writers supporting writers. Boats against the current, indeed.

The Underdog Advantage:
Using the Power of Insurgent Strategy to Put Your Business on Top
David Morey and Scott Miller

Hocus Pocus – I met David Morey at a magic school in Las Vegas. What does a top political and business consultant have to learn from magicians Jeff McBride and Eugene Burger? A lot. Morey and Scott Miller are two of the masterminds behind the winning presidential campaigns of Vincente Fox of Mexico, Corazon Aquino of the Philippines and Kim Dae Jung of South Korea. They’ve also worked as consultants to corporate giants like Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Nike. In their insightful book, they apply lessons from underdog political campaigns and revolutionary business battles to outline several cunning strategies for getting ahead – and staying ahead. Along the way, they note the importance, in business as in politics, of managing perceptions like a magician. This is the sort of stuff professors don’t usually teach in MBA programs or political science classes. For this, you turn to modern-day wizards like Burger, McBride and Max Maven.

Who’s Writing This? Great Contemporary Writers on Writing
Edited by Daniel Halpern

Identity Crisis – More than two dozen writers (from Susan Sontag to Robert Olen Butler and Edward Albee to Margaret Atwood) respond to Jorge Luis Borges’ pint-sized but provocative essay Borges and I to examine the relationship between authors and authorship. With more than enough gobbledygook to keep a thousand English Ph.D. candidates busy for a thousand years, this book does offer one fresh perspective, from Arthur Miller. “Last year a cab driver looked into his rearview mirror and said, ‘You look like Arthur Miller, but I know you’re not.’ I asked him how he knew I wasn’t. ‘You look halfway decent,’ he said. I could only agree.”

Twelve American Writers
Edited by William M. Gibson and George Arms
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
A Norton Critical Edition edited by Charles E. Modlin and Ray Lewis White

A Textbook Case – Reading old and current textbooks when you’re not enrolled in any class feels a bit like you’re getting away with something. You only have to read the portions you want and not those the professor mandates. You can do it all on your own time, within your own schedule. And you don’t have to bother listening to anyone else’s claptrap, no matter how informed or uninformed the claptrap might be. Maybe I’m just growing old and cranky. Right or wrong (and, surely, it’s wrong), I’ve always thought of Sherwood Anderson as old and cranky. The fact that I’ve always appreciated him the more for it is certainly also telling. But after re-reading pieces of Winesburg and discovering an old William Faulkner essay on his one-time mentor, I feel like I’m just getting to know Sherwood Anderson. “Twelve American Writers” features a 1953 Atlantic Monthly essay by Faulkner, which stays with me now weeks later. In the “appreciation,” Faulkner describes his days with Sherwood Anderson in New Orleans, the debt he and Ernest Hemingway owe Anderson, and the pain they inflicted on the older man; Hemingway, in The Torrents of Spring, and Faulkner himself via a booklet titled, Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles, in which Faulkner admits attempting to make Anderson’s style look ridiculous. The essay acknowledges Faulkner’s regret without trying to justify the multi-layered insult and Faulkner’s concluding paragraph tells a lot about both men. After Anderson got Faulkner’s first book published, “I saw Anderson only once more, because the unhappy caricature affair had happened in the meantime and he declined to see me, for several years, until one afternoon at a cocktail party in New York: and again there was that moment when he appeared taller, bigger than anything he ever wrote. Then I remembered Winesburg, Ohio and The Triumph of the Egg and some of the pieces in Horses and Men, and I knew that I had seen, was looking at, a giant in an earth populated to a great – too great – extent by pygmies, even if he did make but the two or perhaps three gestures commensurate with gianthood.”

CHICAGO VOICES: An excerpt from a letter to George Freitag from Sherwood Anderson, 1938

And I am only writing all of this to you to prepare you. In a world controlled by business why should we not expect businessmen to think first of business?

And do bear in mind that publishers of books, of magazines, of newspapers are, first of all, businessmen. They are compelled to be.

And do not blame them when they do not buy your stories. Do not be romantic. There is no golden key that unlocks all doors. There is only the joy of living as richly as you can, always feeling more, absorbing more, and, if you are by nature a teller of tales, the realization that by faking, trying to give people what they think they want, you are in danger of dulling and in the end quite destroying what may be your own road into life.

There will remain for you, to be sure, the matter of making a living, and I am sorry to say to you that in the solution of that problem, for you and other young writers, I am not interested. That, alas, is your own problem. I am interested only in what you may be able to contribute to the advancement of our mutual craft.

But why not call it an art? That is what it is.

Did you ever hear of an artist who had an easy road to travel in life?

Excerpted from Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, a Norton Critical Edition edited by Charles E. Modlin and Ray Lewis White.

Bacchus & Me: Adventures in the Wine Cellar
Jay McInerney

Hiccup – The writer George Savino has said people really only ever tell three stories: (1) I was so funny! (2) I was so smart! (3) Everyone is fucking up except me! With Jay McInerney you always get a bit of all three. In this collection of essays from his wine column in House & Garden, you get Insufferable Jay: “Later I thought about my friend Buzz Whelker, who taught me to play polo.” You get Snobby Jay: “But of course, if markets were strictly about value, I probably wouldn’t be wearing these Prada loafers.” And, naturally, you get Wino Jay: “His Viognier Vin du Mistal seldom demonstrates the exotic and haunting bouquet of the greatest Condrieu, but it delivers more of the musky Viognier flavor and silky texture than any French examples I’ve tasted from outside the Rhône Valley.” But this is a book of wine porn, after all, so drink up.

Pocket Guide to Chicago Architecture
Judith Paine McBrien
Illustrations by John F. DeSalvo

Make No Small Plans – Kathleen Carpenter’s walking tours for the Chicago Architecture Foundation are like any conversation with Kathleen: exuberant, spiced with intelligent detail, funny, and sprinkled with intriguing stories. Whether she’s describing the risk and hope that went into constructing the Field Building as the Great Depression dug in (the Field Building would be the last building to rise in the Loop until 20 years passed) or inviting you to step beneath the take-your-breath-away trellis stretching above the vast lawn of the Gehry-designed Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, Kathleen’s love for Chicago is clear. On Christmas Day, Kathleen and her husband, Jack Gould, hosted a small dinner party at their home, during which they presented copies of this wonderful Pocket Guide to their guests. Jack, like many Chicagoans, also speaks proudly about our city’s awesome architecture. Last year, he showed Eugene Burger, Robert Charles and me around the University of Chicago’s new Graduate School of Business on the Hyde Park campus. In designing the new GSB building, Rafael Viñoly Architects faced the challenge of developing a new school that not only functioned well but referenced its formidable neighbors: the historic Ida Noyes Hall and her two more famous siblings, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House and Rockefeller Chapel. (They succeeded.) But here’s where Kathleen and Jack’s presentations differ. Kathleen would’ve had us marching across the street for a different perspective while she buoyantly described the inside scoop on just what it takes to get a beautiful, world-class building created within the conservative confines of academe. As it was, Jack mostly focused his boyish enthusiasm on the state-of-the-art classroom gadgetry and the Chicago Fire Department’s rigorous smoke-flow tests in the school’s unique atrium. (Chicago, after all, is a bit, shall we say, touchy about fire codes.) Decades after the Great Fire of 1871, Daniel Burnham advised thinking big as a way to stir men’s blood; another way to reinvigorate your soul is to spend time with people like Kathleen and Jack, whose passions are generously shared and easily enjoyed.

POSTSCRIPT: Oriana Fallaci

That great silence you hear is Oriana Fallaci not asking questions. Revered and reviled, the hard-edged journalist recently left New York City to die in her beloved Florence. Her book, Interview with History, single-handedly changed what I thought journalism was – and could be. Here was a journalist who not only acknowledged subjectivity, she demanded it. Here was a journalist who often knew as much (if not more) about the issues she discussed as did the people she interviewed. Of course, “discussed” is not the right word. Fallaci railed. She prosecuted. She hunted. Not only in her final years, when she condemned Islam, but throughout her career when she interviewed everyone from Henry Kissinger to the Ayatollah Khomeini to Sammy Davis Jr. How much better off would our republic be if our fourth estate was not bound by the restraints of objectivity, which are often false restraints too easily manipulated? The question is worth pondering. But now that Fallaci is dead, who will ask it?

Letter to a Christian Nation
Sam Harris

Addressee Unknown – The only problem with a book like this is that the people who should read it won’t. Our country embraces superstitious faith but spurns spiritual inquiry. In part, Harris makes such a powerful argument for atheism simply because you never hear an argument for atheism – religious ideologues of all stripes control the levers of society and so reading such a clear statement sounds revolutionary: “Can you prove that Zeus does not exist? Of course not. And yet, just imagine if we lived in a society where people spent tens of billions of dollars of their personal income each year propitiating the gods of Mount Olympus, where the government spent billions more in tax dollars to support institutions devoted to these gods, where untold billions more in tax subsidies were given to pagan temples, where elected officials did their best to impede medical research out of deference to The Iliad and The Odyssey, and where every debate about public policy was subverted to the whims of ancient authors who wrote well, but who didn’t know enough about the nature of reality to keep their excrement out of their food. This would be a horrific misappropriation of our material, moral and intellectual resources. And yet that is exactly the society we are living in. This is the woefully irrational world that you and your fellow Christians are working so tirelessly to create.” Some people claim, especially in these overheated times, responsible debates about spirituality are not possible. But that’s baloney. Overheated times do not preclude such discussions – in fact, “the times” have always been “overheated.” Responsible debates merely require responsible individuals. Responsibility is what’s missing.

CHICAGO VOICES: An excerpt from “After Italy,” by George Savino

I got so lost the first three months in Florence, with or without a map. I mean, you veer off the main streets and you’re a goner. Suddenly you’re lost in a medieval maze of twisting, turning streets that never, ever, ever intersect at right angles so in a matter of minutes you’ve lost all sense of direction. I had to teach myself not to get pissed off, not to get frustrated, but instead, look up, look around. My God, Florence is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

And the scale of Italian cities is completely different from cities here. Italian cities are lower, but the buildings are more massive: huge, stone Renaissance palazzo with gigantic arched portals you could sail a double-masted schooner through – and that’s the front door! All the stucco buildings are painted in muted earth tones – tan, olive, rust, gold and ivory – and they all have dark green shutters. Everything goes together in Italy. You have no idea how much that means to a gay man.

And there’s an undeclared competition between neighbors to see who can grow the most beautiful, the most colorful window boxes. Ivy, older than your grandmother, wisteria vines with their grape-like clusters of lavender flowers hang from the arches that span the narrow passageways ... There are worse things in life than getting lost in Florence.

George Savino is a writer and story teller who created and performed his one-man show, “After Italy,” in 1999 once he returned to Chicago after living for three years in Italy. George moved back to Florence in early 2006.

Without Feathers
Woody Allen

What Would Woody Do? – In my fantasy world, the civilization that evolves after our next Ice Age (or Great Meltdown or self-inflicted nuclear annihilation or however it is we ultimately will go) builds an entirely new society upon the principles discovered in the sole remaining ancient text: Woody Allen’s “Without Feathers.” In terms of sacred and holy writing, the human race could do a lot worse than basing rules of righteous living on these old, humorous essays. In fact, we have.

Book of Longing
Leonard Cohen

Back on Boogie Street – A perfect morning in early autumn: You wake late in your chilly apartment, pull a sweatshirt over your pajamas, brew a pot of coffee, sit in the big and comfy living room armchair beneath a lightweight quilt, let Keeper the Cat curl in your lap, find yourself devouring a book of Leonard Cohen’s poems and, every now and again, look up from the satisfied pages to see Robert Charles typing away on the laptop at his desk. And you realize, as Robert concentrates and the cat purrs and you swallow another sip of good, hot coffee and turn another eager page that you long for nothing more, nothing more in the whole wide world.

UniBrow blog

Pulling No Punches – UniBrow, http://www.unibrow.blog.com/, takes a feisty and insightful look at literature and politics. Sidestepping the usual ranting you find throughout the internet, UniBrow routinely posts well-considered, concise, well-crafted opinion. Plus, UniBrow is doing a service to the nation by recapping George Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation.

Sport Literate blog
William Meiners

Online Lion -- Sport Literate, offering "honest reflections on life's leisurely diversions," is my favorite magazine. Over the years I've been fortunate to have a fair number of essays and poems appear in Sport Literate so I'm not at all unbiased; as I've said in the past, Sport Literate feels much like a literary home to me. Editor-in-Chief William Meiners, age old-enough-to-know-better, has recently tackled two new things: Bill has joined the Lafayette Lions football team and he's started a blog. Which will lead to more bruises remains to be seen. With a nod to George Plimpton he has humbly dubbed himself the "Online Lion." His reflections make for excellent reading and appear at http://sportliterate.org/blog1/.

Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate
George Lakoff

I’m A Proud American – I’m a proud American. I’m a meat-and-potatoes Democrat who is tired of blood-thirsty conservative phonies and their holier-than-thou attitudes. But I’m also sick of flip-flopping politicians within my own party and whiners who complain that “our side” lacks message discipline; message discipline requires a discipline of belief and what our side lacks is a discipline of belief. You have to know where you stand. I’m a proud American. And what I value can be summed up in 10 words: greater safety, responsible spending, equal opportunity, healthier families, more hope. You don’t have to mimic a Republican to beat a Republican. You don’t have to find God and babble about religion. You don’t have to support a shameful war to show you’re tough. You just have to know where you stand – and then take a stand. James Carville taught us years ago that every election comes down to one question: Do you want change or more of the same? The time is ripe for change. Dr. Lakoff’s book notes that people vote their identities and values more than their self-interest. So who are we and what do we believe? Generations ago, our country’s founders declared that certain truths are self-evident and set out to form a more perfect Union. I’m a proud American and it’s my responsibility – and yours, too – to help shape our more perfect Union, to help create a better tomorrow by ensuring greater safety, responsible spending, equal opportunity, healthier families and more hope. The elections in 2006 and 2008, as always, are the Democrats’ to lose. And lose we will if we fail to nominate candidates who can successfully deliver this message because they fail to fully believe this message. America is my home. And I’m a proud American. And I believe we can build a better tomorrow, together.

AN APPRECIATION: John Mahoney and His “Lost Garden”

I wish I could pen a beautiful, hushed, lyrical poem in tribute to John Mahoney for a beautiful, hushed, lyrical poem is John Mahoney’s specialty and a beautiful, hushed, lyrical poem is what John Mahoney deserves. But, like a character in one of John’s poems, I might as well be pining about Italian opera: I love listening, but, for the life of me, I wouldn’t know where to begin writing one.

What I do know is this: John Mahoney’s writing has enriched my life and John Mahoney’s life has enriched my writing.

I met John years ago in suburban Chicago where he is dean of the Downers Grove Writers Workshop. What I remember most from those now long-ago days was how John – 30 or 40 years older than the rest of us gathered round the large library table – encouraged each of us and inspired all of us by himself doing the simplest-yet-most complicated of all of life’s tasks: trying new things. Two examples: First, his writing ranged from formal forms to unedited improvisations. Second, at an age when many of his contemporaries were content to pass their final years quietly, John and his older brother, Joe, traveled by jet around the world in a matter of days because they had grown up dreaming of one day circumnavigating the globe.

Charlane Bell Poelsterl is another Workshop regular, one of John’s dearest friends and publisher of his collection, Lost Garden. Char describes John as an “unabashedly romantic spirit” who is “appreciative of all things good” – and she’s right. John was born in Joliet, Illinois, during World War I, drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II, and assigned to fire direction in a field artillery unit. As Char writes in a brief forward to Lost Garden, “John spent thirty-six months in the Southwest Pacific, chiefly in New Guinea and the Philippines. He was wounded while landing on Mindanao. His remaining time overseas was spent in Australia, mainly near Rockhampton, Queensland, where he has revisited four times since the war.” Indeed, Rockhampton – John’s beloved, “Rocky” – has become his spiritual home.

“After discharge from the Army,” Char continues, “John enrolled at the Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, where he met graduate nursing student Attracta O’Connor. John received a BA in English and married Attracta in June of 1949. He spent the next year earning an MA in English at the University of Louisville.

“Returning to Illinois, John worked in a locomotive plant and later in various copy-editing jobs at book and magazine publishers. Settling in Westmont, Illinois, he and Attracta became parents of Deirdre, Eileen, and Georgina; and, in time, grandparents of Claire Milsted, and Andrew and Monica Lim.”

Attracta passed away some years ago and it’s a sure sign of John’s affection that he dedicated Lost Garden in this way: “To Attracta – love-long partisan of an obscure poet.”

I have an old-fashioned cassette tape recording of John reciting a handful of his poems. No writer’s voice has ever better matched a writer’s words and listening to the tape reminds me, too, of so many things: the mystery of memory, the doom of yearning, the joy of winter’s first snow, and the fulfillment of friendship. My fondest wish for you is to someday hear John Mahoney in person. Until that day, here is the last stanza from John’s, “Skater’s Shadow” –

A face whose moonlight shadow
sped across the ice,
a shadow never seen
in one place twice
beneath your skates’
shrill sibilance.
Should I see naught
except your shadow
I would know you
from your shadow.

