AROUND TOWN: The Greatest Compliment

I visited The Book Cellar in Lincoln Square yesterday to browse and purchase a couple of books. While I was paying at the register, a customer approached the clerk and asked where the store kept Kurt Vonnegut's books. "We keep them right here," the clerk replied, turned and grabbed a stack of books from the counter behind the register. He handed them to the customer.

"Why do you keep Vonnegut's books behind the counter?" I asked.

"They're the ones most likely to be shoplifted," the clerk replied, then continued ringing up my purchase.

Now that's a compliment. Forget the Nobel. So long, Pulitzer. Your books are most apt to be stolen? Sweet.

CHICAGO VOICES: Oz on the Occupy Movement

My friend Oz returned to Chicago about a year ago. He's participated in a few of the local Occupy protests. I invited him to share his take on what's happening.

Whether it be Occupy Chicago or Occupy Wall Street or Occupy Spokane the Point Is We Are Dissatisfied! What is your question? Need you ask? We have worked our entire lives and have paid our bills and have suffered our diseases and for what? To be laid off and to have our homes be valued less through no fault of our own and to be denied health insurance because we happen to be sick.

So it happens that some wonder why we are disgruntled, to say the least.

Our parents taught us our patriotism, our loyalty and some of us our religion. And what is our reward?

Unemployment.

Foreclosure.

Debt.

Mounting debt.

Absence of health insurance.

Enough is said by We the Many People. You, the Wealthy who own our jobs and our banks and our homes and our lives and our futures MUST stop stealing and give us back your ill-gotten gains.

We are workers. We are providers. We are mothers and fathers and sons and daughters striving to keep our families together, and you insist on fighting us every inch of the way.

Again, enough. Enough! Must I say it again? Sadly, perhaps.

Occupy, the movement, is not organized, it is not a top-down thought-through consultation.

It is an angry, thoughtful, inclusive, welcoming gathering of Humans, Americans, (okay, we’d probably even welcome Martians)People who are Working Together For A Change In How The U.S.A. is Run.

Yeah, dude, that’s some tough shit. Scares a bunch to the back of the bus, now doesn’t it? Don’t let it do that to you. Come on up front. You are welcome here.

"What You Don't Know About Men" named as Book of the Year finalist

I was thrilled to learn late last night that my debut short story collection, "What You Don't Know About Men," has been named as a finalist in the first-ever Book of the Year Awards sponsored by the Chicago Writers Association. The book is nominated in the non-traditional fiction category. What fun! Winners should be announced by December 1, and the party celebrating the awards will be held January 14 at The Book Cellar in Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood.

Windy City Times’ review of “What You Don’t Know About Men”

“This is simply a terrific book, a debut by a very promising writer,” Tracy Baim concludes her review of my short story collection. Those words mean the world to me, especially coming from Tracy.

The Portable Malcolm Cowley
Edited by Donald W. Faulkner

The Man Who Knows – Reading Malcolm Cowley is like taking a survey course of 20th Century literature. In the early 1920s, Cowley met Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein in Paris. Later, he succeeded Edmund Wilson as the literary editor of The New Republic, and throughout his career as critic, editor and writer he shaped how people around the world view the spectrum of writers reaching from Hart Crane to Jack Kerouac, from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ken Kesey, from William Faulkner to John Cheever – and those are just a few examples of writers Cowley actually knew or closely edited. His influence stretched well beyond; what we think today of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman and Henry James is largely influenced by words Cowley has written. “Every time a young professor,” Cowley wrote in a 1951 letter to Hemingway, “goes to work on a writer of our generation it seems to me that he doesn’t know what it was all about.” Fortunately for those of us raised and schooled in 20th century American literature, there was a Cowley capable of putting the whole, broad scene into compelling perspective. Who will be the 21st Century’s clear-eyed interpreter? We’ll see.

Horoscopes for the Dead
Billy Collins

Always and Forever – Billy Collins was, is and always will be America’s poet laureate. “Horoscopes for the Dead” features his trademark crispness, insight and wit. Here is his poem, “Feedback.”

The woman who wrote from Phoenix
after my reading there

to tell me they were all still talking about it

just wrote again
to tell me that they had stopped.

Theatre North’s “Hairspray,” David Gruba’s “Broken Wand,” and BAC Street Journal

A More Perfect Union – If you are feeling shaken by the serious challenges we face as a nation (multiple, endless wars; an anemic economy; grid-locked politics, to name just three), you might find much solace in the arts. Does that seem like a stretch? Consider: The other night in Ironwood, Michigan (population just under 6,000, located in the Gogebic Range of the state’s western Upper Peninsula), Robert Charles and I thoroughly enjoyed the local Theatre North’s production of, “Hairspray.” John Waters’ tale of integration in 1962 Baltimore, featuring a cross-dressing star-turn for the actor portraying Edna Turnblad, might strike you as an odd and even risky choice for a community theater production in the North Woods. Yet, the show’s run was sold-out, the second act’s “I Know Where I’ve Been” (an anthem to the very American struggle of equal opportunity) proved to be a true show-stopper, and the loud, enthusiastic standing ovation at show’s end was well-earned by the earnest and talented cast. Add to all of that this fact: “Hairspray” kicks-off Theatre North’s 48th season. (“Theatre North is among the three oldest continuously operating community theaters in the United States,” according to a program note.) The evening brought back to mind a short story and literary journal I also recently enjoyed. "Broken Wand," by David Gruba (pictured here), is a clever bit of literary sleight-of-hand, telling the tale of two magicians. It’s also just one of many gems in a slim journal published by the Beverly Arts Center on Chicago’s south side. Like the community-created production of “Hairspray,” the poems, stories, photographs and other artwork featured in this fine journal define, describe and decipher the ways in which we live our lives. In so doing, locally created art – whether printed on a page or performed on a stage – builds and fortifies the very bonds of community that hold our nation together. And that, I find, is a reassuring thought. Together, artists are, indeed, helping to build a more perfect union.

City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and ‘70s
Edmund White

Pride and Prejudice – “In the 1970s in New York,” Edmund White begins his breezy, chatty memoir, “everyone slept till noon.” White recounts two important decades in his life, decades key to his personal growth and development as an artist as well as key to the growth and development of the struggle for equality in America. He recalls the sex, literature and politics of this time with an easy-come, easy-go flair; you feel as if he’s seated in the comfortable chair across from you sharing fond and less-than-fond memories, from Stonewall and before to the founding of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, from recollections of James Merrill and Susan Sontag to depictions of the crime and grime of America’s proudest city.

