ChicagoWriter

2011-11-13T10:49:00.002-06:00

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.

2011-10-27T17:49:00.002-05:00

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.

2011-10-22T08:46:00.003-05:00

"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.

2011-10-09T14:48:00.002-05:00

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.

2011-10-09T14:45:00.001-05:00

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.

2011-10-09T14:43:00.001-05:00

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.

2011-10-09T14:38:00.002-05:00

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.

2011-08-26T17:28:00.001-05:00

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.

2011-08-26T17:26:00.001-05:00

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.”

2011-08-26T17:24:00.001-05:00

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.

2011-08-20T08:37:00.004-05:00

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.)

2011-07-18T22:34:00.003-05:00

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!

2011-07-15T13:16:00.002-05:00

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.

2011-07-09T10:55:00.004-05:00

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.

2011-07-09T10:24:00.006-05:00

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.”

2011-06-16T20:02:00.012-05:00

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.

2011-06-11T12:47:00.001-05:00

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.

2011-06-11T12:45:00.001-05:00

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.

2011-05-30T21:30:00.004-05:00

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.

2011-05-21T13:41:00.003-05:00

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.

2011-04-16T14:14:00.003-05:00

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.

2011-04-16T14:12:00.003-05:00

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.

2011-04-16T14:09:00.002-05:00

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.

2011-03-20T17:42:00.001-05:00

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.”

2011-03-12T16:20:00.003-06:00

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

2011-01-24T23:34:00.000-06:00

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

2011-01-16T23:12:00.002-06:00

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.

2010-12-29T15:52:00.004-06:00

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.

2010-12-05T19:24:00.002-06:00

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.

2010-11-23T12:26:00.001-06:00

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.

2010-11-23T11:13:00.001-06:00

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.

2010-11-13T16:57:00.002-06:00

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.

2010-08-20T08:09:00.005-05:00

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.

2010-08-15T21:19:00.004-05:00

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.

2010-07-31T17:35:00.001-05:00

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.

2010-07-31T17:33:00.002-05:00

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.

2010-07-28T21:55:00.007-05:00

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.

2010-07-02T11:11:00.003-05:00

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.

2010-07-02T11:07:00.002-05:00

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.

2010-07-02T11:03:00.004-05:00

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?

2010-06-26T15:16:00.003-05:00

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.)

2010-06-26T10:03:00.005-05:00

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.”

2010-06-15T22:06:00.002-05:00

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.

2010-06-12T09:22:00.004-05:00

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.

2010-06-08T20:00:00.003-05:00

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.

2010-06-08T19:58:00.001-05:00

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.

2010-06-08T19:54:00.002-05:00

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.

2010-05-07T08:23:00.003-05:00

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.

2010-04-03T19:51:00.008-05:00

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.

2010-04-01T22:40:00.002-05:00

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.”

2010-03-30T18:02:00.004-05:00

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.

2010-03-24T21:07:00.005-05:00

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.

2010-03-15T22:13:00.004-05:00

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.

2010-03-13T09:46:00.001-06:00

Gay Haiku
Joel Derfner

Old ponds, young frogs – A few years back, I wrote my friend, the Michigan writer Vicki Ruzicka, and noted my recent reading of the works of Matsuo Bashō, the great 17th Century Japanese poet. I reveled in the delicate beauty of simply translated verse, such as, “Old pond, young frog, splash.” Vicki wrote back: “Young pond, old frog, croak.” Joel Derfner’s small, funny volume on gay dating is a real treat. One morsel: “’Here’s Death in Venice – You like murder mysteries.’ Should have dumped you then.”

2010-03-01T13:55:00.003-06:00

GRANTA: The Chicago Issue

Big Shoulders -- The shoulders here belong to Aleksandar Hemon, Sandra Cisneros, Alex Kotlowitz, Stuart Dybek, Richard Powers, Rich Cohen, Thom Jones, Don DeLillo, Nelson Algren and others. But Camilo Jose Vergara's short essay and then-and-now photo album of a number of Chicago public housing projects is the piece that haunts me. Stormy, husky, brawling, indeed. (The photographer is shown here in a self-portrait taken in an airplane bathroom.)

2010-02-13T09:36:00.002-06:00

AROUND TOWN: The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame

Designed to promote and celebrate Chicago's rich literary history, the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame is long overdue. Thanks to Randy Richardson for letting me know and kudos to the Chicago Writers Association for getting the Hall of Fame up and running.