The Wit and Wisdom of Quentin Crisp
Compiled and edited by Guy Kettelhack

Let Us Now Praise the Old Queens – A few years ago Jeff Osman, Robert Charles and I heard Quentin Crisp talk at the Barnes and Noble on Diversy. “Los Angeles is just like New York,” Mr. Crisp observed at one point, “only lying down.” This slender book is filled with similar such tasty bon mots; some even offer a hint of spice. “Indeed, we might say that the whole purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the terrible things other people say about us.” “Politics is the art of making the inevitable appear to be a matter of wise human choice.” “Except for a sense of humor, Mr. Hemingway had everything.” Witty old queens are veteran patriots in our battle for equality, standing heel to heel (and those are quite some heels!) with other queer royalty: drag queens and leather queens. Every struggle for equality requires a vanguard to push and define boundaries. Now, 37 years since Stonewall, a new royal has been added to the court: wedding queens – committed couples of gays and lesbians who are getting married, making the inevitable appear to be a matter of wise human choice, indeed.

AROUND TOWN:
May All Your Sons Be Bishops

The best part of the 2006 Bloomsday reading at The Cliff Dwellers Club overlooking Grant Park and Lake Michigan in downtown Chicago was the show after the show: Rory Childers, at the post-reading dinner, lifting a glass or two of wine while regaling his tablemates with stories of the great, late Brendan Behan.

Every year, Steve Diedrich does a yeoman's job of organizing the reading. Eric Best opened this year's June 16 event with a selection from the Telemachus portion of James Joyce's masterwork, "Ulysses." The writer Kevin Grandfield performed Proteus from memory and Irish Counsel General Charles Sheehan pitched in with a portion of Aeolus. Steve himself performed from the Circe section, Pat McCaughy performed the catechism portion from Ithaca and I had the pleasure of performing some of Calypso. Robert Reidy did another masterful reading of Hades, Claudia Traudt brought the fireworks to life for Gerty McDowell and, at the end of the show, the wonderfully talented Mary Nell Murphy brought more than one audience member to tears with Molly's Yes.

During the formal reading, Dr. Childers performed Bloom and Stephen from the Ithaca section; but, at dinner, the good doctor had us roaring with laughter at recollections of Brendan Behan. These were good, Irish laughs, too: hilarity and sorrow poured together and stirred well. Yes.

AROUND TOWN:
2006 Printer’s Row Book Fair

Reading is an act of communion, and the transaction that occurs between author and reader is nothing less than holy. So, for me, the Printer’s Row Book Fair always feels a bit like Sunday Mass – only without the guilt and shame.

For me, the book fair is about renewing friendships. This year, I strolled through the crowded stacks and sat beneath the flapping tents with Robert N. Georgalas, Joanne Pepe, Robert Charles and Jack Clements. This year, we also gathered in rows of chairs to behold a few of our modern prophets: E.L. Doctorow, Erica Jong, Cris Burks and John Updike.

The Printer’s Row Book Fair also is an opportunity to visit one of Chicago’s most welcoming bookstores: Sandmeyer’s, on south Dearborn Street. When I daydream of owning my own bookstore it always looks and feels like Sandmeyer’s.

It’s true that Sandmeyer’s hushed ambience and creaking wood floors remind me of the church I was raised in: Saint Joseph the Worker. But in the pews at St. Joe’s, one found a single hymnal and no other books. Not even a bible. At Sandmeyer’s, when you look up and down the rows of neatly shelved and displayed books, you realize this is a house that respects and worships knowledge – and the parishioners congregating here have more questions than answers.

Things We Don’t Know We Don’t Know
Matt Mason

Rebel With a Cause – Matt Mason is a revolutionary. And not just when he’s writing about vigorous political outrage (the title of his new collection is from a Donald Rumsfeld quote). Even Mason’s poems filled with gentle insight, kindness, humor and grace are small, feisty acts of rebellion – crystallizing a new way of thinking, feeling, behaving. (Visit Matt Mason's website at www.MidVerse.com.)

CHICAGO VOICES: “Arresting Beauty,” by Hank DeZutter

It’s blooming spring and –
white blossoms on Wabash
green budbursts on State –
trees I’ve ignored
are reaching out
for my attention.
One in a dark corner of Grant Park
Offers …
a giant open palm of lacy florescence,
a crystal tray of delicate canapés,
a glass plate of feathery white butterflies.

My favorite,
I say,
and more quickly than joy can spring,
into one’s heart
I trip and trouble
over its name,
as if knowing
will heighten its beauty.

I turn my gaze to
The Guide to North American Trees,
my naming obsession
worse
than a photographer’s need
to reduce and capture beauty
in small
squinty-eyed frames.

My beauty must have a name,
a Latinate derivative
some recorded attributes,
a history,
at least some familiar words … but

The Guide fails me.
No illustration therein
looks like this
exquisitely plateful of petals,
this gently glowing floral branching
This aery something brightened by the shadowy gloom.

Which I stopped watching in mad pursuit
of its official identity.

And I must wonder,
as I do each spring,
why I can’t let beauty
come into my life
or steal away
without getting its name
or number.

Hank DeZutter is a freelance writer, journalist and co-founder of the Community Media Workshop.

The Writer’s Desk
Jill Krementz

Evidence – I have owned this wonderful book for several years and I find myself returning to its pages, again and again, as if I were a detective studying crime-scene photographs for an unsolved case. E.B. White types at a spare wooden table beside an opened window looking upon a calm lake in Maine. Susan Sontag, cigarette in hand, holds court behind a long table cluttered with stacked books, The New York Review of Books and a black rotary telephone. Willie Morris stretches from a chair to place a handful of papers upon a side table while Spit McGee, his now-famous cat, slumbers on the carpet behind him. Katherine Anne Porter, wearing a necklace of pearls, leans forward to more closely examine scribbled edits on a typed manuscript. John Cheever looks as if he’s just been caught sitting at his typewriter – no paper in sight – with a large glass nearly empty on his desk beside two packs of Marlboro cigarettes. I scour these photographs looking for clues. Just how do writers write?

Holy Bible: Catholic Layman’s Edition
Edited by Reverend John P. O’Connell and Published with the Imprimatur of Samuel Cardinal Stritch, Archbishop of Chicago

The Making of the President 1960: A Narrative History of American Politics in Action
Theodore H. White

Union House, Union Bar: The History of the Hotel & Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union, AFL-CIO Matthew Josephson

Books that Make the Man – I did not grow up in a house full of books. In fact, aside from two sets of children’s encyclopedias and one set of “condensed” classics, I recall only three books in my parents’ home. The first is the Holy Bible, Chicago Catholic version – which, in part, reminds us that an indulgence of three years is granted if one reads Sacred Scripture with great reverence for at least 15 minutes each day. The second is The Making of the President 1960 – Dad and Mom were staunch Democrats in those days; these days, like so many, Dad has been known to cast a Republican vote or two and Mom has given up voting all together. The third is Union House, Union Bar – Dad was a union man, too; for years he moonlighted as a bartender at O’Hare International Airport to earn some extra money for the family. I have kept these three books, moving them from home to home as if they are precious belongings because they are precious belongings. In so many ways, these early books remind me who I am – or, at least, from whence I came.

Chicago Then and Now
Elizabeth McNulty

Toddlin’ town – The older and newer images of Chicago architecture are fascinating, but the most provocative thing in this book is buried within a caption and credited to an anonymous “commentator.” The caption, below boaters enjoying a leisurely afternoon on the Lincoln Park lagoon, notes how in the old days the lakefront beyond North Avenue was so remote it was used as the city cemetery. In 1864, the city agreed to move the cemetery farther north. “In Chicago,” an anonymous wag says, “even the dead must ‘move on.’”

CHICAGO VOICES: “House of Cakes,” by Robert N. Georgalas

The Goodman Theatre recently produced the David Mamet Write-Alike contest as part of their David Mamet Festival. “House of Cakes,” by Robert N. Georgalas, was among the finalists. Georgalas is a professor at College of DuPage and a founder of Polyphony Press. His stories and poems have appeared in Rambunctious Review, Hair Trigger, Sport Literate, Urban Spaghetti and other magazines.

Scene: A bakery. Ricky Roma is behind the sales counter, Carol in front, holding an open cake box.

ROMA: The cake?
CAROL: Yes.
ROMA: That’s what we’re speaking of? The cake?
CAROL: Yes.
ROMA (points to the box): And that. What is that? What you’re holding? Is that not a confection of flour and water and sugar and cream? And does it not, in its shape, in its shape does it not look like what we, what you, what I, what all of us from childhood were taught to call a cake?
CAROL: Wait. Wait. You’re confusing me. I said...
ROMA: You said...?
CAROL: Yes, I said. I said to my group, I said I needed a cake...to celebrate...to celebrate my transfer to a new school...
ROMA: Did you ever notice that all classrooms smell vaguely of sleep? You transferred? Good. I’m going to tell you something. We’ve all transferred. Me, because of Mitch and Murray, those cocksuckers. And you... you from...
CAROL: What are you talking about? I mean, I stand here in front of this counter and I try to smile, I try, but I don’t know what in the world you’re talking about.
ROMA: You ever take a shit made you feel like you just dropped ten pounds?
CAROL: You’re vile, Mr. Roma. Wretched and vile. You stand behind your counter in your white apron and you talk about how this (shakes the box) is a cake, but to those of us who paid good money, who struggled through traffic and backstreets and rain to get here... Who are you to mock me, Mr. Roma?
ROMA: To mock you?
CAROL: A cake. I needed a cake, and they said go to that bakery so I...
ROMA (circles the counter and takes the box from her): A cake? What is it? Something to eat? Perhaps. Something to make us look good as hosts? Perhaps. To add weight to ourselves so that we feel worse? Perhaps. So fucking what? It’s just part of an event. Listen. You go to a bakery. You talk to the baker. You call him on the phone. It doesn’t matter. A cake. What does it mean? What do you want it to mean?
CAROL: I don’t understand. I mean, I come to you...to you... I mean, I tried to bake one myself. I looked at the recipes... but the words... (removes a small recipe book from her purse and reads) ‘Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl...’ ‘fold batter into beaten egg whites’... I don’t understand.
ROMA: So you thought something from the store...?
CAROL: Yes.
ROMA: And because you couldn’t bake a cake you thought of yourself as a failure? That you’d never get on the board?
CAROL: What board? No. A cake. I just wanted something....
ROMA: ...that your group would approve of?
CAROL: Yes. Yes. That’s right.
ROMA: Fuck you.
CAROL: What?
ROMA: Fuck you. You come in here to my bakery and you say my cake is not a cake, because...
CAROL: Because there are pink florets on top, Mr. Roma. Sexist florets. Did you think that just because I was a woman, you could decorate the face of the cake, of my cake, in pink? (turns to leave)
ROMA: Where you going...? Carol, Carol. This is me, Ricky. Anything you want, you want it, you have it.
CAROL: No. No. You are a sexist and an elitist and I will report this bakery to my group and I will see to it that no one, not one person, buys so much as a cookie from you. No. A breadstick. Not even a breadstick.
ROMA: Breadstick? Why you little cunt... (scoops a handful of cake from the box and pushes it into her face.)
CAROL (stumbles to the floor, trying to back away): No!
ROMA (raises the box above his head as if to bring it down full force, then stops himself): Oh, my god.
CAROL: Yes.
ROMA: Fucking Mitch and Murray. Fucking...cocksuckers...
CAROL: Yes. (Pause) Yes, that’s right.

The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems
Billy Collins

Brilliant Clarity – Nicole Ravenell once pointed out to me how competitive simple conversation has become, with people (friends, frequently; the men and women we love the most, often) seldom listening and always elbowing to get the next word in, to claim the final say. We’re like hurried taxi drivers honking our way through bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic. Sadly, capitalism conditions us to expect (and embrace) competition in all aspects of our lives, from commerce to conversation, from the boardroom to the classroom to the bedroom. Poetry, good poetry, is not competitive. Good poetry is clear and cumulative, teaching us again and again to be patient, reminding us that quiet and slow is good.

POSTSCRIPT: David Mamet, Eugene O’Neill

What is drama? Robert N. Georgalas, Joanne Pepe, Robert Charles and I walked to The Goodman the other night to watch David Mamet boil it down for Richard Christiansen. “Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don’t get it? Why now?” Afterward, back home, I heard another definition on Ken Burns’ documentary about Eugene O’Neill. The great writer’s final uttered words: “Born in a hotel room and – God damn it – died in a hotel room.”

Native Sons
James Baldwin and Sol Stein
Playwrights, Lyricists, Composers on Theater
Edited by Otis L. Guernsey Jr.

Dear Old Friends – Stumbling across a good used bookstore, like Ravenswood Books on Lincoln Avenue, and finding an engaging read, like Playwrights, Lyricists, Composers on Theater, is like running into a dear old friend. The pleasure of just sitting together for a long stretch, confessing and catching up, is invigorating. In Playwrights, the old friends include the Who’s Who from American theater in the 1960s and early 1970s: Marc Connelly, John Guare, Jules Feiffer, Neil Simon, Stephen Sondheim, Richard Rodgers, John Kander, Lillian Hellman, Paddy Chayefsky, Arthur Laurents, Arthur Miller, Clive Barnes, Edward Albee, Jean Kerr (who steals the show) and others. Their conversations and reflections are informative and entertaining, always illuminating. In Native Sons, which I unearthed at Second Story Books in Washington, D.C., the old friends are James Baldwin and his longtime editor, Sol Stein. Here, the conversations are more intimate. In one early letter, Baldwin whispers to his old friend: “I thought I was sick, and indeed, I was, but it turned out to be only a breakdown. About breakdowns, baby, there is nothing to say, nothing one can say while it’s happening, nothing to be said when it’s over. Not even, I hope it will never happen again, for a breakdown, I’ve discovered – hindsight – can be a most valuable thing.”

A Man Without a Country
Kurt Vonnegut

A Patriot’s Call to Arms – You can almost always tell the really needy writers; they’re the ones producing those hefty, door-stopping tomes in which they spend hundreds of ponderous pages trying to impress you with how much they know. Kurt Vonnegut always strikes me as the opposite kind of writer: he continually acknowledges how little he knows – how little any of us really knows about life, existence. In this slender volume, which reads like a warm and welcomed letter from your favorite cranky uncle, Vonnegut warns that humans are squandering the natural resources which are essential to our survival. Simply and profoundly, Vonnegut urges us to wise up and act kindly.

Close Range: Wyoming Stories
Annie Proulx

Bareback Sex and Bare-naked Feelings on Brokeback Mountain – What scares us most in this age of terror? Intimacy. Loving relations between two people. In “Brokeback Mountain,” the most famous story in this solid short story collection, the surprising sexual relationship that awakens in 1963 between two young ranch hands – “quick, rough, laughing and snorting” – is shocking to many readers. And the stunted intellectual intercourse between Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, their self-assured denials and inarticulate pleadings, is all-too-familiar to others. But it’s the arousing emotional and spiritual connection between the two men that shakes us, wakes us and, ultimately, makes us see the commonality of our one true human purpose: to only connect.

POSTSCRIPT: Harold Pinter

100 words from the new Nobel laureate in literature:

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading – as a last resort – all other justifications having failed to justify themselves – as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

For Pinter’s complete speech, visit http://www.nobelprize.org/.

AN APPRECIATION: Television Journalism

Why waste time documenting the atrocities of war or examining fraudulent voting systems in the world’s great democracies when there is “real” news to cover? I salute 20/20’s Elizabeth Vargas for her hard-hitting, in-depth work on my favorite TV news segment of 2005: “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ.” I humbly suggest the following investigative assignments for other noble inheritors of the honored traditions of Murrow, Cronkite and Rather:

• “In Search of Santa,” in which Dateline’s Stone Phillips goes undercover in the North Pole to reveal hidden truths about the jolly, generous recluse.
• “What’s Your Sign?” in which CNN’s Anderson Cooper is strapped into a specially overhauled space shuttle and hurled toward the blazing sun to give viewers an insider’s look at the ancient secrets of the zodiac.
• “Bunny Blues,” in which 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl uses hidden-camera ambush interviews to expose the sad and lonely side of the Easter Bunny at the annual White House Egg Roll.
• “George Washington and the Cherry Tree: A Re-Examination of the Single Axe Theory,” in which This Week's George Will hosts a 12-round battle of wits between presidential historians Michael Beschloss and Richard Norton Smith.
• “The 11th Commandment,” in which Fox News’ Brit Hume discloses recently documented “scientific” evidence proving that Moses personally supported privatizing Social Security.

The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion

WWJD? – Joan Didion once stated, “A writer is always selling someone out.” As you begin reading this excellent memoir recounting the death and mourning of Didion’s husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, you can’t be blamed for thinking, “Well, I guess she’s now selling him out, too.” But by the time you reach the end of this moving and meaningful account, you realize you’ve learned something about love and loss – and you realize, too, that writing this book is exactly what John would have wanted.

No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy

Point of View – Think Dashiell Hammett as a Bush supporter and you’ve got Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men.” This is a hard-boiled tale filled with bloodthirsty, two-dimensional moralism about good guys and bad guys (mostly bad guys) mixing it up after a high-stakes drug deal goes wrong along the Texas-Mexico border. Reading McCarthy has never been a picnic at the beach on a cloudless day, but this violent story is a well-crafted page-turner with a clear-cut philosophical point of view. Whether you agree with that view is up to you. But at a time when so much contemporary writing is awash with angst and ambiguity, McCarthy’s riveting tale is as forceful and unequivocal as the flash of a gun fired in the middle of a starless night. He accomplishes what artful storytelling always achieves: He opens our eyes and our hearts to other perspectives on the human struggle.