Papa: A Personal Memoir
Gregory H. Hemingway, M.D.

First, Do No Harm – This jaunty, slim tale features several of the now-famous Hemingway biographical hallmarks: prowling for Nazi submarines in Caribbean waters, duck hunting in Sun Valley, juggling three of four wives (Pauline Pfeiffer, Martha Gellhorn, Mary Welsh). The memoir movingly depicts the complicated love between the iconic father and his third and youngest son, who was obviously writing to find (and perhaps make) a certain peace. Dr. Hemingway strikes the right notes and succeeds in conveying the sense that he’s come to terms with his larger-than-life father. But I finished the book feeling unsettled, knowing some of Gregory’s story beyond that revealed in these pages. The four wives of his own. The eight children. The alcoholism, emotional anguish and gender questioning that would ultimately lead Gregory to die as Gloria Hemingway, age 69, in the Miami-Dade Women’s Detention Center after a run-in with the law. Now, weeks after finishing the book, one moment stays with me – a scene, I think, that says a great deal about the father as well as the son. “And papa and Adriana went on chatting,” Gregory writes, “sometimes in Italian, sometimes in English, and it was nothing really, except that you could tell he was in love, and perhaps the girl was flattered by his attention, or perhaps bored and just being polite or amused, as only young girls can be amused with an infatuated old man, but certainly not in love with him. But very sweet and considerate and never betraying her inner emotions. Never hurting him. That’s the way I like to remember papa.”

The Chicago Way
Michael Harvey

My Kind of Mystery – Michael Harvey takes a tough guy detective, puts him in the middle of a cold case involving rape, murder, double-cross and old-fashioned corruption, adds some Windy City grit, and creates a first-class page-turner. Want more good news? Harvey’s been writing for a while and there are two more books in the series.

AROUND TOWN: What You Don't Know About Book Tours

I'm excited that my "global book tour" for my new short story collection, "What You Don't Know About Men," gets rolling in September with two readings and a college class lecture. On September 11, I'll be joining some terrific authors -- Patricia Ann McNair, Megan Stielstra and Geoff Hyatt -- at The Chicago Way reading series curated by Julia Borcherts. The festivities get underway at 7 p.m., at The Hidden Shamrock, Lincoln Park's oldest Irish Pub, located at 2723 N. Halsted in Chicago. Plus, on the Saturday afternoon before, I'll be participating in a Book Fair benefiting the In Print writers group at the Barnes & Noble at Cherryvale Mall in beautiful Rockford, Illinois. My panel and book signing is scheduled for 1-3:30 pm on September 10. The college class lecture is a private discussion at College of DuPage. All of this comes in the wake of the terrific book party we held recently at the Edgewater Beach Cafe. I am still overwhelmed that 72 guests joined us for that event. (Here's a photo of me with the party's emcee, my dear friend and fellow author, Ed Underhill.)

CHICAGO VOICES: Patricia Ann McNair

A blog post about the book-signing party for "What You Don't Know About Men" from Patricia Ann McNair, author of the forthcoming "The Temple of Air." Thank you, Patty!

Book Party -- Venue CHANGE

Thanks to an enthusiastic response, we’re changing the location of the book-signing party Sunday to the Edgewater Beach Café.

Same time – 3 pm.
Same date – Sunday, July 17
New venue – Edgewater Beach Café, 5545 N. Sheridan Rd., Chicago, in the historic pink building just off north Lake Shore Drive at Bryn Mawr
Same book – “What You Don’t Know About Men”
Same author – Michael Burke

My friend (and a great writer himself) Ed Underhill will emcee our party. Robert Charles will still perform a bit of magic. And I’ll still provide a grand toast and brief reading. We’ll still have books to purchase (for $12.95) and a cash bar to enjoy.

The Café is on the first floor of the historic Edgewater Beach Apartments. Parking is available in the building (enter off of Sheridan Road, on the south end of the building; plus, it only costs $3 for up to 3 hours once validated by the Café). Street parking also is available. And the Edgewater Beach Café is three blocks from the Bryn Mawr stop on the Red Line subway.

AROUND TOWN: Poetry Slam Turns 25, DePaul Hosts Writing Conference

Watching slam poetry is a bit like watching a lightning storm. You never know when or where a bolt will strike -- and, often, there's jaw-dropping beauty created by the atmospherics. Plus, there's the real danger that, every now and again, a bolt will strike out of nowhere and cause some severe damage. Performance poetry reminds us, then, of the elegance -- and capriciousness -- of life. Marc Kelly Smith (pictured here) is the founder of the Poetry Slam Movement, which celebrates its 25th anniversary on July 30 at Metro. Reserve your tickets for the hottest literary event of the summer here.

DePaul University's 2011 Summer Writing Conference is a blockbuster event, opening with July 15 keynoter Alex Kotlowitz and including an impressive line-up of writers and book people, including Tom Montgomery Fate, Miles Harvey and Jonathan Messinger. The conference encompasses poetry, fiction and non-fiction writing, as well as publishing in a mixed-media world.

CHICAGO VOICES: Hemingway, Anderson, Fuller, Foreman

As I have written before, I was honored to serve on the 2011 Nominating Committee for the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. Nelson Algren, Lorraine Hansberry, Gwendolyn Brooks, Studs Terkel, Richard Wright and Saul Bellow were inducted in 2010 as the inaugural Hall of Fame class. Several others -- Theodore Dreiser, Harriet Monroe, Carl Sandburg, Mike Royko and James T. Farrell -- are automatic nominees for 2011 based upon the level of support they received last year. I nominated Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Henry Blake Fuller (pictured here), and Kent Foreman; my reasons are described below. Other members of the nominating committee included Gina Frangello, George Rawlinson, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Carlo Rotella, George Saunders, Don Share, Tim Spears, and Nell Taylor -- and, may I say, that's damn fine company. Take a look at all of our nominations here.

Ernest Hemingway
All great writing is authentic. The voice is unmistakable, revealing an organic connection between the writer and what is being written. All great writing is innovative, discovering clever approaches to language, structure, form and story that transform our understanding of literary art. All great writing is influential, changing fundamentally how others write. (As Tobias Wolff has pointed out, if you are writing today you are either trying to write like Ernest Hemingway or trying not to write like Ernest Hemingway. That’s influence.) Strip away the larger-than-life life and what you are left with are the man’s stories – authentic, innovative, 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 this pioneer, for better, for worse, forever.