2010-02-12T18:39:00.001-06:00

True North
Jim Harrison

Town and Country – Set largely in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Jim Harrison’s thoughtful novel already had me ruminating about my childhood and adult experiences with people and places “up north.” But those reflections only intensified as I finished reading the book shortly after my Uncle Roy died. Roy Froberg was one of my Dad’s boyhood friends from the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s west side. They’d been friends for roughly 70 years. As a young man, Roy wound up marrying my Mom’s cousin, Marion. Mom and Marion had moved to Chicago from a small U.P. town called Bessemer. This weaving together of family and friendship contributed to a narrowing of geography, as well: Unlike others of my friends who were growing up in Chicago’s suburbs, my Dad’s roots in the city ensured my brother and I would become well-acquainted with the metropolis and my Mom’s roots ensured we would become equally familiar with the northern woods. My brother Joe and I spent many a long summer and winter in Bessemer and Ironwood, climbing tall, sticky pine trees, kicking up red dust from the red dirt of the gravel-paved roads, traipsing through smothering piles of white snow, and skiing on wobbly, ancient, too-big wooden skis down small, nearby bluffs. From time to time, our family’s vacation coincided with Uncle Roy and Aunt Marion’s vacation so our cousins Billy, Bonnie and Bobby joined us as playmates. One time – or were there more? – our families stayed together at a cabin on Lake Gogebic. I remember waking early one morning, walking outside into cool sunshine and joining Uncle Roy, who was seated on a folding chair at the end of a small dock, fishing. Flashing a wide smile (Uncle Roy always seemed to have a wide smile), he invited me to join him. I picked up a nearby fishing rod and when I cast my line I managed to somehow catch the hook in the back of my very own t-shirt. My immediate, thoroughly embarrassed reaction was to act as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened – even though I was sitting directly beside Uncle Roy. I then spent several minutes fumbling around in a silent Laurel-and-Hardy routine, with me playing both parts, trying to tug and flinch and unhook myself without being noticed. Uncle Roy did, in fact, pretend not to notice. He just kept his eyes on the still, wide lake before us. And I always loved him for that.

2010-02-10T18:09:00.004-06:00

Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America
Garry Wills

Of, By and For the People – Read this superior book to better understand a pivotal moment in American history, to delve into a delicious study of some of the most delectable rhetoric in the English language, to gain greater insight into the elegant thinking of a true giant in American politics, and to gather many gems of practical advice: “This, surely, is the secret of Lincoln’s eloquence,” Wills writes. “He not only read aloud, to think his way into sounds, but wrote as a way of ordering his thought. He had a keenness for analytical exercises. He was proud of the mastery he achieved over Euclid’s Elements, which awed Herndon and others. He loved the study of grammar, which some think the most arid of subjects … He was also, Herndon tells us, laboriously precise in his choice of words. He would have agreed with Mark Twain that the difference between the right word and the nearly right one is that between the lightning and a lightning bug.”

2010-02-09T21:55:00.002-06:00

Havanas in Camelot
William Styron

Light Up – This delightful collection of sweet-hearted essays from the late, great William Styron includes recollections of Truman Capote, James Baldwin, John F. Kennedy and Francois Mitterrand as well as a tour de force – “Transcontinental with Tex,” which originally appeared in the Spring 1996 edition of The Paris Review. This is one hell of an entertaining yarn in which Terry Southern, and William and Rose Styron visit Nelson Algren in Chicago, only to have the great Chicago writer abandon them inside Cook County Jail. “I was always very fond on Nelson,” Styron notes, “but I always thought he was half crazy.”

2009-12-20T10:56:00.002-06:00

COMMENTARY: Why does the Catholic Church preach love but practice hate?

Here's one answer: Robert P. George. From today's New York Times Magazine.

2009-11-02T22:46:00.003-06:00

COMMENTARY: Gonzales, Golub and the Ugly Truth

The nation is approaching a tragic 5th anniversary of the November 10, 2004 nomination and the February 3, 2005 confirmation of Alberto Reynaldo Gonzales as U.S. Attorney General. Not exactly an occasion to muster a jubilee of justice. In fact, the sad prospect of recalling the installation of one of the Bush Administration’s chief architects of villainy – spying on Americans, firing U.S. attorneys for political advantage, and torturing foreign citizens (just to highlight a few) – has led me to an unexpected conclusion: I miss Leon Golub.