AROUND TOWN:
Giving Thanks – A Self-Interview

Michael Burke: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Michael Burke: I knew early on, with great clarity. I consider myself lucky – so many people spend their entire lives trying to figure out who they are, who they want to be.

MB: How young were you?
MB: 13 years old. For my birthday that year, I asked my parents for a typewriter; they were kind enough to buy a used, portable, manual Corona. I taught myself how to type the old-fashioned way on that machine: through trial-and-error and constant practice. After that, I figured writing would come easy.

MB: And did it?
MB: Absolutely not! I experienced many, many false starts banging away on that old Corona and many years when I neglected the Corona entirely, not writing stories at all. Inventing stories, much to my surprise, did not come easy. So I instead focused on non-fiction writing, in journalism, politics and public relations.

MB: When did you get back to fiction?
MB: As my 30th birthday approached, I realized once again how eagerly I wanted – in fact, needed – to write stories. I bought a computer and began writing – teaching myself how to write the old-fashioned way: through trial-and-error and constant practice. Now, with my 47th birthday approaching, the stories and poems and essays and plays still do not come easy, but I’m still writing. Almost every day. The wonderful (and awful) fact is I cannot not write.

MB: Do you still have the old Corona?
MB: Oh, yes. What a profoundly influential gift from my parents! In fact, of all of the gifts Jerry and Gladys Burke have given me over the years, the Corona is the most treasured. Aside from their love, of course. The typewriter validated, in a very real and tangible way, my desires to become a writer. And today I still use the old Corona as a reminder: We are all given gifts, but it is only through trial-and-error and constant practice that we learn to master that which we are given.

MB: Why do you write?
MB: To make the world a smaller place. I try to achieve this by depicting the hope and struggle of ordinary life, reminding people what we have in common with one another -- both good and bad. I hope my writing encourages people to take a second look at those around them, to take a second look at themselves, and to remember: We're all in this together.

MB: Do you write about a particular subject matter?
MB: I find myself writing about two things: people coming together or people coming apart. This is not a deliberate choice; the very first flash of inspiration simply seems to suggest the emotional movement of one person into another’s arms – or out the door. In practical terms, this impulse manifests as writing a lot about sex and death, which, ultimately, is how people come together and come apart.

MB: You mentioned “influence” a moment ago. What, and who, have been your major literary influences?
MB: Everyone I have ever met, everything I have ever experienced, everything I have ever read, every place I have ever been.

MB: Care to narrow it down?
MB: No. I don’t mean to be flippant. But I do believe the key to being a successful writer – in fact, the key to living a successful life – is to keep opening yourself up, to keep broadening your experience. There is an encroachment – a narrowing – that is too common in typical life as one grows older. But, we were talking about “literary influence” and I know what you mean so I’d be happy to get specific.

MB: Then get specific.
MB: Okay. Early influences, in addition to my parents: In those early years of writing, after reading one of my first typewritten stories, my brother, Joe Burke, handed the pages back to me and said, “People don’t talk in paragraphs.” This was my first lesson in craft – a lesson I still contemplate more than 30 years later.

MB: Slow learner?
MB: Some lessons must be learned again and again. I’ve also always been grateful to my grandmother, Myrtle M. Burke, and my great aunt, Geraldine Kuehna. When I was growing up, they made sure I saw live theater, musicals and plays – at the Goodman, the old Mill Run and up in Lincolnshire. Thanks to these two good women, I learned that TV can touch your heart, but live theater can touch your soul.

MB: What about your early teachers? Who stands out?
MB: In seventh or eighth grade, one of my English teachers, Miss Brown, was quite congratulatory about a short story I had penned in which Sherlock Holmes (borrowed from Conan Doyle, without permission but with many thanks) solved a murder mystery in a decrepit castle. Miss Brown was one of the first grown-ups I ever shared a story with and her wide smile of encouragement remains with me to this day. A few years later, my high school English teacher, a fireball named Fran McConnochie, taught me that writing should be relentlessly concise, concrete, compelling and convincing. Years later, at my college newspaper, Ilene Slonoff (her name was then Fleishman) reinforced the lesson. Ilene taught me if something is “needless to say,” don’t say it. This was when I fell in love with style.

MB: You’ve said before that you learned to write at The Northern Star, your college newspaper at Northern Illinois University.
MB: It’s true. Had to. That was half the job, after all. But, of course, I loved writing and I loved having to write every day. I also loved spending many an evening and weekend afternoon with Jerry Thompson, a former newspaperman who worked as our faculty adviser. From time to time, Jerry and I would kill an hour or two by drinking a beer or two while reading words to one another from the dictionary, quizzing one another on various word-roots and definitions. That might sound goofy, but this was when I fell in love with words. Individual words. Their sounds, their meanings. At about the same time, the beautiful Vicky Pinney asked me, “How can you write if you’re not reading?” I had just fallen under Vicky’s spell and the thunderbolt of her question ignited my curiosity in reading more than three dozen teachers had been able to spark. So this was also when I fell in love with reading. I’d get drunk on cheap beer in downtown DeKalb – notice any patterns involving beer here? – and stop into the bookstores on the walk back to my apartment and return home with armfuls of books. Also at about the same time, a Chicago Tribune editor named Charles Hayes took me and three other summer interns to a business lunch. During lunch, Hayes noted that graduates from my alma mater were often faster hitting the ground than graduates from other, more prestigious schools because we had been schooled in the rigor of meeting daily deadlines. But, Hayes explained, the graduates from the other universities ultimately performed better over time because they had been schooled in learning. Their critical thinking skills were sharper; their curiosity more finely honed. So this was when I fell in love with learning – near the end of my undergraduate studies!

MB: What was that your brother said about people not talking in paragraphs?
MB: There’s an exception to every rule.

MB: Well, as Al Gore once rather famously said, “There’s no need to get snippy.” Let’s move on. Who are your influences today?
MB: My closest friends have the biggest influence. And my closest friends are artists and thinkers.

MB: I’ll name some names. You tell me what you’ve learned – or are still learning. George Savino.
MB: I love George! I met George when I was 16 years old, so we’ve been friends for a long time. George is the single best storyteller I have ever heard. He’s a world-traveler and teller of true tales. His stories about living in Italy, spending the summer in Morocco and traveling for a month through India teach me that pictures can be drawn with words – that evocative descriptions are created with just the right words.

MB: Ed Underhill.
MB: Ed and I go way back, as well – to 1980 or so. Ed is a lawyer and fellow playwright and story writer. I am, by nature, a character-driven writer. Ed's writing reminds me that plot matters, that stories are better when things happen. Ed's writing also reminds me that all stories are morality tales. We’re now writing a screenplay together, but we’re doing more laughing than writing because Ed is also one of the silliest people I know.

MB: Joe Wade.
MB: Joe is one of the people who shape my thinking. He has for over 25 years. It’s as if we’ve been engaged in a lifetime conversation about life and death and politics and work – and hope. We talk a lot about hope; Joe was a Chicago White Sox fan long before it was popular.

MB: You wouldn’t be who you are today if you didn’t have Joe Wade in your life.
MB: So true. Or if I didn’t know George and Ed and Jim Slonoff. Jim is a newspaper publisher – and a very talented photographer – who is a model of competency for me. In that regard, Jim is like my brother, Joe Burke, and my sister-in-law, Colleen Burke. All three are enormously competent people. Interestingly, the more I feel like an artist, the less competent I feel in the world.

MB: Who else has shaped your thinking?
MB: Well, there are three broad groups. I think of them as my life teachers, my writer-friends from graduate school, and the people who shape my sensibilities.

MB: Let’s start with your life teachers.
MB: Robert J. Hannon, Jerry Thompson, Eugene Burger. They’re the Big Three. I met R.J. in high school – he was one of those rare and wonderful teachers who know you better than you know yourself. Jerry was (and is) a thought-provoking conservative – he was the perfect mentor for a left-leaning college-age writer like me. And Eugene is a gift – a graduate of Yale Divinity School who is now the country’s greatest close-up magician. His way with words and insights into human behavior are unparallel. I met Eugene through Robert Charles. Having Eugene in our lives is truly magical.

MB: What sorts of things are you learning about writing and storytelling from Eugene?
MB: Conciseness, mostly. No one gets to the point like Eugene. I’m also studying, if you want another concrete example, how Eugene uses rhetorical questions. He’s a master at that, as well.

MB: And you’re learning about theater from him, too?
MB: Yes, theater – and show business: How does one make a living in the arts? I’m just beginning to see how this is done. Plus, Eugene has introduced Robert and I to a number of other wonderful teachers: performers such as Jeff McBride, Abbi Spinner, Max Maven, Cesareo Pelaez and David Bull, who have deepened my understanding of drama and entertainment; the filmmaker Michael Caplan, whose documentary, Stones from the Soil, demonstrates how history and art can be woven together; and the University of Chicago economist Jack Gould and the writer-editor Kathleen Carpenter – all of them are enriching how I think about politics and business and theater and art and society … Jack and Kathleen also throw the best parties. It’s always good to have people in your life who throw good parties.

MB: You spent some time studying in the graduate fiction writing program at Columbia College Chicago, where you met a number of friends. Let's talk about some of them. Robert N. Georgalas?
MB: Bob is a writer, publisher, Medieval scholar, former New York advertising guy, photographer, English professor, one-time florist and ex-Merchant Marine – how’s that for character biography? Bob is the best writer I know, word-for-word, sentence-for-sentence. I could get into trouble for announcing a verdict like that, but it’s true. Bob’s an amazing writer. I find myself reading and re-reading his stories because I continually discover something new about the mechanics of storytelling or because I leave the story feeling something deeper than before.

MB: Bob also came up with the idea for Polyphony Press.
MB: Yes. Bob and his wife, Joanne Pepe, who is a sharp and skilled editor herself, live in a Chicago high-rise apartment filled with three thousand books. Within their living room, they created an inviting home for Polyphony Press. Hundreds of hours and three books later, Polyphony Press has, in turn, created what we hope is an inviting home for dozens of emerging and established writers, showcasing their diverse voices and talents. One added joy is that, through Polyphony, Bob and Joanne enabled me to work with the poet Jo-Ann Ledger and the writers David McGrath and Mark Wukas to edit our three anthologies. Jo-Ann’s wicked sense of humor and her equally wicked way with words continues to slay me. David and Mark’s stories always wow me. And Mark, a teacher, provides his students with this very sound and good advice: “Real life is no excuse for bad fiction.”

MB: Jotham Burrello.
MB: Another thoughtful teacher and editor. And a talented filmmaker, too. Over the years, Jotham has been kind enough to publish – and reject – some of my writing. The rejected pieces clearly needed to be rejected … well, at least, I see that now. But I learned through Jotham that every good writer needs a good editor. Jotham and Bob Georgalas also have kindly invited me to speak to their college classes on numerous occasions – a great and generous opportunity for a working writer like me: the gift of an eager audience who has actually read my work.

MB: Elizabeth Ward.
MB: I love Liz Ward! She’s a Chicago cop who is a Chicago writer – or, perhaps it’s the other way around. We met in graduate school and she continues to inspire me to this day. Liz also produced one of my early one-act plays – and, in so doing, showed much tenderness and instilled in me a greater sense of confidence for which I will always, always be grateful.

MB: Kevin Grandfield.
MB: Kevin, to me, is graduate school. He’s a prolific writer, reader and reviewer, and I so enjoy talking about writing and writers with him. On one night a dozen years ago, in a small neighborhood bar called Augenblick, Kevin asked me if I was afraid of making enemies. The question really sharpened my understanding of the artist’s mission. Mary Shaughnessy, Kevin’s wife, has changed Kevin’s life and warmed mine. Mary, too, is a person who shapes my sensibilities about art and life.

MB: Like Linda and Jack Martin.
MB: Yes. Very much so. When they're not in France, Linda and Jack host fabulous dinner parties at their home here, which is filled with beautiful art, including several of Jack's own paintings. At some point in the evening, we always try to talk Linda into playing a piece or two on piano – sometimes she does, often she doesn’t – and then we continue our rowdy, wine-soaked conversations about politics and religion.

MB: They sound like fun.
MB: They are. And Linda and Jack are teaching me another important lesson, too: the joy of staying in love. I’ve never known a couple more in love!

MB: What’s their secret?
MB: They actually like one another, for starters. And, more important, they seem endlessly curious about what the other has to say … Of course it’s the bad relationships that make better fodder for a fiction writer – the couples who are always fighting or cheating on one another. Now that’s entertainment!

MB: Do you use real-life experiences in your fiction?
MB: Only the sex scenes are autobiographical … I’m kidding! Yes, of course. But the valuable thing about fiction is that it’s not handcuffed to the facts.

MB: Facts aren’t important?
MB: Facts are quite important. Facts are precious. And facts should be treated with respect – especially now, when so many people in America are playing so fast and loose with the facts: labeling Creationism science, justifying torture, manipulating spy “intelligence” to rush us into war, ignoring the growing and tragic divide between rich and poor in our country. I say we leave fiction to the fiction writers and keep it out of policymaking.

MB: What is the purpose of fiction?
MB: The better question is, why do we tell stories? I think human beings tell stories because we don’t know our own story. We have no idea why we’re here – why we even exist. So we invent stories and myths and religious explanations to help us make sense of existence. Good fiction does just that. Bad fiction – like a lie from the White House or from a minister’s mouth – is irresponsible.

MB: Do you consider yourself a political writer?
MB: In the broadest sense of “political,” yes. Every artist is. Entertainment confirms what we know and comforts us. Art confuses us and challenges what we believe. So if you’re an artist, you’re confronting the status quo, which our politics is programmed to protect.

MB: How did you develop your ideas about politics?
MB: My thoughts about politics are shaped by three things: experience, conversations and reading. Early in my career, I worked on two different political campaigns in Midwest, middle-class, middle-of-the-road America. I met and got to know all sorts of people on farms, in small towns and big towns. What I found and what I still believe is that most people, Republicans and Democrats, want the same five things: greater safety, equal opportunity, responsible spending, healthier families, and more hope. That’s not asking too much; yet, our politicians don't seem able to deliver it.

MB: Why not?
MB: You tell me.

MB: So much of your writing is dark and even pessimistic.
MB: Henry James said the happiest people write the saddest stories.

MB: Are you happy? Are you hopeful?
MB: Absolutely. I’m happier than I ever have been and more confident than ever that better days are ahead.

MB: Why?
MB: You go through life and, if you’re lucky – and no one is luckier than me – you go through life held by many hands. Friends and colleagues – people such as Jeff Osman, who is a poet who doesn’t write poetry, and Priscilla Brown, who is a playwright who doesn’t write plays, and Sally Mandell, who has not only provided loving encouragement but also has given me the computer right off her desk. She’s my Medici! With friends like these, how can I not be filled with hope? Mike Lynch, Jerry Bowman and Mike Shaver are the kind of friends who can make me laugh by saying, "Hello." Stephnie Weir, Bob Dassie and Mary McCain are great comic performers. There's not nearly enough laughter and poetry in life, but I have an abundance in mine.

MB: Part of that is luck and part of that is “opening yourself up,” as you mentioned earlier.
MB: Yes, welcoming people into your life like the octogenarian poet John Mahoney, the musicians Amy Lusk, Anne-Marie Akin and Kate Milan, the writers Nancy Monk and Vicki Ruzicka, the graphic artists Sam Silvio and Sheila Sachs, the weaver Aimée Piccard, and the painter G.L. Smothers. They’re creative, expressive people who help you see the hope and struggle of ordinary life in a different way. I think, too, of Thom Clark, Hank DeZutter, Gordon Mayer and all of my fellow rabble-rousers at the Community Media Workshop, who are fighting to make sure the voices of ordinary people in Chicago's many neighborhoods are heard in the mainstream media. And I think of all the teachers and editors and producers and directors and booksellers – including Tom Montgomery-Fate and Cele Bona and Katey Schwartz and Dale Heiniger and Reginald Gibbons and Richard Shavzin and Domenick Danza – who, at different moments in my life, have each provided encouragement.

MB: You’ve also said that encouragement is almost always more helpful than advice.
MB: And encouragement comes in unexpected ways. Our friend Luis Martinez once pulled out a chapbook of my poetry in the middle of a party at his home – and that simple gesture lifted me for days. Our friends Michael Godnick, Steven Cohen, Sanford Sharp and Karen McCartan show up for my readings and come to Robert’s magic shows – simple gestures which reaffirm that kindness lives. All of this reminds me of Bill Meiners, who edits Sport Literate, the magazine I love the most because it feels like my literary home. Having work published in Sport Literate is like coming home after a long and tiring trip.