Sherwood Anderson
Why are great writers great? Because they stand on the shoulders of giants. In an Atlantic Monthly essay published 12 years after Sherwood Anderson’s death, William Faulkner describes his days with Anderson in New Orleans, the debt he and Ernest Hemingway owe Anderson, and the pain they inflicted upon their old friend – Hemingway in "The Torrents of Spring" and Faulkner himself in a parody booklet designed to ridicule Anderson’s style. After Sherwood Anderson helped to get Faulkner’s first book published, the great Southern writer recalls, “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.”

Henry Blake Fuller
Let us now praise the carpenter-writers, those too-often unsung wordsmiths who hammer out sentences and paragraphs, and are equally responsible for building a great city as the highly praised architects and well-paid financiers. Let us now praise Henry Blake Fuller. “Ogden smiled,” he writes in his most popular work, The Cliff-Dwellers. “He saw that he was face to face with a true daughter of the West; she had never seen him before, and she might never see him again, yet she was talking to him with perfect friendliness and confidence. Equally, he was sure, was she a true daughter of Chicago; she had the one infallible local trait: she would rather talk to a stranger about her own town than about any other subject.” Fuller was born in 1857, in a house that stood where LaSalle Street Station stands today. One of Chicago’s most important early writers, he penned short stories, novels and plays with an eye cast on the social and economic forces at play in the bruising city he loved. Today, Henry Blake Fuller is largely unknown – perhaps because his 1896 play, “At Saint Judas’s,” was very possibly the first play with a homosexual theme published in the United States while a novel published 10 years before his death in 1929, “Bertram Cope’s Year,” centered on gay characters. A man ahead of his time? A writer not to be forgotten.

Kent Foreman
Go to a poetry slam – and you will hear Kent Foreman’s voice still among us. Listen closely and you will catch the husky, rhapsodic echoes of how Kent Foreman bridged generations from the Beats to today’s performance masters. Dubbed “the elder statesman of spoken word” by the Chicago Tribune, Kent was born in February 1935 and died in November 2010. Along the way, he wrote and performed across the United States, received the Chicago Historical Society’s Carl Sandburg Award, delivered a classic performance of a haiku, “Epiphany,” on Def Poetry Jam, and inspired countless writers searching for their own voices. “Kent was such a strong presence in our lives as young poets,” Tara Betts recalls in an online obituary. “The last time I saw Kent we drove on 47th Street together; even as we were taking in the familiar street, Kent was reciting poems.”

AROUND TOWN: Telling the Nelson Algren Story

One underlying theme in Chicago filmmaker Michael Caplan's work is identity. Whether he's exploring his father's story as a young student at a unique school in 1930s Germany ("Stones from the Soil"), or his friend Eugene Burger's story as magic's mystic guru ("A Magical Vision"), or David Drake's life as a gay man coming of age in the 1990s ("The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me"), Michael finds riveting ways to reveal the many and layered truths of his subjects. That's why I'm especially excited about the newest subject he's tackling: Nelson Algren. If you are a Chicago writer, you live in the shadow of Algren, author of the iconic, "Chicago, City on the Make" and winner of the first National Book Award for his novel, "The Man with the Golden Arm." And Michael Caplan is just the filmmaker to tell the Nelson Algren story. If you love Algren, if you love insightful film-making, if you love gritty Chicago writing, I invite you to join me in helping Michael finish his movie by supporting his Kickstarter campaign. Your $25 or more can ensure that this chapter of great Chicago writing -- and a great Chicago writer -- gets its due. You can watch the movie trailer here. Thank you for your consideration.

Leonard Cohen: Poems and Songs
Edited by Robert Faggen

Gifted – My dear friend and colleague Susan Mullin gave me this book as a gift the other day. Gifts presented for no special reason, presented at no special time, are perhaps the loveliest gifts – and it’s just like Susan to be so thoughtful. (Thoughtfulness itself is a gift.) And it’s just like Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, too, to present such a handsome collection of fine work from a master. Leonard Cohen has shared his many gifts with all of us in a career spanning more than 50 years. His words only resonate more deeply with each passing year. An example, from “Alexandra Leaving:”

As someone long prepared for this to happen,
Go firmly to the window. Drink it in.
Exquisite music. Alexandra laughing.
Your first commitments tangible again.

You had the honour of her evening,
And by that honour had your own restored –
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Alexandra leaving with her lord.

Las Vegas: Underfoot
Gordon Meyer & Gale Meyer

Down Under – Gordon and Gale Meyer use fewer than two dozen words to preface their delightful picture book. “‘Look! Up! Here!’ Las Vegas screams for you to look everywhere but down. What’s underfoot is no less spectacular; it’s just rarely noticed.” They then share 85 simple, whimsical photographs – each featuring cameo appearances of the tips of the photo-takers’ shoes – of the floors, carpets and sidewalks of Sin City. The result is a magical, fresh and thoroughly charming take on America’s playground in the Mojave Desert.

AROUND TOWN: Printers Row highlights

Three highlights at next weekend's Printers Row Book Fest: Michele Weber Hurwitz, pictured here, and author of a novel for middle-grade readers titled, "Calli Be Gold;" and Tom Montgomery Fate, author of "Cabin Fever: A Suburban Father's Search for the Wild," will both appear Saturday morning. They're terrific writers. Also, you can enjoy a wide range of writers at the Chicago Writers Association tent on Saturday and Sunday.

AROUND TOWN: And the Nominees are ...

When Donald G. Evans and Randy Richardson invited me to participate on the Nominating Committee for the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, I jumped at the chance. And then I realized just how difficult it would be to narrow my nominations down to three or four writers. Nelson Algren, Lorraine Hansberry, Gwendolyn Brooks, Studs Terkel, Richard Wright and Saul Bellow were inducted in 2010 as the inaugural Hall of Fame class. Several others -- Theodore Dreiser, Harriet Monroe, Carl Sandburg, Mike Royko and James T. Farrell -- are automatic nominees for 2011 based upon the level of support they received last year. I spoke and exchanged emails with about a dozen friends, other writers and readers, which, of course, opened up my thinking -- and only made my decision more complicated. (And more fun.) Kurt Eric Heintz pointed me toward the poet Kent Foreman. Writers like Don DeGrazia and Patricia Ann McNair made a case for Ring Lardner and others, while Sun-Times journalist Tom McNamee suggested, in part, George Ade and Edna Ferber. They weren't wrong. In the end, I nominated Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Kent Foreman (pictured here) and Henry Blake Fuller. My ballot and others' are on the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame website. Now it's up to the Selection Committee to decide. I wish them well with this thoroughly enjoyable -- and complex -- decision.