Golub, who died in August 2004 at age 82, was a gritty, Chicago-born artist who never looked the other way when it came to depicting the shocking realities of life. Remember those infamous Abu Ghraib photos? They were and are grotesque examples of ugly human behavior. They came to light after Gonzales, then White House counsel, authored and commissioned various “torture memos” in 2002 and before Gonzales was promoted to U.S. Attorney General. The savage actions memorialized in the Abu Ghraib photos also could have been subjects in Leon Golub paintings.

For several decades, Golub examined the often hideous truth of how human beings treat one another, creating wall-sized, monstrous works that simultaneously documented our past, foreshadowed our future, and now serve as siren warnings of the horrors we are clearly capable of inflicting. The process Golub used to make art – scraping paint from his canvas with a cleaver – mimicked the violence he often portrayed. And the disturbing images – crouched, writhing victims of napalm bombings in his Burnt Man series; threatening soldiers chasing screaming children in his Vietnam series; and, most prophetically, the masochistic brutalization of stripped and hooded prisoners in his various Mercenaries, Interrogation, Riot, and White Squad paintings – depict adults at their despicable worst.

I did not know Leon Golub and only met him once, quite briefly, at a 2003 retrospective of his late work at the Chicago Cultural Center. But I miss Leon Golub because he had the courage to show us the ugly truth. Today’s world could certainly use more politicians who would stand up to the ugly truths of our past and present. But, frankly, today’s world also would benefit from more artists like Golub, too – good artists who know that entertainment confirms what we know and comforts us while true art confuses us and challenges us to grapple with reality, no matter how beautiful or ugly.

2009-10-29T21:41:00.009-05:00

The Devil in the White City: A Saga of Magic and Murder at the Fair that Changed America
Erik Larson

A Chicago Story – I didn’t get around to reading this page-turner until after Robert Charles, Eugene Burger, Jack Gould, Gordon and Gale Meyer, David Kovac and I participated in Kathleen Carpenter’s related tour for the Chicago Architecture Foundation. The timing worked well: heading down to Hyde Park, visiting the old Midway, walking out onto Wooded Island and learning a great deal of history from Kathleen was the perfect prelude to reading this tale of the imaginative angels and monstrous demons that live among (and within) us. The book accomplishes a rare feat, not unlike the great World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 itself: it keeps topping itself with each chapter. One of my favorite passages – because it is so Chicago – comes when the Fair finally opens to great fanfare, including a Presidential speech, a poetic ode and this:

"Two hundred white doves leaped for the sky. The guns of the Michigan fired. Steam whistles shrieked. Spontaneously the throng began to sing ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee,’ which many thought of as the national anthem although no song had yet received that designation. As the crowd thundered, a man eased up beside a thin, pale woman with a bent neck. In the next instance Jane Addams realized her purse was gone.

The great fair had begun."

My kind of town, indeed.

2009-10-23T21:04:00.003-05:00

AROUND TOWN: Chills and thrills with the magic masters

Halloween is High Holy Season for many magicians. Our friends Jack Gould and Kathleen Carpenter recently hosted a party ostensibly celebrating several milestone birthdays among the guests (70, 60, 50) and the night included entertaining performances by a handful of mentalists, card manipulators and the local maestro himself, Eugene Burger. (Among the other guests: my all-time favorite magician, of course and for all of the obvious reasons, Robert Charles; Gordon Meyer; Jeanette Andrews; Sandy Marshall; and the fast-talking, fast-fingered swindler Richard Turner.) Coming up next week is a special treat: Robert, his "Magic Chicago" co-star Benjamin Barnes and rising star Jeanette welcome Eugene for two late-night Halloween shows. Visit Magic Chicago for more information. Plus, checkout this terrific Chicago Tribune story by Kevin Pang from today's newspaper.

2009-09-06T16:59:00.002-05:00

True and False:
Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor
David Mamet

Acting Out – In these 29 brief essays, David Mamet offers a stinging dissent to commonly accepted practice and wisdom. “If you decide to be an actor, stick to your decision,” he writes. “The folks you meet in supposed positions of authority – critics, teachers, casting directors – will, in the main, be your intellectual and moral inferiors. They will lack your imagination, which is why they became bureaucrats rather than artists; and they will lack your fortitude, having elected institutional support over a life of self-reliance. They spend their lives learning lessons very different from the ones you learn, and many or most of them will envy you and this envy will express itself as contempt. It’s a cheap trick of unhappy people, and if you understand it for what it is, you need not adopt or be overly saddened by their view of you. It is the view of the folks on the verandah talking about the lazy slaves.” Mamet also provides some practical, straight-forward advice: “In the theatre, as in other endeavors, correctness in the small is the key to correctness in the large. Show up fifteen minutes early. Know your lines cold. Choose a good, fun, physical objective. Bring to rehearsal and the performance those things you will need and leave the rest behind.” A must-read for anyone involved in theater.