MB: You’re also fortunate to surround yourself with an army of friends who are a lot smarter than you are.
MB: Yes! That’s my motto: If you can’t be the smartest person in the room, then sit next to the smartest person in the room. Someone like Dan Pedersen, a former London bureau chief for Newsweek, who is teaching me that theater doesn't only happen on a stage and “density,” not only conciseness, matters in writing. Or someone like Judy Bertacchi, an educator and thinker, who has given me eight words of wise advice for writing and for life: "You always have to get the birth story." Or people like the sociologists Ami Nagle and Mark Chaves. Ami is an independent scholar who works for major foundations across the country. Mark chairs the sociology department at the University of Arizona, where he’s working on a new book examining the mega-church phenomenon in our country. And I think of the Magnificent Seven – seven smart, savvy women who are making the world a better place by fighting for social justice: Amy Lusk, Nancy Shier, Harriet Meyer, Portia Kennel, Karen Freel, Sarah Bradley and Claire Dunham. If we are to be judged by the company we keep, I’d say I’m fortunate to be standing among quite good company.

MB: Can you imagine living – and working – somewhere besides Chicago?
MB: Working, yes. Living, no. At least, not in the sense of making someplace else my home. Chicago is my home and I’m lucky because Chicago is a writer’s town. Chicago is still very much a hustler’s town; but what, after all, is a writer if not a hustler?

MB: That said, you can – and do – write well elsewhere.
MB: Absolutely. In fact, it’s no small thing that I’ve done some of my best writing on the quiet kitchen porch at Veda Mae Creason’s house in Browning, Missouri (population 189 – and dwindling). Veda, her daughter, Nola Mae and Nola Mae’s husband, Bob Swearengen, have graciously opened their homes and their hearts to me over the years. Browning is my writer’s retreat.

MB: And Browning brings us to Robert Charles.
MB: Yes. Indeed. The best for last. Quite fitting. Robert means the world to me. I wake thinking of him and fall asleep thinking of him. Robert Charles certainly knows me better than anyone and, in that way, he is the greatest influence on me as an artist and, more importantly, as a human being. I just love him with all of my heart and soul.

Now Showing: Unforgettable Moments from the Movies
Joe Garner

Happy Endings – Robert Charles and I recently returned from a long weekend in Washington, D.C. While sightseeing around the capital one warm and sunny afternoon, we paused on the wide, white, marble steps leading up to the U.S. Supreme Court and kissed. It’d be nice to say our kiss on the steps of the nation’s highest court was celebrating America’s long but inevitable march toward equality for all; in reality, however, we were simply feeling very much in love. To me, the moment brought to mind the end of a feel-good Hollywood movie. (Though, I must admit, with the Court’s imminent heavy swing to the political right, we might, in fact, be sitting through an American movie that ends badly.) “Now Showing” celebrates two dozen of the most entertaining moments from celluloid history. We don’t get a kiss on the Supreme Court steps, but we are treated to Thelma and Louise’s drive together off a Grand Canyon cliff. Alas, our march toward equality still has its own share of literal dead-ends.

CHICAGO VOICES: “Thought Delayed,” by Jo-Ann Ledger

having peeled back skin
and stepped inside
two in messy motion
realize
the tenuous hold
each has on the other,
as every panted breath
acknowledges
that freedom’s no longer the issue

Jo-Ann Ledger was born in England, where her passion for writing took root upon publication, in the Chapter School for Girls 1983 Yearbook, of a poem about her dog. Since then, she notes, she has moved to another country and broader topics. “Thought Delayed” initially appeared in “The Thing About Love Is…,” the first of three Polyphony Press anthologies of which Jo-Ann has been instrumental in editing.

1776
David McCullough

Founding Fathers – We’re at a moment in American publishing when a handful of old, white men are writing about the “handful” of old, white men who founded the United States of America. There are other tales to tell than The Great Men Tales, but this trend would be easier to criticize if the stories and the writers weren’t so damned good. Here, David McCullough recounts the rousing tale of courage, commitment and extraordinary luck in one critical year as General George Washington leads an out-manned, out-trained and out-gunned army away from defeat toward victory. Maybe it’s just because, with each passing day, I myself grow closer toward becoming an old, white man, but I cannot help but think: Why wasn’t history this interesting when I was a kid?

Literary Chicago: A Book Lover’s Tour of the Windy City
Greg Holden

Big Shoulders – This is an essential guide for every Chicago writer working today, a handy, helpful neighborhood guide to those who’ve come before us and upon whose shoulders we stand.

AROUND TOWN:
Faces of Tragedy

The land of plenty has never been kind to the poor and it’s been especially mean-spirited to poor people with dark skin.

The tragedy that unfolded before and after Hurricane Katrina roared off the Gulf of Mexico onto the southern shores of the great nation has followed what has become a surprisingly familiar script. In the drama, a devastating catastrophe is foretold months and even years in advance. After the calamity occurs, television journalists portray simplified stories of heroics and heartbreak. The leader of the great nation, one who always was slow to understand, is once again slow to respond. Days pass. And as the sun rises and sets, and rises and sets again, television journalists do what their technology enables them to do so uniquely well: show the faces of tragedy.

Hour after hour, day after day, people throughout the land of liberty see dark-skinned poor people corralled on bridges, the old and the young left broiling in the late August sun, the infirm and the ravaged abandoned without adequate food and proper shelter. When the people throughout the land begin seeing pictures of swelling crowds of dark-skinned poor people grabbing for bottles of water and snatches of food, the drama turns a new page of a different yet equally familiar script.

In this production, the great leader is airlifted in – and, within hours – out of the disaster zone. During his minutes on the ground, the leader is shuttled along from one carefully staged hug to the next. Photographers take pictures. But because this leader is not known for his warmth despite his blather of compassion – for he is a man best understood by his actions and inactions as opposed to his word; his hurried, thoughtless and malicious deeds as well as stammering and indifferent hesitations – the leader’s wife is called upon to stagger into a roomful of dark-skinned survivors and smile warmly. Photographers take pictures.

But because the majority of the faces on television screens across the land of the free, hour after hour, day after day, are dark-skinned poor people, the great leader also calls upon the top dark-skinned person among the leader’s many advisors. The woman is rushed from holiday to a podium in the capitol city of the great nation to speak of her duties outside of her official post. Officially, she now manages foreign affairs – a promotion she obtained after so spectacularly failing to manage her previous post, which was to guard domestic safety. From behind the podium, the dark-skinned foreign advisor looks down and speaks in hushed tones, softened to approximate genuine concern when she mentions that her family tree is rooted in the southern states now so horribly devastated by Mother Nature. The great leader’s advisor notably avoids any mention of the monumental, insidious, destructive effect of years of deliberate human neglect. Photographers take more pictures.

And because this script is the script we all have seen before, we all also knew what would come next: the mighty dark-skinned reverend from the city in the north would appear the very next day to christen the previous five days what many agreed they were: a disgrace. And two former leaders, foes now posing as friends, would be airlifted in for their staged embraces and calls for prayer and hope.

And as photographers take more and more pictures, the conversation across the home of the brave will move beyond the calamity and its aftermath to endless debates, hollow shouting matches about rebuilding the southern towns and metropolises, empty hollering contests about the political implications of these awful days in the final weeks of summer.

This noise – trust this: it will become an imposing sound and fury – will be created because the real issue at hand is far too frightening for far too many in this great and awesome land to ponder. And so, in no time, the real issue – how we treat one another, whether we respect our neighbors, all, no matter the tone of each other’s skin – will once again be dismissed and left unaddressed, just as the memories of all of those dark-skinned faces will soon be pushed into the shadowy corners of the attics in which we, the people, store our most fearsome and unwanted recollections.

Hidden.

Buried.

Forgotten – except perhaps by one woman who had suffered the worst of the storm, not to mention the best and the worst of years of life upon this great land. In the time following the horrific hurricane, this anonymous woman stood before the television photographers to brush drying tears from her beautiful dark-skinned face and cry, “How can this be happening in the greatest nation on the earth?”

Shop Talk
Dennis Brown

The Theater, The Theater, Oh How I Love The Theater – An excellent collection of interviews with the likes of Edward Albee, Lanford Wilson, David Merrick, Jason Miller and William Goldman. Tennessee Williams’ mother, Edwina Dakin Williams, steals the show, but ol’ Tennessee gets the best quote, a line that summarizes the quintessential sorrow of a Tennessee Williams play. “I was always falling down during the 1960s,” he tells Dennis Brown, “and I would always say, before falling, ‘I’m about to fall down,’ and almost nobody, nobody ever caught me.”

CHICAGO VOICES: An excerpt from “Finding Momma” by Jotham Burrello

The radio was broken. No static, nothing. And I needed a distraction between my ears. Even a sappy love song by the latest one-hit-wonders would have done the trick. I had not seen Momma in fourteen years, and the quiet forced me to tally every Christmas, every birthday, every day I had been away. I now regretted leaving my husband and daughter at the Super 8 in Gallipolis. I have never felt so alone. Like the man on the moon.

Jotham Burrello is the producer of two new dvds on writing available at www.erpmedia.net. “So, Is It Done?” examines the revision process. Hosted by Janet Burroway, the dvd features interviews and bonus features with Robert Olen Butler, Rosellyn Brown and others. “Submit” walks viewers through the process for submitting short stories, featuring insights from editors and writers such as Gina Frangello, Todd Dills and Joe Meno. “Finding Momma” appears in Polyphony Press’ “The Thing About Love Is…”

The Middle of the Night
Daniel Stolar

3 a.m. – The best books? Those you can’t put down. The best stories? Those that stay with you. The best writers? Those who get inside your head, illustrating your past, present and even your future. Each story in this moving collection possesses a bruised tenderness. Each features characters and situations that ring with the fullness (in big and small ways, in sad and funny ways) of real life. “In a real dark night of the soul,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.” Stolar illuminates the dark night – and the world around us – with an aching longing for the brightness of dawn.

Amsterdam
Ian McEwan

Dutch Treat – A very smart, very clever book; not unlike a David Mamet examination of how grown men behave among other grown men, but written with wit and understatement rather than fuck-you aggressiveness. “How prosperous, how influential, how they had flourished under a government they had despised for almost seventeen years,” McEwan writes of his main characters – a tabloid newspaper publisher and a composer of classical symphonies – as each stumbles forward certain of their correctness. The story starts strong and ends surprisingly, yet, in retrospect, inevitably – which is, of course, the most satisfactory ending.

The Paris Review (no. 171)
Edited by Brigid Hughes

The Art of Fiction, Indeed – Many, many lessons to be gleaned from the Tobias Wolff interview: (1) “The one thing I would say to a young writer who wanted counsel is to be patient. Time, which is your enemy in almost everything in this life, is your friend in writing. It is. If you can relax into time, not fight it, not fret at its passing, you will become better.” (2) “I tend to hew to values of exactitude, clarity and velocity … There’s no right way to tell all stories, only the right way to tell a particular story.” (3) “It’s the gravity of daily obligations and habit, the connections you have to your friends and your work, your family, your place – even the compromises that are required of you to get through this life. The compromises don’t diminish us, they humanize us – it’s the people who won’t, or who think they don’t, who end up monsters in this world.” (4) Shelley’s line: “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” (5) “That’s the way we view our lives, by way of stories. Jesus taught mostly in stories – in parables: the good Samaritan, the woman at the well, the prodigal son. The teachings of that ancient Taoist text the Chuang Tzu are essentially a series of parables that force the mind into unexpected avenues of consideration and intuition. That’s what story can do that statement can’t do, axiom can’t do, rules and commandments can’t do. And that’s why Chekhov with his freedom from programs and vulgar designs continues to have this power over us.” (6) “And the most radical political writing of all is that which makes you aware of the reality of another human being. Self-absorbed as we are, self-imprisoned even, we don’t feel that often enough.”

Exhibitionism
Christopher Makos
On City Streets: Chicago, 1964-2004
Gary Stochl
Photographs
Eudora Welty
Havana 1933
Walker Evans

Similar Differences – These four very different photographers offer everything from provocative, commercial portraits of pumped-up pin-up boys posed in erotic mischief to evocative, candid documentaries of the damned, the proud, the walking wounded. The cultural, geographic and artistic differences between the four are evident; but, viewed together, the dissimilarities begin to blur. Walker Evans and Christopher Makos are from opposite worlds but explore similar subjects: human grace and the defining power of status objects. Gary Stochl and Eudora Welty lived more than 700 miles apart, but both depict the triumph and defeat of ordinary life. On a planet in which any two human beings share 99.9 percent of the same identical DNA, the forces of commerce, politics and religion can only succeed by magnifying the differences between us. Art reminds us what we have in common.

AN APPRECIATION: Jack London, Brain Merchant

Look: We could spend a lot of time debating Jack London. God knows the pseudo-scholars have, when they haven’t merely ignored him, hoping he’d fade away.

We could devote precious hours to sitting around in circles (not to mention talking around in circles) about Jack London’s Socialist and Utopian politics, about his Nietzschean and Freudian philosophies. We could write papers – condemning or defending or both (don’t laugh: one cannot delve too deeply into London-abilia before standing ankle-deep in such published blather) – about his portrayal of women, men, Indians, Caucasians and, of course, dogs. We could analyze, scrutinize and pulverize Jack London’s treatment of masculinity and morality, his approach to sexuality and spirituality, and (the all-time favorites of English Majors Who Know Just Enough Psychology To Be Dangerous) his relationship with his father.

But then we’d be wasting time not reading Jack London’s stories. And his stories are well worth reading because Jack London was one of our country’s great storytellers.

Jack London’s full name was John Griffith London. He was born on January 12, 1876, in San Francisco – and he lived dozens of extraordinary lives before his death a mere 40 years later. He left school when he was 14 years old, tackling an assortment of odd jobs: in a cannery, a jute mill, a laundry and a power plant; working first as an oyster pirate, then “jumping ship” to become a member of the Fish Patrol in San Francisco Bay. When he was 17, he shipped out to Japan, hunting seals. By the time he was 21, he was back in North America, heading up to the Klondike for the Gold Rush of 1897. Once there, he soon decided to abandon manual labor and instead become what he called a “brain merchant,” a writer.

London began as a so-called regionalist, writing stories that took place in the Yukon and often featured Malemute Kid as his central character. His yarns became enormously popular with readers and tremendously profitable for their author. With such tales as “To Build a Fire” and “The Call of the Wild,” he soon gained wide acclaim, across Russia and Europe as well as throughout the United States. Finally, in 1916, at his home in California, he died of uremia, a form of kidney disease.

Jack London is sometimes dismissed as a not-serious writer, a mere adventure scribe, a plot-spinner for boys. While he freely admitted to often writing for the money (in fact, by some accounts, he died the wealthiest writer of his day) his best writing endures and even obscures the remarkable story of his own life. Born 41 years after Mark Twain, the same year as Sherwood Anderson and 23 years before Ernest Hemingway, Jack London maintains a firm place in our literary heritage, reminding us always to push on, fear not and brave what comes.

Adapted from Michael Burke’s “Braving Jack London,” which appeared in the winter 1998 edition of Sport Literate magazine.

POSTSCRIPT: W.S. Merwin

The only thing better than going to a poetry reading is not going to a poetry reading. So, after meeting on the steps of The Newberry Library, the writer Kevin Grandfield and I decided to make an abrupt about-face, walk north a few blocks, and enjoy an early supper at Albert’s Café. Albert’s is in the old coach house behind the mansion that once housed Bigg’s; it’s the closest place we have to a European café in Chicago. After our meal, Kevin brandished a handful of Merwin poems and we read across the table to one another – “Every year without knowing it I have passed the day/When the last fires will wave to me …” Later, Kevin and I, shadowed by the echoes of Merwin’s good words, walked, talked and laughed our way toward home through the quiet of Lincoln Park and an ever-more darkening night.

The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury
Sam Weller

Above and Beyond – A recent weekday evening. The crowded auditorium in the Harold Washington Library. After a musical prelude by keyboardist Kirk Brown and welcoming remarks from Columbia College’s Randall Albers, Booklist’s Donna Seaman interviews the glib, charming Sam Weller on stage. Four local actors – Tom Mula, Paul Amandes, Doreen Feitelberg and Will Casey – present selections from three Bradbury works with near-perfect precision. And then a “conference call” with Bradbury himself – at 85, he doesn’t travel much from California. Sam Weller sits beneath the white lights on the wide, empty stage and Bradbury’s voice emanates from the rafters like God. And of what does Bradbury speak? Love.

Congregations in America
Mark Chaves

Spiritual Life, Spiritual Death – As a young boy growing up in the Catholic church, I was taught to sing of my love for the Lord: “Sons of God, hear His holy word, gather ‘round the table of the Lord, eat his body, drink his blood …” Perhaps it was crooning about cannibalism that eventually drove me from the church. Maybe it was the dull, pedestrian, un-engaging repetition of the Mass week after week: the rote recitation of meaningless prayers, the automatic genuflection. For these and other reasons I’ve moved away from practicing religion to studying spirituality, which often feels like a revolutionary act in today’s America – where corporate-media and corporate-politics depend upon a fearful, unthinking populace well-trained in robotic behavior by corporate-religions to continue mindless consumption. This book by Mark Chaves, a professor of sociology at the University of Arizona and a dear friend, offers equal doses of comfort and concern. Drawing on findings from the first-ever National Congregations Survey, Chaves notes that there are more than 300,000 religious congregations in the United States. More than 60 percent of American adults have attended a service within the last year; perhaps as many as 25 percent attend services in any given week. Interestingly, worship, religious education and even the arts are central activities in congregations, involving more people and exhausting more resources than political activities or social service. “For the vast majority of congregations,” Chaves writes, “social services constitute a minor and peripheral aspect of their organizational activities.” He notes: “As with social services, the overall extent to which congregations engage in politics is rather meager.” He adds: “A healthy proportion of all live performance at drama and dance viewed by American adults occurs in congregations’ worship services.” This is all good news for those of us involved in politics – maybe it’s not as bad as we think! – but bad news for those of us involved in the arts – oh no, there goes our audience! Audiences are created, after all; just imagine the kinds of audiences we’re cultivating with the phony drama, plastic music and syrupy emotion found in houses of worship. When you consider that all of this insipid entertainment-disguised-as-religion-disguised-as-entertainment is mounted upon hypocritical codes of behavior, you realize we’re breeding audiences that expect nothing and are shocked by real thought, disturbed by true feeling and outraged by reality. Sadly, the worst is yet to come: Surveys also show that those entering and participating in seminary are less intelligent than their predecessors. Slowly but surely, our audiences will wither. Slowly but surely, religion will smother our spirit.