Hitch 22: A Memoir
Christopher Hitchens

Keeping the Faith – The booze-soaked prose of this old-school raconteur creates a first-rate memoir. Rather than merely recapping his work to liberate people from tyrannical regimes and religions, Hitchens offers some up-close-and-personal insights into his upbringing (the eldest son of the beguiling Yvonne and the commanding Commander), his friendships (with Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, James Fenton and others), and his political evolution (from something of a Marxist to something of a conservative). The result is an entertaining, provocative tale, complete with contradictions. Hitchens acknowledges a frequent and thoroughly human desire to have things both ways, in more ways than one. I’ve always found Hitchens to be a dexterous and mostly thoughtful writer, and while I certainly don’t agree with him on all political matters, his book reminded me that I don’t even agree with myself 100 percent of the time. The book also sheds light on a larger point: Everyone gets the United States of America they want. Hitchens became a citizen after 9/11, and he proudly carries an unabashed convert’s zeal in believing in the power of America to repair and heal the world. I find this lack of humility in geopolitics to be as equally disturbing and no less threatening than the widespread lack of humility in the world’s religious faiths.

The Paris Review
Edited by Lorin Stein

The Dance – Does any magazine do a better job of celebrating writers and good writing? Volumes 195 and 196 feature interviews with Jonathan Franzen, Louise Erdrich, Ann Beattie, and Janet Malcolm as well as the prose, poetry and artwork of two dozen others. In one especially memorable moment, Ann Beattie describes the dance between the writer and what is being written – and cites the moment when a writer realizes she knows as much about the story as the character being created. Katie Roiphe’s interview with the reluctant-to-reveal-much Janet Malcolm is equally intriguing. It’s like watching Roiphe attempt the tango while Malcolm insists on the fox trot.

The Best American Short Stories 2010
Edited by Richard Russo and Heidi Pitlor

Conciseness Counts – This series is always a good read and the 2010 edition features some powerful writing – and advice. In his introduction, Richard Russo tells the story of Issac Bashevis Singer visiting Southern Illinois University in the late 1980s and offering a simple, yet profound answer to a student’s question about the purpose of literature. “The purpose of literature,” the master explains, “is to entertain and to instruct.” When the great man says no more and is pushed to elaborate – who among us has not believed it’s far more involved, certainly more complicated than that? – Singer holds up his hand. “To entertain …,” Russo quotes the old pro, “… and to instruct.” The stories that follow demonstrate the point. A standout among them is Jennifer Egan’s “Safari,” which originally appeared in The New Yorker. The ending of Egan’s story is a potent example of the power of compression.

The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Edited by Jay Parini

On Writers and Writing – I turn back again and again to Gore Vidal’s writing for several reasons: his snarky humor, his reflections on other writers, his insights on literature and politics. The essays here feature Gore in fine Snark Mode. Writing of Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of many Tarzan adventure stories, Vidal observes: “Not one to compromise a vivid unconscious with dim reality, he never set foot in Africa.” On the jumbled prose of a USC English professor: “Professor Halperin has not an easy way with our rich language.” And on John Updike, with a glancing swipe at a certain U.S. politician: “There is nothing, sad to say, surprising in Updike’s ignorance of history and politics and of people unlike himself; in this, he is a standard American and so a typical citizen of what Vice President Agnew once called the greatest nation in the country.”

Gore Vidal being Gore Vidal, sometimes even a passing reference is an opportunity for a sideswipe. In an essay on the memoir of Tennessee Williams, Vidal refers to “the artistically gifted and humanly appalling Carson McCullers.” Robert Lowell and Jean Cocteau receive better treatment. Dorothy Parker and Truman Capote seem well-equipped to withstand anything Gore tosses their way.

His reflections on William Dean Howells and Dawn Powell are particularly enlightening. In fact, combined together, these essays have helped me better understand a key point in craft: How third-person narration in a story or novel invites (and welcomes) a variety of observations, illuminations, opinions and commentary often not allowed for by first-person narrators. That seems like a fairly basic lesson in craft; one I certainly know and, of course, have studied. But without directly focusing on the essential mechanics of point of view in either essay, Vidal’s writing provides a master class on the subject. Similarly, in Tarzan Revisited, Vidal notes: “Though Burroughs is innocent of literature and cannot reproduce human speech, he does have a gift very few writers of any kind possess: he can describe action vividly … Because it is so hard, the craftier contemporary novelists usually prefer to tell their stories in the first person, which is simply writing dialogue. In character, as it were, the writer settles for an impression of what happened rather than creating the sense of the thing happening.”

The concrete lessons about writing are couched throughout, cushioned (though it’s often a rather firm, even uncomfortable cushion) between thoughtful observations about writers and writing. Three long quotes to provide example:

From his 1983 essay on Howells, commenting on many contemporary writers: “Then, if he is truly serious about a truly serious literary career, he will become a teacher. With luck, he will obtain tenure. In the summers and on sabbatical, he will write novels that others like himself will want to teach just as he, obligingly, teaches their novels. He will visit other campuses as a lecturer and he will talk about his books and about those books written by other teachers to an audience made up of ambitious young people who intend to write novels to be taught by one another to the rising generation and so on and on. What tends to be left out of these works is the world. World gone, no voluntary readers. No voluntary readers, no literature – only creative writing courses and English studies, activities marginal (to put it tactfully) to civilization.”

From a 1953 essay on novelists and critics from the previous decade: “It is a possibility, perhaps even a probability, that as the novel moves toward a purer, more private expression it will cease altogether to be a popular medium, becoming, like poetry, a cloistered avocation – in which case those who in earlier times might have written great public novels will be engaged to write good public movies, redressing the balance. In our language the novel is but three centuries old and its absorption by the movies, at least the vulgar line of it, is not necessarily a bad thing.”

And from a December 1967 essay in Encounter: “In any case, rather like priests who have forgotten the meaning of the prayers they chant, we shall go on for quite a long time talking of books and writing books, pretending all the while not to notice that the church is empty and the parishioners have gone elsewhere to attend others gods, perhaps in silence or with new words.”