2009-09-06T16:57:00.002-05:00

The Colossus of New York
Colson Whitehead

Manhattan Mystery – I found this to be a forgettable book about an unforgettable city. But how can that be? After all, Colson Whitehead is an accomplished writer. Author of several books, he is a recipient of the Whiting Award as well as a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. Perhaps the subject (let’s face it: he shows the courage to tackle New York City) is just too large to capture on any sized canvas. But I think my disappointment is centered upon the book’s style with its shifting points of view, generalized rather than individualized characters, and an overall approach designed to provide a wide-angled survey rather than a spot-lit focus on concrete specifics. That means I came to this book expecting a very different book – and so: is that a critique of Whitehead’s writing or of my reading?

2009-08-02T11:16:00.007-05:00

AN APPRECIATION: John Mahoney, Kat Powers and Friends

Surfing the internet a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon the fine photography of Kat Powers. One of her images really jumped out at me -- a picture of my old friend, the writer John Mahoney. Here's another portrait made by Kat, of John in his famous rose garden. Plus, here's a re-post of an early Appreciation essay titled, "John Mahoney and His 'Lost Garden.'" And here's to friends, old and new!

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.

2009-07-10T21:38:00.004-05:00

The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter

Edited by Robert Kimball

You're the Top -- There's something to be said for singing, even if you can't really sing: the very act just lifts your soul. (That's one of the downsides to growing up as we do: as an adult you don't sing nearly as much as you do when you're a child. What's worse, most of the singing you might do could very well be in a church. I sometimes think "church" music is so awful because really good music is more powerful than prayer.) Cole Porter was certainly a master of American song; his tunes are widely available, performed by a vast variety of artists, still today. And a reading of his lyrics reveals Cole Porter was a great American poet, too.

When they begin the beguine

It brings back the sound of music so tender,

It brings back a night of tropical splendor,

It brings back a memory ever green.

I'm with you once more under the stars

And down by the shore an orchestra's playing,

And even the palms seem to be swaying

When they begin the beguine.

2009-07-04T12:37:00.003-05:00

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.

2009-07-04T11:16:00.004-05:00

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.

2009-06-27T11:34:00.004-05:00

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.

2009-06-27T10:33:00.003-05:00

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.

2009-06-27T09:58:00.012-05:00

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

2009-05-12T15:40:00.002-05:00

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.”

2009-05-03T13:43:00.005-05:00

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.”

2009-05-03T13:42:00.001-05:00

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.”

2009-04-09T07:39:00.010-05:00

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.

2009-04-07T10:22:00.002-05:00

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.

2009-03-21T11:01:00.002-05:00

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.

2009-03-15T22:22:00.010-05:00

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.

2009-02-21T09:36:00.003-06:00

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.

2009-02-21T08:58:00.003-06:00

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.

2008-12-28T20:52:00.008-06:00

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.

2008-12-20T12:43:00.004-06:00

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.

2008-11-14T11:22:00.002-06:00

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.

2008-11-06T09:23:00.000-06:00

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.

2008-11-05T09:28:00.002-06:00

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.

2008-11-01T17:40:00.003-05:00

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.

2008-11-01T09:37:00.002-05:00

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.”

2008-10-31T20:04:00.003-05:00

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."

2008-09-27T14:01:00.005-05:00

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.

2008-08-30T16:51:00.007-05:00

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.

2008-08-30T16:46:00.003-05:00

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.

2008-07-27T09:48:00.012-05:00

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.”

2008-07-19T15:55:00.004-05:00

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.

2008-07-12T13:02:00.005-05:00

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.

2008-07-04T10:44:00.006-05:00

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.

2008-07-04T10:24:00.005-05:00

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.

2008-07-04T10:17:00.004-05:00

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."

2008-07-04T10:14:00.002-05:00

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.

2008-06-15T10:52:00.004-05:00

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.