AN APPRECIATION: The Genius of Guinness

With apologies to Mr. Yeats

Down by the beer garden my love and I did meet;
She passed the beer garden with little snow-white feet.
She bid me, “Have another Guinness – best of all the beers!”
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

With apologies to Mr. Joyce

and I asked with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked have another Guinness yes and first I put my hands around the glass and I could feel my heart yes going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

With apologies to Mr. Shaw

Higgins: Stop. Say, ‘a cup of tea.’
Liza: C-c-c-I can’t. C-cup.
Higgins: Good. Say, ‘Have another Guinness.’
Liza: Have another Guinness.
Higgins: By Jupiter, she’s done it at the first shot.

CHICAGO VOICES: An excerpt from “Julia Says She Loves Me, But I Miss You Every Night,” by Robert N. Georgalas

All my life I have been taught to respect the privacy of others. So I do not pry. What people do in their own space and time is their business. And you rarely make friends by intruding where you’re not wanted. Yet, there I was, standing above the desk, captured by the page of crayoned letters, then pulling the small white chair from under the desktop and sitting. As I recall, I had gone into Clothilde’s room to scold her once more for leaving her toys strewn about the house. “Do you want someone to get hurt?” I had planned to say. “I mean, isn’t it dangerous enough that the floors are all tile or stone?” But the room behind the closed door was empty, the curtains drawn against the sun, the pillows and blankets on the bed unruffled. As always, Clothilde had gone somewhere without my notice. And because the dog had not bounded up the stairs after me, yapping at my heels, I suspected Clothilde had taken her along as well.

Robert N. Georgalas’ stories have appeared in Rambunctious Review, Hair Trigger, Urban Spaghetti and other magazines. He is a professor at College of DuPage and a founder of Polyphony Press. “Julia Says She Loves Me, But I Miss You Every Night” first appeared in bowwow magazine.

REJOINDER: Mark Wukas on Thesauri

“Dear Sir: Having just read your latest blog entry, I take the gravest possible exception to your inclusion of a thesaurus in your list of five essential books. As someone who has earned his salt both as a writer and a teacher of writing, I have come to view thesauri as enemies of writers for several reasons:

• They encourage writers to use words not usually in their vocabularies, and therefore making their prose stilted and unnatural.


• They give the mistaken impression that big words make for better writing, which they emphatically do not.


• They make writers lazy. You will not find Flaubert's "le mot juste" in any god-damned thesaurus. If the word is not in your head, don't use it.


• They do not improve vocabulary. If you want to improve your vocabulary, a) browse the dictionary, or b) study Latin.

I hope you will see fit to share my remarks with your faithful readers."

Mark Wukas teaches English at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois. He previously worked in public relations and journalism, including stints at City News Bureau and United Press International. He also edited “The Thing About Love Is …” and taught fiction writing at Columbia College of Chicago.

The Elements of Style
William Strunk and E.B. White
The Art of Fiction
David Lodge
The Thin Man
Dashiell Hammett
Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary
Webster's Thesaurus

The 5 Books Every Writer Needs -- I once groused to the writer and actor George Savino that I possessed too many books -- more books, even, than fit into my many bookcases. "I know why we keep books," George said quietly. "It's so we can display them as Knowledge Trophies." Since George's bulls-eye observation I have done a better job of giving away finished books and while I still have a long way to go I also now pass along the advice when I am invited into college classes to discuss writing. "There are only five books every writer needs to keep," I announce somewhat dramatically, but it always grabs the students' attention. "A handy dictionary. A good thesaurus. 'The Elements of Style' by Strunk and White because it's the best grammar and style book you'll ever read. 'The Art of Fiction' by David Lodge because it's the best book on form you'll ever read. And a touchstone book -- a book that'll remind you why in the hell you fell in love with writing. Lately, for me, 'The Thin Man' does the trick. No story starts faster. No story is more tightly written."

CHICAGO VOICES: Robert Creason on U.S. Senator Bill Frist, "Justice Sunday" and the Republican Party

The participation of Bill Frist, the Senate Majority Leader, in the "Justice
Sunday" telecast organized by the Christian right is another clear indication
that the Republican party has been hijacked by right-wing fundamentalists. For a prominent senator to associate himself with such an event reflects a blatant refusal to accept a secular society.

Robert Creason lives and works in Chicago. This letter appeared in The New York Times on April 16, 2005.

W.B. Yeats: Selected Poetry
Edited by A. Norman Jeffares

Emerald Memories – I bought this paperback about a dozen years ago from a Broderick’s Newsagents in Galway – or maybe it was in Westport or even some other town. Wherever I purchased the book, I clearly remember reading Yeats’ masterful words as my family and I traveled to and from Sligo, Ardmore, Killarney and Shannon. Along the way, I scribbled notes on the book’s inside covers, random thoughts and observations that now read like poetry:

A wedding at the Hotel Silver Swan. Monomania. Two half past … and ten past one. Baby in a dung trough. Not mean; wounded. "The poor creature, her health is failing." The brook, the birds chirp-chirping, the wetness around my shoes, the fat cow’s moo, the sun stays warm – warm on my face. Feeding black Smoky (with the brown belly), tugging grass as a tractor thrashes the rolling field, reaching over rusted barbed wire bound to square, wooden posts – farm cats trotting, toppling, wrestling, running again – the whomp-whomp of Smoky’s lips closing around a handful of pulled weeds and grass, the chomp-grind of her teeth, two then three blows of air – she’s a chest-high pony and I find myself thinking of Black Rages … Later, Bobby Darrin and Fats Domino wail from the tractor’s radio and Goldie the dog jumps aboard when called. The 10-mile neighbor kid who four years ago spent three months in Boston – and came home talking about electrical storms, the likes he’d never seen. Ireland: where you can’t find a straight road – or get a straight answer. Pip the border collie, too. And the glass blower at Waterford. Step dancing. Residential gardens. Grandpa’s hand shadows. Shanty, lace-curtain, bicycle-seat Irish.

The Pet Psychic: What the Animals Tell Me
Sonya Fitzpatrick

The Cat’s Meow – It’s impossible to criticize a book that’s inscribed to you and your cat. (Sonya might pardon a finicky assessment, but Keeper would never forgive me. Plus, Robert Charles waited a long time in line to get Sonya to sign the book – and he wasn’t doing all that for no feline!) So let me just say that The Pet Psychic is one of the best acts in show business today. On the page as well as on her popular television program, Sonya Fitzpatrick is sincere and convincing as she “senses” the thoughts and feelings of our companions from the animal kingdom. She thankfully downplays her “healing” powers and concentrates on bolstering the true and never-ending love that exists among beasts – whether two-legged, four-legged, winged or finned.

CHICAGO VOICES: Michael Burke’s introduction of Tracy Baim at the Community Media Workshop’s 2005 Studs Terkel Awards

I’m thrilled to introduce our first Terkel Award recipient. I came home a few weeks ago and told my boyfriend, Robert: "Great news! Great news! At the Terkel event, I get to introduce one of the major gay icons of journalism – not Anderson Cooper, but the other one." … "Tracy Baim?" Robert said. "Indeed," I replied …

So: A conservative rabbi, a high priest and a deputy mufti walk into this news conference. That sounds like the start of some sort of joke, but it actually happened one week ago today.

And what united these representatives of the world’s great religions? The struggle for peace? A call for mutual understanding? An honest attempt to find common ground among diverse peoples in these troubled times? Well – not exactly. These wise men had set aside everything they disagreed on to stand together and jointly condemn a gay pride festival being planned for Jerusalem. Now, I could say a lot about this, but the only thing I know for sure is: They’re going to miss one fabulous parade!

I also know that the news conference was yet another attempt by the “powers that be” to silence “the opinions of others.” Another example of how “the mighty and the strong” work to stifle “those with the smaller voices.” And further evidence that, now more than ever, society needs people who – like Studs Terkel and Tracy Baim – confront the powers of silence, challenge the mighty and the strong – and know a good party when they see one!

Tracy received her journalism degree from Drake University and started working in the field nearly two decades ago. From the start, she was influenced by her birth-Dad, who was a photographer, and two important journalists – her mom and step-Dad, Joy Darrow and Steven Pratt.

Today, Tracy is the publisher of Chicago’s largest and still-growing family of gay, lesbian, bi and trans publications and broadcast outlets. In fact, Windy City Times will be celebrating its 20th anniversary this year with a big gala in September that I’m sure you’re all invited to. And to prove Tracy knows a good party when she sees one – and is an influential civic champion – she’s also been instrumental in bringing the Gay Games to Chicago next year.

Over the years, Tracy’s work with Windy City Times, Outlines, Nightlines, Blacklines, En La Vida, Identity, and Windy City Radio – to name just a few – have showcased the voices of thousands of Chicagoans. She’s chronicled the day-to-day stories of our ordinary and sometimes not-so-ordinary lives. And in that great Terkel tradition, Tracy’s work has confirmed that our stories have merit, our voices are worthy, our lives matter.

At its best, Tracy’s work – like Studs’ work – enriches all of us by reminding us that the world is a very small place – and it pays to be a good neighbor. And so it’s my honor to present this Studs Terkel Award for Journalistic Excellence to Tracy Baim.

Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote
Edited by Gerald Clarke

Who’s Who – Truman Capote was one of our country’s best and worst writers – at times creating pure and memorable prose; at others, languishing in bathtubs of bubbles and gossip. These letters were by no means written with any high literary purpose in mind; rather, they’re not unlike the letters many others write – brief telegrams hinting at juicy tales, short notes skimming over private dramas. But Capote was writing to and about everyone from Jackie Kennedy to Perry Smith, from Harper Lee to Andy Warhol. The book reminded me of a dinner party in Washington, D.C., several years ago. My friends and I started playing the question-and-answer game, “Who would you like to know if you could know anyone in the world?” My friend Lisa Tate offered the evening’s most whimsical answer: “Truman Capote – because then I’d know everyone else, too.”

The 42nd Parallel
John Dos Passos
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
David Foster Wallace

Writing – There is writing you admire for story and writing you admire for writing. In other words, as is the case with these two very good and very different books, storytelling can overshadow the story being told. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The pyrotechnics on the page (detailed footnotes, stream-of-consciousness passages, and other dramatic variations in point of view, voice, style and form) fuel the innovation that keeps literature alive and lively. Imagine where we’d be if there were only one way to tell every story. Of course, the very best literature weaves together the story and the telling in a seamless way.

After Hours (Summer 2002, Summer 2004, Winter 2004)
Edited by Albert DeGenova and P. Hertel
Slipstream (Issue 1, Volume 1)
Edited by Nicholas J. Aquina, et al
The Prairie Light Review (Spring/Summer 2004)
Edited by Emily Ruggles
Essai (Volume 1)
Edited by Robert N. Georgalas, et al
Other Voices (Issue 41)
Edited by Gina Frangello and JoAnne Ruvoli
Another Chicago Magazine (Issue 42)
Edited by Barry Silesky
New American Writing (Issue 19)
Edited by Paul Hoover and Maxine Chernoff
Tin House (Am I Blue?)
Edited by Rob Spillman
Granta (Hidden Stories)
Edited by Ian Jack

Guiding Lights – Aside from bank accounts and budgets, there’s nothing small about “small” magazines. In fact, they are often filled with big voices, which echo off one another in what Jorge Luis Borges described as the singular dream of literature. From the poetry of Charles Rossiter to the stories of Matthew Vollmer to the good advice of Andre Dubus III cautioning writers to avoid worrying, “How does this story I wrote reflect back on me? How does it make me look?” – each writer and every “small” magazine is making a big contribution to helping us find our way through life.

AROUND TOWN:
The Messiah, 2003 and 2004

I’m standing near the checkout counter in Performers Music. It’s a cold, weekday evening in November 2003 but the small shop cluttered with bins of sheet music on the ninth floor of the Fine Arts Building feels warm, even cozy. I’m thumbing through the score of Handel’s famous and popular oratorio.

A curly haired man with bright eyes behind glasses turns toward me and smiles. “Where are you singing, ‘The Messiah’?”

I feel my face growing red. “Well,” I say. “If,” I say. “If I sing ‘The Messiah,’ I’ll be singing at the Civic Opera House next Tuesday night.” Saying the words aloud – “Civic … Opera … House” – makes the prospect of the evening all the more intimidating.

The man’s smile widens to an eager grin. “Oh, you must,” he says. “You’ll have fun.” He steps forward slightly. “What do you sing?”

I find myself looking down. “Well,” I say. “Tenor, I guess.”

“Oh, you must,” the man says again.

“Well,” I say, still looking down. I’ve got enough Irish in me to sing in public at the drop of a hat but I’m not exactly blessed with an emerald sense of melody. “I don’t want to ruin it for everyone else.”

“But you won’t,” he says like he knows.

I sigh and look up. “I don’t have a trained voice.”

The man pauses, then smiles warmly. “You should do it,” he says. “I’m conducting.”

I can’t help but grin. I say I’ll take our encounter as a sign from Handel Himself that I should sing this 262-year-old masterwork. I ask the man his name and we shake hands.

“Tenor, eh?” Stanley Sperber says with a laugh. “I’ll remember to call on you for the solos.”

Flash-forward to December 2004: My boyfriend Robert Charles and I are standing in one of the crowded upper balconies of the Civic Opera House. I didn’t hesitate to sing again this year but I also didn’t feel completely comfortable until the Maestro stepped onto the podium, turned to the audience and encouraged all of us “to be not afraid.” Within minutes, the orchestra’s music and our 3,500 voices were filling the beautiful hall with an awesome wonder; indeed, the sopranos were once again sounding like angels.

Famous Last Words:
Fond Farewells, Deathbed Diatribes and Exclamations Upon Expiration
Compiled by Ray Robinson

You Don’t Say – The best line, naturally, is attributed to Oscar Wilde: “I am in a duel to death with this wallpaper. One of us has to go.” The second best line belongs to Pancho Villa: “Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.” Both are likely fiction but it warms my capitalistic heart to think that P.T. Barnum might have actually said, “How were the circus receipts in Madison Square Garden?”

The Crucible
Arthur Miller

The Play’s the Thing – I could say a lot about this play. I could observe that three centuries have now passed since the Salem witch hunts – but the American people remain dangerously enthralled by superstitions and theocracy. I could dissect Miller’s smart use of interspersed narrative to deepen a reader’s understanding, a director’s insight and an actor’s portrayal. I could even recount my recent visit, over Thanksgiving weekend, to the Rebecca Nurse homestead in Danvers, Massachusetts – describing how I felt the tangible chill of fear and fanaticism that you often feel emanating from the dark earth of awful tragedy. But instead I find myself fascinated by a line scribbled by hand, in blue ink with a co-ed’s rounded lettering, on the inside back cover of this used Penguin Plays edition: “Danny wanted to wear leather pants tonight but I talked him into wearing jeans.” To me, the line is a parallel play – a 14-word drama about desire, puritan ethics, young girls and men, vanity, societal pressure to conform, and the small tragedies of everyday life.

Rare Earths
Deena Linett

Rare Delight – Before I picked up Deena Linett’s book of poems, I had the pleasure of hearing her read at The Cliff Dwellers club downtown. The artist Aimée Picard had incorporated some of Linett’s poetry into a series of daring and delicate textile pieces titled, “Material Evidence.” The other guests and I enjoyed strolling around – and even beneath – the breathtaking art exhibit before we crowded into the Louis Sullivan room to hear Linett. The one-two punch of the evening – art mixed with poetry, poetry combined with art – should have prepared me for the delights of “Rare Earths” but I was still surprised. The collection is layered with narrative and point of view and voice – and meaning. These poems carry the fullness of a good novel.

Picnic, Lightning
Billy Collins

Faith – Reading Collins makes me believe that one day poetry will replace preaching – and the Gods, we will someday see, live merely within our imaginations.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Mark Haddon

Epic Minimalism – Homer sang of a hero’s journey that traversed the world over several years. James Joyce turned the epic upside-down, portraying one day in the ordinary life of an ordinary man. Mark Haddon now turns the epic inside-out, describing a 15-year-old autistic boy’s adventure full of mystery, danger, deceit and heartbreaking tenderness. Along the way, Haddon provides profound insights with surprising candor, but his great achievement is to forge the new frontier of “epic minimalism.” He carefully eliminates big pieces of narrative while still creating a full sketch of the emotional, physical, intellectual and cultural lives of his characters, no matter how rounded or flat each aspect might be.