AROUND TOWN: ‘Story Week’ mixes national, local talent in literary rock-&-roll

The 15th Annual Story Week festival – sponsored by Columbia College Chicago’s feisty Fiction Writing Department – features a reader’s delight of top local and national talent. The festival kicks-off Sunday night and rolls through Friday, March 18. And get this: It’s all free. Patricia Ann McNair (author of the forthcoming story collection, The Temple of Air) headlines a Sunday night reading at Martyrs with Eric May and others. Jennifer Egan, fresh from snatching the National Book Critics Circle Award for A Visit from the Goon Squad, appears Monday evening in conversation with local book maven Donna Seaman at the Harold Washington Library. Power hitters Audrey Niffenegger, John McNally, Joe Meno, Tom Mula, Regina Taylor, Philip Hartigan, Sam Weller, Randall Albers, Rick Kogan, Gina Frangello, Alex Kotlowitz and Steve Edwards round out the festivities. Not to be missed: Wednesday night’s Literary Rock & Roll at Metro with Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting), Don DeGrazia (American Skin), Stephanie Shaw and others. For the full schedule: Story Week.

Audio Interview with author Nicholson Baker: On the Future of the Book

AN APPRECIATION: Nigel Beale interviews Nicholson Baker

John Cheever said literature is, “the most serious and exalted dialogue that goes on between mature and well-informed men and women.” Canadian writer, broadcaster and bibliophile Nigel Beale consistently delivers the most exalted dialogue about that dialogue with his blog and interviews. In this example, Beale discusses the past, present and future of the book in a delightful, informative conversation with Nicholson Baker.

Audio Interview with author Nicholson Baker: On the Future of the Book

The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Edited by Andrew Turnbull

A Life in Letters – Here is F. Scott Fitzgerald multi-tasking: managing his career as he writes to Maxwell Perkins; navigating a rocky but resilient relationship with his friend and competitor, Ernest Hemingway; offering advice and guidance to his daughter, Frances, and his wife, Zelda; negotiating with his agent, Harold Ober; and sharing stories with his friends Edmund Wilson and Gerald and Sara Murphy while exchanging ideas, opinions, apologies and thanks with numerous others, including Gertrude Stein, H.L. Mencken and Charles Scribner. The letters are full of wisdom, wisecracks and even some whining; they also contain more than a few true gems. An example? Look at a letter to Dayton Kohler penned about 18 months before Fitzgerald’s untimely death in 1940. Kohler had written Fitzgerald with the idea of publishing a survey of contemporary literature. In replying, Fitzgerald suggests that Kohler’s project “would depend rather on its unity than its variety.” And Fitzgerald continues: “… your list includes so much of the mediocre, so many men who are already covered with dust, that I cannot find a line through it. If you’d confine yourself to twelve contemporaries, instead of fifty, you would find, I think, that they swept up everything worth saying. Perhaps I am wrong. Some people seem to look on our time as a sort of swollen Elizabethan age, simply crawling with geniuses. The necessity of the artist in every generation has been to give his work permanence in every way by a safe shaping and a constant pruning, lest he be confused with the journalistic material that has attracted lesser men.” Good advice, then and now, from one of America’s greatest writers.

AN APPRECIATION: "Play Dead" and "Monday Night Magic"

Robert Charles and I just returned from New York City, where we were accompanied by our dear friend, Eugene Burger. We saw two great off-Broadway shows. "Play Dead" is a must-see thrill ride by Teller and Todd Robbins (pictured here). The play is a wildly entertaining, lights-off spook show that gets you thinking about the living and the dead. And Todd Robbins is just the guy for the lead role. "Monday Night Magic" is the older-brother inspiration for "Magic Chicago," featuring a different line-up of visiting magicians with each show. The show we saw featured David Oliver, Michael DuBois and Chris Capehart, with Todd Robbins not wearing a white suit in the role of master of ceremonies.

Essays
Wallace Shawn

The Lost Art of Conversation – Too often in our daily lives, conversation is turned into a twisted competitive sport with friends and colleagues knowingly and unknowingly mimicking the blustery dunderheads of cable television, elbowing one another in a sort of verbal roller derby to make a point about me, me, me. There is precious little listening, digesting, and asking further questions or offering informed opinions to reach greater mutual understanding. Perhaps that’s why the interview between Wallace Shawn and the great poet Mark Strand included in this book is so illuminating – and refreshing. It’s a joy to read the rich conversation between these two men. They speak of life, death and poetry. A snippet –

Shawn: “But you don’t find it sort of awful that our society doesn’t even respect poetry enough to allow poets to support themselves through their writing?”

Strand: “I think poetry would be different if people could make a living writing poetry. Then you would have to satisfy certain expectations. Instead of the inherited norms by which we recognize poems to be poems, there would be a whole new set of constraints, and not such enduring ones, having to do with the marketplace, having to do with what sells, or what engages people in the short run. So perhaps poetry is better off having no monetary value.”

And the value of this conversation? Priceless.

Raymond Carver:
A Writer’s Life
Carol Sklenicka

The Master – You’re a fan, a huge fan. The kind of fan who has read every story, read every poem, read every essay. You’ve bought the memoirs of others who knew him. You’ve devoured the photo books, the interviews. You’ve wished there was more on YouTube of the man himself, the Master, Raymond Carver. And then comes along Carol Sklenicka’s exquisite, exhaustive biography, which reads like a page-turner despite its thorough detail, and you find yourself slowing down, spending more time with each page, with each sentence, with each word, wanting to savor every anecdote, wanting to enjoy every moment, good and bad – and there is plenty of bad. In other words: You want to drink every drop and can never quite get enough. Nothing ironic about being a Carver-holic – just as there is nothing ironic about a 500-page tome to capture the life of a man who the Master himself used to capture in a few, thin pages per short story. In the end, you still don’t want it to end, but, of course, the story does end, far too early. Raymond Carver’s friend (and no short-end-of-the-stick in the genius-writer department himself) Tobias Wolff once said, if you’re writing today, you’re either trying to write like Hemingway or not write like Hemingway. The same can be said for Raymond Carver.

The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide:
Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist
John McNally

Working Writer – From time to time, I have the pleasure (and it truly is a privilege, as well) to appear as the guest speaker in college English and fiction-writing classes. In each class, I suggest the students read a few particular books: Strunk and White’s classic “Elements of Style,” Francine Prose’s invaluable “Reading Like a Writer,” and David Lodge’s insightful “The Art of Fiction.” Strunk and White provide essential tips on grammar and style. Francine Prose dissects the tools every wordsmith uses to construct a story: words, sentences, paragraphs, narration, character, dialogue, details and gesture. And while several books are titled “The Art of Fiction” – and almost all are quite worthwhile – I emphasize Lodge because of his colorful analysis of narrative form. I will visit Columbia College Chicago next week and there, as well as in all future talks, I will add a fourth book to my list of recommended reading: John McNally’s “The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide.” McNally is the author of three novels and two short story collections. He also has edited six anthologies. He’s spent some time at Columbia, too. In this book, McNally offers something many writers will warmly welcome: sound, practical, candid advice without bravado or romance on what it takes and what it means to be a working writer. He writes about perseverance and durability. He notes how writers must love sentences – which means loving (or, at least, respecting) punctuation and spelling if you’re serious about controlling point-of-view and narrative voice. He reviews the particulars of various educational degrees, offers suggestions on giving and receiving feedback in a writing workshop, and shares useful tips from his front-line experiences getting published and trying to get published. With this book, John McNally is the accomplished brother every artist needs.

AROUND TOWN: Books, books and more books

Robert Charles and I are looking forward to the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame ceremony this coming Saturday evening. In what promises to be the literary event of the year, we are delighted by the prospect of walking the “well-read” carpet to celebrate the likes of Nelson Algren, Studs Terkel, Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry and Saul Bellow. Tickets are still available. Please join us.

Mr. Charles and I also recently attended the Gerber-Hart Library benefit, where powerhouse actress Alexandra Billings lit up the evening with an electric performance. During the festivities, we had the chance to catch up with local writers Owen Keehnen and Darwyn Jones as well as magic aficionados Robert Cohn and Norman Sandfield.

A few weeks later, Mr. Charles and I had the pleasure of making the rounds to a handful of bookstores with Jay and Michelle Horn, who had traveled by train from St. Louis to spend Halloween weekend with us here in Chicago. (And what great fun it is when out-of-town guests ask to go book hunting!) Our friend Oz joined us, as well. Oz – his real name is Jeffrey Osman; he’s just moved to Chicago from California – is a bit of a literary character himself. In fact, Oz seems to have stepped right off the pages of some nifty book, if that nifty book had been co-written by John Cheever, Henry Miller, Nelson Algren and Jane Addams. We passed several hours during the weekend walking to some of our favorite bookstores and thumbing through the stacks: Ravenswood Used Books and the Book Cellar in Lincoln Square; Quimby’s in Bucktown/Wicker Park; the Occult Bookstore in Noble Square; and Alchemy Arts in Edgewater.

Jay and Michelle could’ve used an extra suitcase to carry home the books they bought. The best news? They promised to return soon for more and, of course, there are so many more bookstores to visit: Unabridged Books in Boystown; Women and Children First in Andersonville; Seminary Co-op Bookstore and 57th Street Books in Hyde Park; Barnes & Noble at Webster Place; Myopic Books in Bucktown/Wicker Park; Border’s in Uptown; Bookworks and Booklegger’s in Lakeview; Bookman’s Alley in Evanston; Sandmeyer’s Bookstore in Printer’s Row; and on and on.

Speaking of bookstores, I managed to visit the new home of Elliott Bay Book Company on a recent trip to Seattle. The venerable bookseller recently moved from Pioneer Square to the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Happily, the new store retains the cathedral-like feeling of the old store. How do you know when you’re in a great bookstore? When you can feel a respect for words, a respect for stories; it’s when you can sense the presence of the sacred without any of the sanctimony, a feeling almost all houses of worship lack. A good bookstore is my church.

CHICAGO VOICES: Artist Philip Hartigan interviews The Book Cellar's Suzy Takacs

If you don't happen to know (and even if you do!) the artwork of Philip Hartigan or the crowded but neat bookshelves of The Book Cellar, among the finest independent bookstores, located right in Lincoln Square, here is a brief introduction posted on Philip's always interesting blog.

Beyond the Echo Chamber:
Reshaping Politics through Networked Progressive Media
Jessica Clark and Tracy Van Slyke

O Pioneers!– Tracy Van Slyke and Jessica Clark are the Lewis and Clark of the 21st Century’s digital media world. “Beyond the Echo Chamber” neatly maps the U.S. landscape, charting newer terrain (including Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo and Brave New Films) while exploring the evolving contours of more familiar lands (including The Nation, In These Times, Mother Jones and The New Press). The book also describes a clear path forward through which pioneering bloggers, journalists, filmmakers and others can continue to stake claims in new and old political territories. What’s more, Van Slyke and Clark offer several thought-provoking reflections on the new “participatory media environment” in which you and I not only consume news, we create and critique news and, thereby, cultivate an even greater stake in current events. That’s a revolutionary change. And the magnitude of that change is something mainstream media and mainstream politics is still only slowly awakening to despite the flourishing of new portals (YouTube, blogs) and new gadgets (iPhones, Flip cameras). The fact that all of these new tools no longer seem so very “new” only underscores the extraordinary pace of the revolution underway – a pace the authors eloquently match in the pace of the book’s writing. Along the way, Van Slyke and Clark even produce a few hearty laughs. “One of us – Tracy – has often joked that some progressive magazines should start targeting nursing homes for advertising.” Funny – and true. And in an insightful discussion of the need to find more appealing ways to deliver the news in this age when major demographic shifts are converging with the ever-accelerating tech revolution, Clark and Van Slyke note, “Humor and a willingness to cover and feature pop culture – including sports, music (and while we appreciate Pete Seeger, not that kind of music), television, film, and the miscellaneous trends that inform people’s everyday lives – are key ingredients for high-impact progressive media.” Here’s to youth, technology and all kinds of music for making the Left fun again.

The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett

Talking with a Man Who Likes to Talk – I’ve obviously been in a San Francisco state of mind, so after devouring some Lawrence Ferlinghetti poems I was hungry for more and pulled this Sam Spade mystery from the shelf. The novel gets better with every reading – the signature of any true classic – filled, as it is, with thick fog rolling in off the bay and clouding each character’s twisting motivations.

San Francisco Poems
Lawrence Ferlinghetti

And the Beat Goes On – Any visit to San Francisco requires a visit to City Lights, another of America’s great literary meccas. And any visit to City Lights, requires purchasing and reading a bit of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who, in 1953, opened this treasured bookstore with Peter D. Martin. I had the pleasure of hearing Ferlinghetti read over 10 years ago at Columbia College Chicago – and was knocked out. San Francisco Poems, a slim collection published in 2001 in honor of Ferlinghetti being named the city’s poet laureate packs an equally powerful punch. Here are the first four lines from “Challenges to Young Poets.”

Invent a new language anyone can under-
stand.

Climb the Statue of Liberty.

Reach for the unattainable.

Kiss the mirror and write what you see and
hear.