The Little Book of Venom:
A Collection of Historical Insults
Compiled by Jennifer Higgie

Odium – Now that Hate is officially enshrined as a moral value of our great nation, this slender volume offers many timely pointers on the true expression of utter disgust. Here’s D.H. Lawrence to Katherine Mansfield: “I loathe you. You revolt me stewing in your consumption … the Italians were quite right to have nothing to do with you. You are a loathsome reptile – I hope you die.” Ah, yes: the old Lawrence charm! Touching as ever. Of course, Mansfield was not about to be outdone. “E.M. Forster,” she wrote, “never gets any further than warming the teapot. He’s a rare fine hand at that. Feel this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain’t going to be no tea.” How elevating! Indeed, as we celebrate our renewed hatefulness, let us turn to and learn from the viperous assaults of the past. Oscar Wilde on Alexander Pope: “There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.” F. Scott Fitzgerald on Gertrude Stein: “What an old covered wagon she is.” And William Faulkner on Henry James: “One of the nicest old ladies I ever met.”

CHICAGO VOICES: An excerpt from "A Man Walks Into A Bar," by Edward Underhill

Stop me if you've heard this before: A man walks into a bar. Sometimes the man is carrying a duck and sometimes he has a frog on his head. Occasionally, the guy says something to the bartender as he enters. Sometimes the bartender says something back. I was thinking about this man on a stifling August afternoon as I walked into a bar in downtown West Palm Beach. I was not, it should be observed, carrying a duck or wearing a frog. I was, however, there to see a man about a horse.

Edward Underhill's short stories have been published in various legal publications. He is a past winner of the "Chicago Lawyer Annual Fiction Contest." Ed's plays also have been produced in Chicago and Ohio. "A Man Walks Into A Bar" appears in The Thing About Hope Is ..., published by Polyphony Press.

Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes

November 3, 2004 -- This is about more than feeling "blue." This is the knowledge that things in this country -- and throughout the world -- will get much worse before they ever get better. Today, the poets are weeping.

The Unfeeling President
E.L. Doctorow
Understanding the Christian Roots of My Political Depression
John Shelby Spong
Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia
Gore Vidal

No debate – Of course George W. Bush cannot admit a single mistake or acknowledge any doubt; like all self-righteous fundamentalists, he will go to absurd lengths to deny reality because even the softest whisper of a second thought will cause his entire house of cards to tumble. A mere doubt might lead to others more serious: Maybe, he might wonder, I have, indeed, ordered these troops to die in vain. Maybe, in fact, I don’t have a clue what it’s like to live from paycheck to paycheck. Maybe, after all, I really am serving as President under false pretenses. It is 2004 in the United States of America and pious, dim-witted zealots are still enforcing Creationism and outlawing evolution. It is 2004 in the United States of America and simpleton evangelicals continue to define the world in black-and-white terms. Like them, Bush will not admit he is wrong on one thing because that would mean he is wrong on many things in the fragile, shallow, pathetic world in which they reside. And why do Bush and the other crackpots get away with this? There are at least three reasons. First, the “opposition” party offers too little opposition and is largely nothing more than a parade of panderers hurrying to catch the Hail Jesus bandwagon. Second, what passes for “journalism” in the United States of America is shameful, though not surprising. Talk about living in some other world? Think of all the newspapers that to this day publish horoscopes foretelling your future. And that leads to my third reason: Think of all the bombastic people who trust the “truth” of their horoscope. I am less concerned about what will occur on November 2 than I am worried about what will occur on November 3 and the next day and the next day and so on. So I will vote for John Kerry and I will vote for John Kerry with enthusiasm. Why? Because men, women and children are getting killed to satisfy George W. Bush’s apocalyptic yearnings. Enough is enough.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Edward Albee

Chills – How do you know when a play is a masterpiece? When you can quote just about any random line – and feel the chills. Our friends Jeff Osman and Sham Hoyte were visiting from California this past week. Sometime in a long, happy evening filled with vodka and laughter, Jeff turned to me and said: “I’ll hold your hand when it’s dark and you’re afraid of the bogey man, and I’ll tote your gin bottles out after midnight, so no one’ll see … but I will not light your cigarette. And that, as they say, is that.”

POSTSCRIPT: Irving B. Harris

F. Scott Fitzgerald got it wrong: There are second acts in American lives – and no better proof exists than the great and good life of Irving B. Harris. A shrewd businessman, Mr. Harris also was a visionary leader in the early childhood field, promoting the wisdom of helping children and at-risk families from the earliest possible moments (i.e., during pregnancy) and working across disciplines (early education, social work, public policy advocacy, politics, research, teacher training, etc.). Mr. Harris’ “second act” did not begin until his sixties; over the course of the following thirty years, he began to genuinely change the way our society views and values young children. Walking through the airport in Nashville a few years ago, I asked Mr. Harris to describe the secret of his success. He smiled widely. “Luck,” he said. “I’ve been very, very lucky.”

The Night Torn Mad With Footsteps
Charles Bukowski

Hello, Again – Bukowski is one of those writers you think you outgrow only to find, years later, that now you get it, now you’ve finally lived long enough to really understand what they’re saying.

“my god,” some will say, “all Chinaski writes about
are cats!”

“my god,” some used to say, “all Chinaski writes about
are whores!”

but these complainers will still keep buying my
books: they love the way I irritate
them.

Ah, yes. Love, indeed.

Leon Golub: Echoes of the Real
Jon Bird

The Messenger – Leon Golub was a gritty artist who never looked the other way when it came to depicting the shocking realities of life. The horrific torture photos – from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to the private prison in Brazoria County, Texas, when George W. Bush was Governor to the certain abuses occurring today in Texas, others states and around the world – are grotesque examples of ugly human behavior. They could also be Leon Golub paintings. Entertainment confirms what we know and comforts us. Art confuses us and challenges us to grapple with the truth, no matter how beautiful or ugly. Leon Golub was a true artist.

In Our Time
Ernest Hemingway

The 3 Elements of Great Writing – All great writing is authentic. The voice is unmistakably real and the story is unwaveringly true and there is an organic connection between the writer and what is being written. All great writing is innovative. The writer is a pioneer, discovering clever approaches to language and structure and form and story that build upon our knowledge while expanding our current understanding of literary art. Finally, all great writing is influential, changing forever how others write (or, as Tobias Wolff has pointed out, try not to write). You find the echoes of great writing in stories told years later. All of this brings me to one of our nation’s great writers, Ernest Hemingway. Strip away the larger-than-life myths, ignore his many real-life dramas, and what you are left with are the man’s stories – authentic, innovative and influential tales. “At the lake shore there was another rowboat drawn up,” one story begins. “The two Indians stood waiting.” Generations of writers have now come and gone writing in the shadows of such lines, for better, for worse, forever.

CHICAGO VOICES: An excerpt from “Chicago Visions,” by Eugene Burger

I think stories are important for humans generally, because that’s how we tell who we are, where we came from, and how this all happened. So almost every society has a myth of origin, or multiple myths of origin, to explain how the things that are taken for granted came to be. Without stories, we would have no self-definition, I think, and we would probably go crazy.

Eugene Burger is one of the country’s best magicians. He can be reached at http://www.magicbeard.com/.

POSTSCRIPT: Barack Obama

Back in the cold days of February and March 2004, well before Barack Obama was catapulted onto the national scene by his electrifying speech at the Democratic National Convention, Robert Charles and I mailed a letter to the state senator who was then struggling against a handful of tough opponents in the Illinois Democratic Primary. We stated our support for his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, saying his election would “be good for Illinois and good for the country.” But we also noted our disappointment with his position of supporting civil unions while withholding support for gay marriage, even though Robert and I recognized the political calculation of the strategy (i.e., winning the battles we can, making what progress we might). We enclosed a check and offered best wishes in the upcoming primary. To our surprise, Barack responded to our letter with a personal letter of his own: an elegant, eloquent explanation of his position crafted around the anti-miscegenation laws his white mother and black father faced in 1961 and the political jeopardy of “playing into Karl Rove’s playbook on cultural issues.” To our shock, Barack also returned our check, inviting us to first consider his response before accepting our support. What politician would ever turn down money, especially in the midst of a fierce election struggle? Barack Obama. Of course, it was the right thing – and the smart thing – to do. Robert and I immediately doubled our contribution.

Best Remembered Poems
Edited and Annotated by Martin Gardner

Chestnuts -- For kicks, Robert Charles, Eugene Burger and I have been making the rounds at many of the old Chicago joints: The Cape Cod Room, The Pump Room, Trader Vic’s, Mirabel, The Walnut Room, Lawry’s, Miller’s Pub and so on. The cocktails are generally well-poured and while the quality of the meal and service rises and falls from place to place, the tables are often crowded with customers -- and memories. People still visit these dark dining rooms not for what they are, but for what they were. The same could be said of the nearly 120 poems (and, indeed, of many of the 66 poets) in this collection. “The poems I have selected,” Martin Gardner warns in his introduction, “are not necessarily those I think are ‘best loved’ either by critics or the general public. They certainly are not the poems best loved by me.”

Call If You Need Me
The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose
Raymond Carver

Try a Little Tenderness -- We live in a hard, swift, cynical age, enraged by stress and racked by fear -- the fear that we're falling behind while everyone else is getting ahead, making more, moving faster, excelling, succeeding, winning ... happy. You can see this manifested in everything from the way grown-ups speak to one another (always interrupting, never listening) to the way in which children increasingly turn to guns and bullets to settle the score. "'Tenderness,'" Raymond Carver writes here in a commencement address, his last written prose, "that's certainly another word we don't hear much these days, and certainly not on such a public, joyful occasion as this. Think about it: When was the last time you used the word or heard it used?" Tenderness, indeed. I wept after reading, "Dreams," one of the "new" short stories featured here. I wept because it's a story about horrible things that frequently happen to ordinary people and the ways in which human beings often try to be simply decent to their neighbors. "Dreams" is just the sort of story you see televised a dozen times, night after night, on the evening news. But those "real" stories don't stand up next to Carver's fiction. He helps us see, let's us hear and above all else, he makes us feel. And to feel anything in this day and age -- when it's too easy to laugh sarcastically, when everyone is so guarded against allowing themselves to feel true emotion (let alone anything as overwhlemingly subtle as tenderness!) -- is nothing less than enobling.

Your Country is Safe from Me
Elena Lappin
First, Get a Green Card. Next, Hire a Publicist
Gary Shteyngart

The Enemy Within -- “Terrorism” is the new “Communism” -- a catch-all excuse to promulgate fear, censor the free exchange of ideas, strip away basic rights, wage war and prosecute anyone who fails to look, sound, behave or believe the same as the people in power. With the “fall of Communism” it was only a matter of time before the corporate-military alliance that runs the United States found a new great enemy in the world; after all, a soul-less system like capitalism that values profits over principles and dollars over people can only be defined positively when contrasted against nothing less than sheer evil itself. The truly disgusting -- and clearly dangerous -- downside to this political shell game is that terrorists are a real threat in a way that communists never were: missiles in Cuba posed a threat, yes; but hijacked airplanes used as missiles led to thousands of deaths on U.S. soil. The fact that Bush and his war councilors are doing so little to combat our real enemies while they build up and knock down vicious straw dogs like Saddam Hussein is grounds for treason. And it’s shocking (though not really surprising) that Americans remain asleep, obese and sedated by a culture that can’t get enough fast food or “fast news.” If we would only open our ears and eyes for longer than a passing moment, we might actually learn something about ourselves from the immigrants and new citizens like those described in these two essays from the New York Times Book Review (July 4,2004). They realize that the rights and responsibilities which come with being an American are, indeed, quite precious. Instead, we doze on the sofas of our living rooms, tummies full and minds empty, our doors closed and locked against the wrong intruders.

AROUND TOWN:
Campaign Memories from 20 Years Ago

May 16, 1984 – Seven months ago I quit my public relations job and left the Loop to work on an election campaign in northern Illinois, a congressional race in Midwest, middle-class, middle-of-the-road America. My candidate was defeated in the recent primary and now friends ask whether it was worth it – whether leaving a promising job, taking a steep pay cut and spending 16-hour days on the campaign trail was worthwhile.

I think before answering. I remember.

I was barroom politicking in a VFW hall, sharing beers and cheers with a tableful of blue-collar workers. One started a story about a “colored” guy at work and was interrupted by his pal: “’Black,” he’s ‘black.’” The storyteller apologized to us at the table, corrected his terminology and finished telling the story. I was reminded that progress comes slowly.

Another working man in a different beer hall had another story to tell. He works with his hands and told me how he was worried that he was slowly losing his job. The year before last he only worked 112 days, he explained, this past year he only worked 93 days and now even his sturdy wife was scared because this year looked no better. The man could see it coming – no work, no paycheck, unemployment lines – and all he could do was shrug. The best I could offer was a sort of intellectual shrug. “Keep the faith,” I told him.

I spent one night cornered in a small living room crowded with men and women who sipped champagne, nibbled shrimp goodies and interviewed candidates who were called on the carpet before them. The group chastised a particular candidate when the politician revealed how he would prefer to be notified when his teen-age daughter purchased contraceptives. Between sips and bites, one woman interviewer leaned forward and flashed a phony smile. “But don’t you think that’s a grossly middle-class attitude?” she scolded. “Maybe it is,” the candidate mumbled, fumbled. I kept quiet.

At a distant, more relaxed occasion I shared dinner with a young woman who discussed the prides and pressures of farm life and commiserated that modern machinery made farming easier but detracted from that earthy feeling of working the soil with your hands.

During a political rally sometime later, I got to talking with a woman and her son. I rattled off the statistic that there are 34.4 million Americans who pass their days in poverty only to have the mother nod her head and say softly, “I know. I’m one of them.”

Along the campaign trail, I watched politicians make plays at breakfast gatherings of senior citizens by talking about the past. While throughout it all, most senior citizens in the room wanted to hear about the future. What’s to become of Social Security? What’s stopping the next world war from starting? What’s in store for our grandchildren? I wondered if the future is not cherished more by those who expected fewer days ahead.

I observed politicians scramble to grab Page 1 coverage for their position favoring the completion of a local freeway project – a project that had so many election-time supporters it became increasingly difficult to ascertain just where the opposition to the freeway was coming from. I spent too many lone, late nights listening to self-proclaimed politicos blabber on with big-shot talk about friends known and deals cut. I witnessed a more graceful politician tiptoe along the political fence by discussing two opposing candidates from within the same part, calling one candidate “nice,” but referring to the other as “super nice.”

And I saw other, better politicians.

I mean the kind who listened to a man talk about the humiliation of waiting in line for a chunk of government-handout cheese – and truly heard what was being said. I mean the kind who begged away from joining a protest demonstration because he knew he really had no reason to participate but to gain needed newspaper fanfare. I mean the kind who realized a public official’s life is, indeed, a public life, which amounts to no life at all.

“I wanted to help out because I thought it’d be a great way to get to know some people,” a campaign recruit explained when she volunteered. Ever so simply, that’s what the past seven months come down to for me. This past half year, I have developed a deeper appreciation of people and the way people operate: how they fear, how they hope, why they keep slugging away. I have learned that the campaign trail is a winding road to the heart of America – to the dreams, pains and promises that are the soul of America.

Now, is it a road worth walking? Damn right.

“Was the campaign worth it? Take a look” was first published by the Chicago Sun-Times on Wednesday, May 16, 1984.

The Personal is Political
Tony Hendra

All About Me -- Wouldn’t you just love to hear Diana Sands tell her side of this story? “Tony Hendra?” you can just hear her saying. “He was always trying to get me to sleep with him. And here’s the best part: The more I insulted him, the more he wanted me. Years later, when we finally did sleep together, it was awful. I tried to make him feel better by telling him it was just all about politics. In reality, he was just a zero in the sack.” This New York Times magazine essay (July 4, 2004) is Look-At-Me! writing at its worst -- self-absorbed, self-indulgent, completely void of perspective and insight, transparent to everyone except the writer himself.

Ulysses
James Joyce
James Joyce
Edna O'Brien
yes I said yes I will Yes:
A Celebration of James Joyce, Ulysses, and 100 Years of Bloomsday
Edited by Nola Tully
Joyce Images
Bob Cato and Greg Vitiello, with an introduction by Anthony Burgess
Bloomsday, Bloody Bloomsday
John Banville

ReJoyce -- Reading Joyce is like being present at the very moment of Creation -- only with many more laughs. And I have my friend, the writer Kevin Grandfield, to thank for inviting me to be among the handful of readers in the crowded Cliff Dwellers Club at the recent 100th anniversary of Bloomsday. The other readers included: Charles Sheehan, the Irish Counsel General; scholar Claudia Traudt; the actors Robert Reidy, Lawrence McCauley and Courtney Baros; Kevin himself; and Rory Childers, undoubtedly the most authentic voice of the evening. Randy, raunchy, rambling and brilliant, Ulysses tops the world's great scriptures by showing us what life really is -- for better and for worse.

From Hanging Chad to Baghdad
Editorial Cartoons by David Horsey

Smile When Your Heart is Breaking -- The funniest cartoon I have ever seen appeared in The New Yorker after their cartoon-less issue published right after September 11. A well-dressed woman and a man wearing a checkered sports jacket are sitting side-by-side at a bar. The woman says to the guy: "I thought I'd never laugh again. Then I saw your jacket." One or two of Horsey's renderings come close to conveying that sort of truth (he's a two-time Pulitzer winner for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer); but, all in all, I'm left thinking that successful cartoons are like minimalist literature: they conjoin rather than explain. In other words, they leave you connect the dots.

All Hands On
THE2NDHAND Reader
Edited by Todd Dills
When the Messenger is Hot
Elizabeth Crane

Vox Populi -- Another Printers Row Book Fair has come and gone, and we're all a little better because of it. My clearest impressions from this year's two-day festival include: the big blue-and-white Chicago Tribune tents, which added a pervasive air of suburbanized money to the proceedings; heavy-hitter writers (thanks to some of that suburbanized money, of course) like Jim Harrison, who leaned into the microphone in the echoing Winter Garden atop the Harold Washington Library and growled about God and sacrifice and open spaces and just where a guy could get a good steak in this town (Gibson's, he suggests); the young woman passing out inside and the young man passing out outside of the tent on Dearborn during Chuck Palahniuk's reading, and the river of fans who twisted around-the-corner and down-the-block for Palahniuk's autograph afterward; local poetry czar C.J. Laity posted at his table (or was he tabled at his post?); the Newtown Writers offering their own poems in a nearby tent; the peace and quiet of a creaky floored bookstore like Sandmeyer's; and the jousting, joyful freshness of the indie readings. I ducked into the first floor of Grace Place to catch Todd Dills and Elizabeth Crane reading from All Hands On and When the Messenger is Hot. I left considering a half-dozen different experiments I could and should try to push my own writing.

Sudden Fiction (Continued)
Edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas
In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction
Edited by Judith Kitchen and Mary Paumier Jones

The Pleasures -- One of many pleasures provided by these two excellent collections is the variety of voices you encounter: Peter Meinke, Don DeLillo, Ursula Hegi, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Sherman Alexie, Reginald Gibbons, Cynthia Ozick and so on. Another is seeing so many writers attempt the “high wire” of prose writing: compression. Perhaps the most memorable pleasure is Glen Weldon’s bittersweet story, “The Cat Was Dead,” which should be required reading for all writing workshop students … and their beleaguered loved ones.

CHICAGO VOICES: An excerpt from "Waltzing in the Garden of Forgiveness," by Susan Strong-Dowd

LIESEL: It was in this way we came to America. Our first home was a tenement in New York City.
ROSE: And our first friends were the janitor, his wife and --
LIESEL: daughter, Sylvia. She took me to the movies. That was how I learned English. I tagged along behind her everywhere. We went down to the big hotels where the stars stayed and got their autographs. Look Mommy, look, Edward G. Robinson.
AARON: Good people. They were good people.
ROSE: But then my sister, Regina, sent word. There was more work with family in Chicago.
AARON: Family is important.
LIESEL: Family is to be honored and cherished. I didn't want to leave my new friend, Sylvia. I was just beginning to feel this was home. I hid my feelings from Mommy and Daddy as best I could, and we began to pack.
ROSE: We didn't know it yet, but Aaron's nine siblings and their children would perish in concentration camps.
LIESEL: And my Auntie Ann and Uncle Poldi and their three daughters, including my cousin Friedkin, who everyone said could have been my twin, would all perish.
AARON: The only ones to survive would be Rose, her two sisters, Regina and Molly, and their families. So we moved again.
(Again, each of them has a suitcase to carry.)
AARON: Chicago.
ROSE: Chicago.
LIESEL: Chicago.
ALL THREE: Chicago.

Susan Strong-Dowd, trained in Stanislavski and Story Theater, worked for many years with Fritzie Sahlins. "Waltzing in the Garden of Forgiveness" appears in the Polyphony Press anthology titled, "The Thing About Love Is..." Susan says she "believes in ensemble theater companies and the healing power of story."

The Essential Gore Vidal
Edited by Fred Kaplan

Fine Whine – These excerpts and reprints from a range of factual and fictional writings are Vintage Vidal: insightful, bitchily funny, occasionally awkward and often brilliant. Why is Vidal one of our nation’s most revered – and reviled – writers? Because, in fewer than 230 words, he can execute a shattering dissection of American life that a thousand phony writers, talking heads and blowhards could never even conceive, let alone deliver. Here, from a 1983 New York Review of Books essay ostensibly on William Dean Howells, is a taste:

Obviously, there is a great deal wrong with our educational system, as President Reagan recently, and rather gratuitously, noted. After all, an educated electorate would not have elected him president. It is generally agreed that things started to go wrong with the schools after the First World War. The past was taught less and less, and Latin and Greek ceased to be compulsory. Languages were either not taught or taught so badly that they might just as well not have been taught at all, while American history books grew more and more mendacious, as Frances Fitzgerald so nicely described (America Revised, 1979), and even basic geography is now a nonsubject. Yet the average ‘educated’ American has been made to believe that, somehow, the United States must lead the world even though hardly anyone has any information at all about those countries we are meant to lead. Worse, we have very little information about our own country and its past. That is why it is not really possible to compare a writer like Howells with any living American writer because Howells thought that it was a good thing to know as much as possible about his own country as well as other countries while our writers today, in common with the presidents and paint manufacturers, live in a present without past among signs whose meanings are uninterpretable.

Our Literary Heritage:
A Pictorial History of the Writer in America
Van Wyck Brooks and Otto L. Bettman

Trash Heap of History – “Our Literary Heritage” was published three years before I was born and reads like ancient history, replete with bigoted interpretations and purple prose. “Negro Folklore Charms the Nation,” one chapter is titled, with a subtitle stating that it “took the genius” of a white man to “make the Southern folk-tale immortal.” Compounding the overt racism is a contrived yearning for the young, male writers. The authors describe the poet Sidney Lanier as “pale, dark, slender, nervous and eager.” Nathaniel Hawthorne: “He had a massive head. His eyes were black and brilliant. Picturesque, he appeared vaguely foreign.” Reading all of this is an awful task; the only pleasure comes in the final disposing of the book.

Beyond Compere: A Pocket Guide to Being an Emcee
Terry Seabrooke

Thank You, Ladies and Germs – This book is a treasure chest of good and practical advice, suggested to me by the magician Eugene Burger before I first emceed the Northern Star Alumni Hall of Fame Dinner. Among the book’s many lessons: (1) Have fun. (2) Bring extra material in case you need to stretch. (3) Remember that you, as emcee, are not the star. People should leave the evening saying, “It was a great show and it moved along fast.” (4) Put the audience at ease and let them know what’s going on. (5) Arrive early – and see how the microphones work. (6) Find out what each act requires for their introduction. Always use their name as your last words. (7) Get their names right. (8) Make sure they’re present! (9) Start on time – and end on time. (10) If possible, “back introduce” the opening act. (11) Set the mood immediately. (12) Watch – and listen to! – each act or speaker. (13) Think of yourself, the emcee, as “insurance.” (14) Don’t just introduce the acts. Present them. (15) Don’t make a gag out of an act … at least not until the act is finished! (16) Be brief and avoid statements about the performer’s “excellence.” Never tell the audience how they are going to react. (17) Notes look tacky. (18) Never ask the audience if they’re enjoying themselves. Appear as if you’re enjoying the show. (19) Avoid tired phrases, such as, “Let’s have a big hand for …” and “Ladies and Gentlemen …” (20) Don’t crash in on an act’s applause.

POSTSCRIPT: Jeff Osman

What is reverence? What is respect? Try my old friend Jeff Osman – pausing on a warm September evening in a dim pool of light beneath an alley streetlamp on the city’s north side – quoting Nelson Algren in a hushed voice: “The city’s rusty heart that holds both the hustler and the square. Takes them both and holds them there. For keeps and a single day.”

Disgrace
J.M. Coetzee

Honor/Honors, Noble/Nobel -- I’ve always been a bit perplexed by the writing adage that there are only two plots in the world: “a man takes a journey” or “a stranger comes to town.” Seems to me there’s really only one plot and everything else is a matter of point of view. You’re either walking with the man on his journey or watching the traveler arrive. (Spending so much time proving and disproving old writing saws is Reason # 312 why I will never win the Nobel Prize for literature!) Coetzee’s protagonist is a university professor who takes a taut journey into his own heart of darkness, a vividly rendered place in which he encounters murky questions of personal honor and experiences an all-too-real violence. The dialogue sometimes shifts into short speeches, but that, too, fits these characters; in turn, each revels in his and her moment in the spotlight.

CHICAGO VOICES: An excerpt from Michael Burke’s remarks introducing Alex Kotlowitz at the Community Media Workshop’s 2004 Studs Terkel Awards

Like Studs Terkel, Alex Kotlowitz was born in New York City. Like Studs, Alex learned about Chicago and the world by walking the forgotten streets, talking to
often overlooked people. Like Studs, Alex has written books, and worked in radio and TV, as well. Unlike Studs, Alex has not yet been investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee -- of course, that might change after he receives the Terkel award tonight! You never know who’s listening.

Alex has said, "I am at best a storyteller." And his stories have appeared everywhere from the Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker to WBEZ and Frontline. He is probably best known for two stories, his books: The Other Side of the River, which looks at racial isolation in Benton Harbor, Michigan, following the death of Eric McGinnis; and There Are No Children Here, which follows the lives of two brothers, Lafayette and Pharaoh, as they grow up in Chicago’s Henry Horner Homes. Alex’s new book -- Never a City so Real -- looks at some of the "outsiders" he has encountered in Chicago. The book will be published this summer and his "stories of money" will air on public radio this fall.

Like that other great storyteller, Studs Terkel, Alex Kotlowitz is dedicated to making our world a smaller place by helping each of us better understand what we have in common with one another -- both good and bad.

It is my honor to present this 2004 Studs Terkel Award for Journalistic Excellence to Alex Kotlowitz.

The Clinton Formula
Michael Tomasky

Observing Bill -- No matter what you think of William Jefferson Clinton, you have to acknowledge that he is a gifted (albeit, sly) communicator. The former President’s skills are center stage in this November 2003 interview from American Prospect magazine. A close reading serves as a master class in communication. Watch Clinton choose words that resonate. (He says “responsible” or “responsibility” about two dozen times throughout the interview.) See Clinton distill various facts into succinct summaries. (Speaking of the Democratic Party, Clinton states: “We’re the party that gave you responsible welfare reform. We’re the party that gave you fiscal responsibility, low interest rates and high growth.”) Witness Clinton recite a litany of values-charged statistics. (“We’ve gotta have $87 billion spent in Iraq, but we’re gonna kick 300,000 kids out of after-school programs, 84,000 kids out of student loans … 25,000 uniformed police off the street?’”) Listen as Clinton employs the one-two debater’s punch. (In a portion of the interview concerning tax cuts, Tomasky notes how emotionally compelling it is when conservatives say, “It’s your money, you deserve it back.” Clinton agrees, then adds, “I think we ought to say, “It’s your money, and it’s your country. What kind of country do you want?” So his first punch counters by redirecting the discussion and his second punch is a swift undercut: “I also think we ought to say, ‘It’s not like they’re not spendin’ money!’”) Finally, learn as Clinton speaks simply, plainly (providing a jargon-free description of how our nation needs “good diplomacy and a good domestic policy”) and with bountiful vision (“… the historic mission of America [is] to form a more perfect union. What does that mean? It means widening the circle of opportunity, deepening the meaning of freedom and strengthening the bonds of community.”) In addition to showcasing these lessons in strategic communication, the interview also features an important socio-political insight. “The public is operationally progressive and rhetorically conservative,” Clinton observes. “The more they believe that you’re careful with tax money and responsible in the way you run the programs and require responsibility from citizens, the more the public in general is willing to be liberal in the expenditure of tax money.”

Death in Venice
Thomas Mann

Innocence, Lost and Never Found -- “Death in Venice” is the story of a mature man who yearns for fulfillment but is unable to see the very facts before him. But “Death in Venice” is also the story of our nation. For von Aschenbach, the longing is for Tadziu. For the United States, the longing is for innocence -- a warmly imagined (not remembered) innocence that will forever remain unattainable because it simply does not exist. Our nation’s massive ignorance and destructive arrogance has only further enmeshed us in the shocking immorality of torture and war. In short, we are less safe and more guilty. Who is responsible? The Bush Administration? The armchair warriors called neo-cons? The people who vote for them? The people who give them money? Yes … and who else? The people who don’t do enough to protest, perhaps? Those who draw fine distinctions between means and ends? Those who deem one war just, another not? Those who say that vengeance is sometimes permissible? Indeed. I am one of the many people who have made such distinctions from the comfort of my own armchair. Soon after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan but well before the invasion of Iraq, I hosted a salon at my apartment that included the writers Ed Underhill, Robert N. Georgalas, Jotham Burrello and Kevin Grandfield. Talk of writing soon turned to talk of war, with Ed basically sharing his sentiments against U.S. retaliatory efforts in Afghanistan while I vigorously voiced my gung-ho support. (In fact, Ed and I debated so fiercely that Kevin observed, “The way you two disagree, I can’t believe you’re such good friends.” Ed laughed and placed his glass of wine on the table between us. We’ve been friends for nearly 25 years. “Well,” he said, “I can’t imagine ending a friendship over something as stupid as politics.”) And so here I am: a mature man yearning for fulfillment and, in many ways, finally seeing the facts before me. I, like so many others, protested the Iraq invasion, but I see now that our actions were too little, too late. September 11th had clouded our thinking and whetted our primal appetites for revenge, the most hollow and empty of victories. I see now how our earlier support for the Afghanistan invasion -- for doing something post 9/11 -- only contributed to a worsening of conditions. Like von Aschenbach, I and my country are left feeling a terrible sense of loss and longing -- loss for that which we never possessed, longing for that which never existed.

The Gift of Peace
Joseph Cardinal Bernardin

Bite Your Tongue -- Saturday afternoon. Years ago. A slow day in a small bookshop in New Buffalo, Michigan. Father Andrew Greeley sits quietly at a folding table, waiting to autograph his latest thriller. I remember how my Dad used to read Greeley’s column in the old Chicago Sun-Times so I pick up a copy of the novel, approach the table and say, “Good afternoon, Father.” Father Greeley smiles, nods and raises his pen. “Father,” I say, “would you mind signing this book to my Dad? His name is, ‘Jeremiah.’” Father Greeley smiles again, but after a moment he pauses his pen in mid-air and looks up at me. “Now,” he says softly, “how would you spell that?” I come this close to snapping, “Like the book in the Bible, Father!” But I don’t. I come this close to teasing, “A little more time with the Good Book, Father, and a little less time with these smutty books and perhaps you would know!” But instead I return his smile and spell Jeremiah. “Ah, yes,” Father Greeley whispers, smiling and nodding once more as he puts pen to paper. Cardinal Bernardin’s book is neither the Good Book nor a racy thriller and ‘tis hard for me -- good Irish Catholic lad I at one time was -- to find huge fault in the final words and at-death’s-door reflections of such a prince of the Church. But this memoir does remind me that it was within the warm darkness of the confessional that I learned my earliest lessons about non-fiction storytelling -- about the importance of audience (just who is that sitting on the other side of the screen?) and purpose (and why in the world is he interested in what I have to say?) With this book, Bernardin had a clear audience and purpose in mind: He was writing to his flock, attempting to redeem a reputation battered by false and ugly allegations. The Cardinal makes his case, then turns toward contemplating his final days on Earth. While he wisely observes that making peace is our great calling as humans and the one pursuit we devote no great time or energy toward achieving, Bernardin fails to see that we are raised and trained and educated and indoctrinated -- through our weakened education system, by our myth-making government and thanks to our doctrinaire religions -- to live lives schooled in fear. Given all that, peace doesn’t stand a chance.

AROUND TOWN:
The Pro

July 2001 -- Sixty-three year-old Paul Daniels has been called “The Johnny Carson of the U.K.” The entertainer was in Chicago for a few days this month, making a rushed, last-minute appearance for one night only at the new Noble Fool Comedy Theater near Randolph and State. He was billed as “Paul Eldani, the Unusualist.”

Paul Daniels’ television show, featuring comedy, magic and interviews, ran on the BBC for about 16 years. He’s hardly known in the United States, except among magicians, among whom he’s famous for more than his master technical skills and take-no-prisoners performance style. He’s also known for introducing more American magicians to European audiences than anybody else.

“I saw Lance Burton when he was just a kid playing The Back Door in Las Vegas,” Daniels recalled one evening over a glass of white wine. “We gotta book this kid, I said.”

But as with any and every Paul Daniels story, there was, indeed, a story to tell.

“The act before Lance was a girl named Kitten,” he explained. “She appeared in a glass pool on a small revolving stage. Kitten’s claim to fame was that she had the most enormous breasts anyone had ever seen -- mammoth, 60-inch breasts, which would sort of float along the top of the water in the pool as she spun around. And as she revolved around, to everyone’s delight, she would slap these babies together and create a fountain of water that would jet skyward and spray onto the men in the audience, who’d, of course, just be sitting there, mumbling, ‘Hit me, Kitten! Hit me!’”

As he told this and other stories, Paul’s eyes tap-danced, his face contorted, his voice assumed various personalities, and his shockingly spry body jumped, twitched, bent and sprawled.