AN APPRECIATION: Donald Evans on the Chicago literary scene in Stockyard Magazine

Donald Evans, founder of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, has penned the single best overview of the Chicago literary scene I've ever read. What's more, the essay appears in Stockyard Magazine, a trailblazing online journal. As Evans' piece makes clear, when it comes to writing, we are a City of Big Shoulders, indeed.

A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway

Rain – Speaking during the Chicago Humanities Festival a few years back, Tobias Wolff summarized Ernest Hemingway’s influence on American writing this way: If you are writing today, Wolff noted, you are either trying to write like Hemingway or trying not to write like Hemingway. This 1929 novel features all of the classic Hemingway trademarks: the stoic male, the tough female, love, lust and action against the messy backdrop of war, punchy dialogue, and bucketfuls of rain.

101 Things You Didn’t Know about Lincoln:
Loves and Losses, Political Power Plays, White House Hauntings
Brian Thornton

The Man Behind the Myth, the Myths Behind the Man – Robert Charles and I had the pleasure earlier this year of visiting the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. (Robert took the photograph of General Ulysses S. Grant and me being bored to tears by that loafer, General George B. McClellan.) The museum is a grand and surprisingly moving tribute to a giant of American history about whom much is known. Brian Thorton’s book is a fun and even insightful look at the life, lies and legacies of our 16th President.

Soup & Bread Cookbook
Edited by Martha Bayne, Designed by Sheila Sachs, Illustrated by Paul Dolan

Yum-yum – As Martha Bayne notes in the introduction, Soup and Bread is a free weekly dinner served seasonally at the Hideout, the venerable bar and music venue on Chicago’s north side. Donations benefit the Greater Chicago Food Depository. For those too impatient to wait for the next soup and bread season to begin (and, really, what’s the point of waiting?), look no further than this artfully designed (thanks to the talented Sheila Sachs and Paul Dolan) recipe book. Ham Hock and Habanero Soup with Cornmeal-Plantain Dumplings, anyone?

POSTSCRIPT: Steve Diedrich, 1951-2010

Chicago’s literary community has lost a true Bloomite: Steve Diedrich, age 59. I met Steve through a mutual friend, the writer Kevin Grandfield. Steve was kind enough to invite me for three different years to present a portion of “Ulysses” during the annual Bloomsday reading he organized at the Cliff Dwellers Club overlooking Grant Park and Lake Michigan. I cannot think of Steve without thinking of Bloomsday – and the sheer joy on Steve’s face while we all performed passages from the great novel. Sitting in a row of chairs behind the podium where the person reading stood before a room crowded elbow-to-elbow with James Joyce fans, Steve often closed his eyes and recited the reader’s passage, silently, from memory – as a sort of prayer. Artists never really know how many lives they touch and Steve’s life touched thousands. Thanks to Kevin and thanks very much to Steve, I’m a Bloomite and I glory in it. (Pictured left to right: Kevin Grandfield, Claudia Traudt, me, Steve Diedrich, Pat McCaughy, Mary Nell Murphy, Gene Smith, Robert Reidy. Thanks to Mary Nell Murphy for the photo.)

AROUND TOWN: Gay Pride

With voices as colorful as a rainbow, as resilient as a lightning rod, and as varied as any five human beings will be, Goldie Goldbloom, Stacy Fox, Kurt Heintz, Darwyn Jones and I recently had the great pleasure of participating in the Gay Pride Reading Series at Gerber-Hart Library. The night was curated by Owen Keehnen. The stormy weather was brought to us by the dark heavens. But a hearty crowd – including the magicians Robert Charles, Eugene Burger and Benjamin Barnes – forged ahead through thunderstorms, electricity dancing madly through the rolling clouds and tornado sirens echoing off the high rises to enjoy the powerful poetry and prose. Did our words subdue the dragons of nature? Well, after the reading ended and we walked outside into calmer, cooler weather on Granville Avenue, we were greeted by an arching rainbow stretching over Lake Michigan. I read that as nature’s way of saying, “You win.”

The Original of Laura
Vladimir Nabokov

A Writer at Work – Less “a novel in fragments,” as the cover proclaims, than a tantalizing hint of what might have been, “The Original of Laura” remains nonetheless an intriguing glimpse of a writer at work – and a Great Writer at that. Beautifully imagined and designed (let us all now bow before the legendary Chip Kidd), this book reproduces 138 handwritten index cards, which is how Nabokov outlined much of his writing. Nabokov had left orders for the cards to be burned upon his death. Alas, his family ignored the demand – and we’re left with an insider’s look at a literary giant’s process of creation. Fascinating.

COMMENTARY: Crisis Control

The BP mess in the Gulf is sickening on so many levels: the damage to the ecosystem (the toll on the ocean, the toll on underwater sea-life, the toll on above-water wildlife); the battering, yet again, of the Gulf shore economy; and the diminishing of the Obama Presidency. Even while placing the onus squarely on BP, it’s impossible not to say that Mr. Obama has thoroughly bungled this crisis – a complete blunder now made worse with hypocritically transparent theatrics that do nothing but reinforce how thoroughly the United States of America bows to Big Oil. Having adeptly if not always elegantly met the challenge of so many major crises (e.g., financial market collapse, global recession, health insurance reform) it’s puzzling to witness the White House’s total ineptness here. “Day 54.” The TV and cable news shows are counting this crisis like the Iranian hostage crisis 30 years ago under Jimmy Carter. Tick-tock. The Carter-ization of Obama is tragically underway and the malaise weighing down the White House on this crisis is astounding no matter what trumped-up outrage Barack performs on the morning chat shows. Tick-tock. Instead of seeing blindfolded Americans trotted out day after day for Iranian photo ops, the world now gets to watch the endless plume of oil spewing from a broken underwater pipe. Tick-tock. The BP mess is not Obama’s Katrina. This is Obama’s hostage crisis, with the U.S. President himself being held hostage.

Sailing Alone Around the Room
Billy Collins

Black River Harbor – There is something poetic about visiting the place where I have asked for my ashes to be scattered – off the bridge at Black River Harbor in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. I hope (and trust) the time won’t come for a long time, but my sense is it’s always good to be prepared. Through Billy Collins’ poems I feel I am getting to know not only life, but death, too, which is an astounding feat by an author whose work is so, well, alive. That zestful joy includes the poem, “My Number,” in which the narrator ponders a visit by Death:

Or is he stepping from a black car
parked at the dark end of the lane,
shaking open the familiar cloak,
its hood raised like the head of a crow,
and removing the scythe from the trunk?