“Well,” Paul continued, “you can just imagine the scene. The curtain closes and the men are still sitting there -- ‘Hit me, Kitten! Hit me again!’ -- and the announcer says, 'And now, the magician.' Well, right. The curtain opens and there’s young Lance Burton in his tuxedo -- but before the audience can even move, Lance lifts a lid off a small silver bowl and a burst of flame roars out and, just as quick, a dove comes flying through the flame above the audience’s head. And then Lance removes one of his white gloves and throws it into the air -- and that’s a dove, too, which flies out over the head of the audience. And then he removes his other white glove and throws it into the air and catches it and then you notice that a small white dove is somehow already perched on his other hand -- and that takes off out over the audience. And Lance had them, the audience, right from the start. Each and every one of them. These guys who only moments before were slobbering all over themselves for Kitten-hit-me-Kitten were now sitting there, mesmerized by the magician. Fantastic.”

Paul Daniels told the story while relaxing (as much as Paul ever appears to relax) in Jack Gould and Kathleen Carpenter’s stylish Streeterville apartment. Jack is a University of Chicago economist and boyhood friend of the great magician Eugene Burger. Jack and Kathleen are the Gerald and Sarah Murphys of the magic world, hosting big parties and small get-togethers for Eugene, Max Maven, Penn and Teller, Jay Marshall, David Parr and others. Eugene is another of the magicians Paul Daniels gave an early career break to, much in the way that Eugene has generously introduced my boyfriend Robert Charles and me into the magic world.

Paul was in town, working under an anagram of his last name, because he was being taped for a new BBC show. For this segment, the producers plopped Paul down in Peoria, Illinois, gave him $25 and told him he had to make his way to California in a week. The show’s producer encouraged Paul to scramble his name, fearing the American public would recognize “Paul Daniels.”

“My producer doesn’t understand,” Paul confided, lifting his eyebrows, shaking his head. “No one knows me here. America’s too big.”

Paul quickly earned enough money in Peoria -- marching into taverns and doing close-up card effects, working the crowd gathered by the river for the 4th of July fireworks -- to head up to Chicago. But before he left, he had become the hottest thing in Peoria through some clever self-promotion. He slipped a few bucks to a cab driver to call up the local TV station and say some crazy Englishman is doing tricks downtown. An hour later, he slipped a few more bucks to a cocktail waitress and had her telephone, too. “Yeah,” the TV producer told her, “We’ve heard about this guy. We’ll send a crew.” The next morning, Paul called the town’s most popular radio program. “Hey,” they said. “We saw you on TV last night. Could you sit in with us this morning?”

Once in Chicago, Paul went to Magic, Inc., the famed shop owned and operated by Jay Marshall on the city’s north side. One of the guys working the shop counter was appearing in “Flanagan’s Wake” at the Noble Fool; Paul booked the theater for the next night. Then he quick-copied hundreds of fliers and began handing them out at Navy Pier.

“’My God,’” Paul exclaimed, slipping into a character he met at the Pier, complete with buggy eyes, twisted face, thick Irish accent. “’You’re Paul Daniels!’”

“’Paul Eldani,’” he replied, quick-changing his voice and face to an overly serious demeanor. “’Please take a flier … In fact, take two.’”

Later that evening, at Jack and Kathleen’s, Paul performed some flawless effects -- forcing the same card on me ten times in a row and, once, from behind his back -- and told more stories: about growing up poor in northern England, about his family getting bombed out of their home during the blitz, about the wonderful world of entertainment.

“A friend of mine, this was years ago, directed a staged production of ‘Gone with the Wind’ on the West End … You can just imagine … Noel Coward came to opening night and they gave him the Royal Box and this was when, well, Noel was King, of course. So they had everything for this production. Miss Scarlet. Rhett Butler. They closed the first act with the burning of Atlanta, which was set-up at the rear of the stage, but there were a few problems. First, the producer had insisted that they add someone to the cast, a little girl who was very popular at the time, sort of the Shirley Temple of Great Britain, and they brought her out to sing one or two songs in the middle of everything. And then, with the burning of Atlanta, Rhett Butler charged out onto stage riding a real-life horse and as he grabs Miss Scarlet around the waist and a dying soldier raises his rifle and calls” -- thick Southern accent -- “’Here, Miss Scarlet! Take this! You might need it!’ As all of this is happening, the horse rears and shits right on the middle of the stage … Well … My friend went up to Noel’s box at the interval and Noel Coward said” -- perfected Noel Coward sneer -- “’Dear boy. I have never seen such a spectacle on the London stage.’ And my director friend immediately begins to say” -- meekly -- “’Well, it’s opening night and we’ve got a lot to work out, a lot of problems to fix’” -- back to Noel’s sneer, with a slight lift of the chin -- “’Dear boy. You have only two problems. And if you shove the little girl up the horse’s ass, you’ve solved them both.’”

At the Noble Fool Theater the following evening, Paul’s show was not unlike dinner the night before: a thousand laughs and expert magic, all-Paul, all the time. Paul performed his well-known chop cup routine, his signature linking rings with a kid on stage and some mind reading with various adults in the audience. He closed by levitating himself on stage.

I’ve never seen anyone so fearless on stage, so completely comfortable, so intimate. He connects one-on-one with audience members, inviting interaction and interruptions, involving everyone in the room no matter the size of the room. And throughout it all, Paul Daniels is a master at control -- with fidgety kids as well as with know-it-all adults. He always knows where everyone is and what everyone is doing throughout the theater. He’ll use first names and call-backs, linking an audience member's comment to something said by somebody else twenty minutes before. Mostly he’ll use humor -- sometimes sweet, more often, bitingly clever -- to manage the entire evening.

“I couldn’t always do that,” Paul replied when I asked him about achieving this level of comfort, this measure of confidence and courage. “Took me years and years. You see, what I finally realized was that human beings are animals and, like animals, we can sense fear, we can sniff fear, as soon as we get close to it. And if a performer is fearful, then the audience will be fearful, as well. But if the performer can somehow communicate, ‘Look, don’t worry. I’m in control. Let’s just have some fun,’ then everything will be okay.’”

In the Shadow of the Patriarch
Francisco Goldman

The Competition -- One joy in watching the wonderful documentary, "A Great Day in Harlem," is hearing so many jazz musicians say such nice things about one another. Our public spaces have become so filled with shrill criticism and lurid gossip that it is refreshing (even startling) to hear men and women swap favorable, polite compliments. I'm not sure why the public realm of the writing life has so often been peppered with pettiness and competition. It's either because the stakes are so small -- or so big. Hard tellin', as my friends in Missouri say. This profile of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (appearing in The New York Times magazine, November 2, 2003) left me pondering the competitive nature of writers, especially a passage in which Francisco Goldman recollects a long-ago lecture by another great writer, Jorge Luis Borges: "I was in my first year at the University of Michigan when Jorge Luis Borges came to speak. I sat on the floor of a packed auditorium and remember the moment during the questions and answers when a graduate student rose to voice his vehement request for Borges to unequivocally denounce the realist novel. Borges, with his soft, blind stare, resembled an elegant saint levitating in an English suit as he answered, 'Young man, whether we are talking about Henry James or Robbe-Grillet, Conrad or Beckett, all of literature is part of the same dream and one of the few pleasures allowed to us on earth.'" Goldman does not say, but I hope the remark was welcomed with thunderous applause.

CHICAGO VOICES: An excerpt from "Top Hat (A Poem Dedicated to James Yellow Bank)," by E. Donald Two-Rivers

Our old pal Ted Aliotta said
"We have another angel pullin' for us now."
He was speakin' 'bout you Top Hat.
And I remember nights
in alley ways of Uptown.
Dog Soldiers lookin' for the center
tryin' to be a community ...
you with your gitfiddle
and me with my poems.

E. Donald Two-Rivers is an Ojibwa poet, playwright and storyteller currently residing in Chicago. His books include "A Dozen Cold Ones" (poems), "Survivor's Medicine" (a short story collection which won the 1999 American Book Award), and "Pow Wows, Fat Cats and Other Indian Tales" (poems). "Top Hat" appears in the Polyphony Press anthology titled, "The Thing About Hope Is..."

POSTSCRIPT: C. Martha Nussbaum, Ph.D.

About a year ago, I heard University of Chicago philosopher and author Martha Nussbaum speak at a Chicago Club luncheon. She described how good, healthy experiences very early in childhood help to build a strong, ethical and just society. During her talk, she cited narrative examples from Marcel Proust and the Roman poet Lucretius, as well as scientific evidence from psychologists Donald Winnicott, John Bowlby, Daniel Stern and Christopher Bollas. Dr. Nussbaum ended her remarks by asking a fundamental question: "Are we striving for American preeminence or are we striving to be part of a world in which people support and urge human beings to be together?" The question underscores the paradox at the core of our nation -- we are, after all, a union of bullies and peacemakers, motivated by crude self-interest and true generosity. Our nation's president can often tip the balance one way or the other, summoning the worst in our collective nature or inspiring us toward greatness. It has been a long, long time since any president has inspired the best from his fellow citizens.

Tell Me
Mary Robison

What D'Ya Talk -- In my debut on the theatrical stage (Doesn't that sound grand? It wasn't. I was 12 years old; the stage was the big, echoing gymnasium of Jack London Junior High School), I played one of several traveling salesmen who open, "The Music Man." About a dozen of us are riding a rattling train through the Iowa countryside, talk-singing various complaints about the dastardly Harold Hill. My sole line -- "What d'ya talk? What d'ya talk? What d'ya talk?" -- was repeated over and over again at key moments to mimic the clickity-clackity rhythm of the train. The scene cleverly sets the tone for the fast-talking shenanigans that follow. The scene also teaches a great lesson about writing: The audience doesn't really care if characters don't talk like real people. Rather, readers want the spoken words to be especially catchy and, above all else, to push the story forward. (Ever read a verbatim transcript of a conversation? You'll find much more chaos than clarity. The punctuation hasn't yet been invented to describe characters conversing like real people.) All of this brings me to these stories by Mary Robison, a master of dialogue who comes the closest yet to capturing the fits-and-starts and half-thoughts of real-life conversation. Each plot has an almost invisible arc. Each story begins with a clear moment and nearly always ends in a drift, not unlike real life, of course. But Robison's dialogue is as concrete as Navy Pier.

A Cat Named Darwin:
Embracing the Bond Between Man and Pet
William Jordan

Love and Death -- My friend Jack Gould has observed that cats are a triumph of evolution. Look how cats (and dogs) have ingratiated themselves into the lives of humans -- not merely achieving a level of co-existence, but cultivating a place of true worship within our lives. Cats and dogs, one could easily argue, are the world's real empire builders, prevailing and not simply surviving. Regrettably, William Jordan (a Ph.D. in entomology from the University of California at Berkeley) doesn't really explore the Darwin behind his little Darwin; rather, he spends a year of his life (and 187 pages of our's) learning that, sigh, the human heart is stronger than the human mind. It's actually not until long after Jordan has needlessly prolonged little Darwin's tortured life and completely botched his at-home, do-it-yourself euthanasia of the poor cat that the biologist begins to understand how selfishly he's been acting. But this doesn't come until a few more helpings of canned Latin are spooned down our throats and an imagined "conversation" with his now-dead cat leaves us cringing. Still, there are a few gems hidden here and there. Jordan quotes an unamed biologist saying, "They look for the second coming. They expect Him to come back on a cross. They blew it. He already came and went again. He called himself Darwin." And Jordan offers a very keen analysis of fear and religion: "Yet that same mind holds the capacity to comprehend death. It knows that we will die someday. And suddenly we find ourselves staring into the existential dilemma -- that nuclear furnace of paradox -- where the deepest essence of life, the will to survive, comes face to face with the truth of reality, and the conflict is too intense to face ... The upshot? Why gods, of course, gods created in our image and projected back upon the world ... These self-serving projections comfort us as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death and hold us back as we peer over the edge into the abyss."

TriQuarterly (No. 114, No. 117)
Edited by Susan Firestone Hahn
Other Voices (No. 39)
Edited by Gina Frangello and JoAnne Ruvoli
Euphony (Winter 2003)
Edited by Jospeh N. Liss
Off the Rocks 10
Edited by Jonathan Dixon
Granta (Over There)
Edited by Ian Jack
F Magazine (F5)
Edited by Don De Grazia
The Baffler (No. 15)
Edited by Greg Lane

Making Sense -- Why do we tell stories? Why do we read stories? I think it's because we don't know our own story: We have no idea why we exist in the universe, so we tell stories and listen to stories as a way of making sense out of the non-sense of everyday life. Of all the storytellers, I most relish those who are slugging away, producing fiction and poems and commentary and interviews in the small literary journals. The pay is minimal, at best. The acclaim is rare, if ever. The commitment -- to telling stories and sharing stories -- is staggering.

POSTSCRIPT: Joe Burke

With my family crowded around my parents' kitchen table more than a year ago, I mentioned that I had self-published "State of the Union," a chapbook of political poetry, and had posted an anti-war poem with Poets Against the War. "Oh," said my brother, the cop. "Poetry," he said, giving me the patented Joe Burke Eyes Roll. "That'll make a big difference." We all laughed. And then Joe added, "I'm just kidding. Just kidding." But he wasn't, of course ... A few days ago, Joe landed in Baghdad, starting a one-year assignment to train local police officers. And all I can think of are a few lines from Sandburg: "In the darkness with a great bundle of grief, the people march. In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people march: 'Where to? what next?'"

Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
William Faulkner

December 10, 1950 and September 11, 2001 and Today -- Fear is a wicked weapon. Over the centuries, religious zealots have refined the use of fear as a cynical tool to divide, conquer and govern with hate. In the past, some U.S. leaders have inspired us with hope while reminding us that we have nothing to fear but fear itself; sadly, George W. Bush and his cronies happily pander to our basest insecurities. I wonder if the Real Republicans will ever find the courage and capacity to stand up to the religious fanatics who have seized control of their party. In the meantime, Bush and his disciples of deceit (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Powell, Rice and the others) will continue misleading and mis-leading the country. The deadly threats of terrorism are all too real; but all of our nation's responses to date have been based in fear. With all of this in mind, Faulkner's call to literary arms is more pertinent now than ever:

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself, which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed -- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny and inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

Zagat Survey: Chicago Restaurants 2003/04
Alice Van Housen, et al

Food for Thought -- Foodies, Boozies and Gluttons of All Kinds praise this popular guide as "the New Testament of Dining Out" and especially enjoy the booklet's "fits anywhere" size -- and jaunty, gossipy style. While detractors claim confusion over the numerical ratings ("F19? S24? I feel like I'm playing Battleship!") and others grumble, "Too many choices, too many choices," regulars advise it's definitely worth the $11.95.

Old School
Tobias Wolff

A Book of Revelations -- I read this book after hearing Wolff speak at the Chicago Humanities Festival and now, months later, I am still euphoric. Why? First, Wolff is a tender and funny writer, offering the kind of humor that's only and always derived from honesty. Second, after reading this book I have a new definition of art: Art is a conversation you've never heard before. Third, a passage about Robert Frost's reading at a private boys' school made me see what's truly special about all readings, why, indeed, author readings are essential: "In print, under his great name, they (Frost's poems) had the look of inevitability; in his voice you caught the hesitation and perplexity behind them, the sound of a man brooding them into being." Fourth, the quote about form attributed to Frost: "Such grief can only be told in form." (He's referring to Achilles' "famous, terrible" grief.) "Maybe it only really exists in form. Form is everything. Without it you've got nothing but a stubbed-toe cry -- sincere, maybe, for what that's worth, but with no depth or carry. No echo. You may have a grievance but you do not have grief, and grievances are for petitions, not poetry." Fifth, the wonderfully wry scene between the narrator and the girl he plagiarizes. He says, "You should keep writing." She replies, "Mmm, don't think so. Too frivolous. Know what I mean? It just cuts you off and makes you selfish and doesn't really do any good." Sixth, the great lines (e.g., "He didn't see this as a lie so much as a kind of dozing off in his attention to the truth," "And why would Caeser fear Ovid, except for knowing that neither his divinity nor all his legions could protect him from a good line of poetry.") Seventh, how I re-read the epigram from Strand four times ... and reveled in the tears welling in my eyes and spilling against my eye glasses with the final allusion and phrase, "His father, when he saw him coming, ran to meet him."

CHICAGO VOICES: An excerpt from "Silky Dream Girl," by Cris Burks

Hubby announced he was leaving me at the Labor Day barbecue. Right before my brother, LaDell, took the last rib off the grill. Right before my sister-in-law, Georgie, poured another round of her weak-butt, nonalcoholic margaritas. Right before Mama stumbled out of the house with the ice cream maker. Right before my son, Alex, dragged his friend, Tameka, into the backyard. Right before my friend, Donna, and her husband, Mike, arrived. The children (my niece, Shanna, my nephew, Terrence, and my stepsons, CJ and Darius) ran around LaDell's perfectly landscaped backyard. Hubby and LaDell stood at the grill like buddies, pals. They wore light khaki shorts and T-shirts that accentuated their muscles. Both were short and as dusky brown as Idaho potatoes. LaDell's eyes, nose, and lips gushed generously across his face. On the other hand, Clarence, my hubby, had a tight,