Did you have any trouble with the directions?
I will ask, as I start talking my way out of this.

A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005
Annie Leibovitz

A Thousand Words – This book is filled with haunting images: Jasper Johns’ shadow stretching into a sunlit workroom; George W. Bush’s anything-but-benign benign-looking war council; the magnetic eyes of Sarah Cameron Leibovitz; and stunning portraits of Susan Sontag on the Nile, in Sarajevo and upon her deathbed. What makes these and other Annie Leibovitz photographs so absorbing? Intimacy.

Daily Globe
Milan Standard
The New York Times
The Omaha World-Herald
Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Tribune
Chicago Reader
The Hinsdalean
The Wall Street Journal

All the News that Fits – Here is a snapshot of me taken by Robert Charles, aboard a fast train from Rome to Florence, enjoying my favorite 20th Century pastime: reading a newspaper. In this case, the newspaper was the International Herald Tribune, but, the truth is any newspaper would’ve sufficed. Whether it’s reading the small-town news of the Milan Standard (Milan, Missouri) and the Daily Globe (Ironwood, Michigan) or the longer, in-depth pieces of The New York Times and the Chicago Reader, I love newspapers. Yes, I use Twitter to create my own personalized daily “news filter” – Scott Simon’s interview with Christopher Hitchens, Joe My God’s take on gay issues, and Sarah Silverman’s jokes are included in today’s “edition” – but what I like about old-fashioned print is how a newspaper insists upon at least some measure of considered reflection, in both its creation and its consumption. Perhaps there is only a modicum more than digital demands; but, that measure of pause often constitutes the difference between a first and a second opinion – and it is within that difference that informed opinions take shape.

AN APPRECIATION: Artist Philip Hartigan

Philip Hartigan is the real deal. And it's always interesting to read one great artist interview another. Here is Philip interviewing Chicago artist Julia Katz on his blog,Praeterita.

Ballistics
Billy Collins
Our Story Begins
Tobias Wolff

Hallelujah – Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle is one of the great cathedrals of North American bookstores and the gospels of Billy Collins and Tobias Wolff are always well-worth reading. Robert Charles and I recently visited Seattle, where we spent one evening browsing the cedar-scented stacks of this inspiring bookstore just a few days before they began their move from their nearly 40-year home in Pioneer Square to a new location in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Choosing to buy and read books by Collins and Wolff seemed to match the occasion of a “final visit” that evening. Are any two writers more of a sure bet than these gentlemen? (No leaps of faith required here.) Billy Collins writes with an evocative, crystal clarity. Tobias Wolff’s stories always register as real and often feature his signature, from-now-on-nothing-will-ever-be-quite-the-same powerhouse moments. Elliott Bay Book Company is scheduled to be resurrected and re-open on Thursday, April 15. Good luck to them – and happy reading to you.

Stuff White People Like: The Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions
Christian Lander

No. 151: Saying You Sat Beside the Author on a Plane – On a recent United flight from Tulsa to Chicago, I happened to find myself sitting beside Christian Lander, a very funny guy who has written a very funny book that repeatedly hits the white bulls-eye. Example: “114: The New Yorker … When you first pick up The New Yorker, you will notice there are not a lot of pictures. This is very important to white people, as it makes them feel smarter about reading it. However, do not assume that white people read every word of The New Yorker. Due to an abundance of words and the fact that the magazine is published weekly, white people have been subscribing to and not reading The New Yorker for more than seventy years.”

Vintage Cheever
John Cheever
Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism
John Updike

My Two Uncles John – At a dinner party years ago in Washington, DC, someone asked the gathered guests who from history they would most like to meet. My friend Lisa Tate quickly replied, “Truman Capote, because he knew everyone else.” Splendid answer. In the imaginary, literary cocktail party I sometimes dream of, a living room lined with bookshelves is elbow-to-elbow with my friends and the literary giants of today and yesterday. Capote is present, giggling beside Lisa on the sofa. And there’s Mark Twain, swaying in a rocking chair, telling all who will listen some winding tale. There’s Dostoyevsky, standing with Ed Underhill before the smoldering fireplace, extolling the virtues of suffering. There's Hemingway, feigning a swing at Joe Wade. There’s Dorothy Parker, coyly asking Robert N. Georgalas to fix her another martini: “As long as you are pouring, darling,” she whispers and smiles. And there, in a far corner of the room, are John Cheever and John Updike, looking and chatting like two beloved uncles at a crowded family gathering. In a room like this, jammed with larger-than-life personalities, the two, tweedy men enjoy a serious, subdued conversation. And I stand near, not wanting to interrupt while leaning closer to hear, to understand, to more fully comprehend what Cheever means when he speaks of the “invincibility” of literature.

AN APPRECIATION: Marc Smith

There are some nights I will just never forget. Here are three. (1) A rainy, Spring night in 1980 on the campus of Northern Illinois University at DeKalb: The first time I saw "Macbeth" staged. (2) Friday, January 14, 1994, a God-forsaken, ice-cold night outside, but a warm, welcoming, elbow-to-elbow crowd inside the Private Arts reading in the Deson-Saunders Gallery on West Superior: My first big public reading of one of my short stories. (3) Last night, at the Omaha Healing Arts Center in Omaha, Nebraska: The first time I've ever seen poet and Slam-impresario Marc Smith perform. Don't ask why someone who writes a blog called ChicagoWriter had to find this great Chicago voice and performer in Omaha, Nebraska, when Marc has been performing at the nearby Green Mill for 25 years; but, know if you want to gain some insight into the power of theater, the thrill of great writing, and life -- yes, capital-L Life itself -- see Marc Smith for yourself.

Ireland in Poetry
Edited by Charles Sullivan
Ireland: A Terrible Beauty
Jill and Leon Uris
The Illustrated History of Ireland
Seán Duffy
Out of Ireland: The Story of Irish Emigration to America
Kerby Miller and Paul Wagner

Irish Eyes – The great Irish poet William Butler Yeats once observed, “Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” The line encapsulates the feisty Irish character – and I offer thanks, again, to the writer (and honorary Irishwoman) Vicki Ruzicka for bringing it to my attention. Another dear friend and feisty writer, Rosemary Tinker, once observed that being Irish means possessing “a particular blend of humor and malice.” Indeed. Paradox is the essence of life, especially when seen through Irish eyes, from Yeats’ “terrible beauty” (borrowed here by Leon and Jill Uris) to the juxtaposition of the grievous and the glorious images and words that fill these fine books.