Literary Chicago: Ernest Hemingway - "The Snows of Kilimanjaro And Other Stories"

Sigh. Some things never change.

"Listen," the detective said. "This isn't Chicago. You're not a gangster. You don't have to act like a moving picture. It's all right to tell who shot you. Anybody would tell who shot them. That's all right to do. Suppose you don't tell who he is and he shoots somebody else. Suppose he shoots a woman or a child. You can't let him get away with that. You tell him," he said to Mr. Frazer. "I don't trust that damn interpreter."

"I am very reliable," the interpreter said. Cayetano looked at Mr. Frazer.

"Listen, amigo," said Mr. Frazer. "The policieman says that we are not in Chicago but in Hailey, Montana. You are not a bandit and this has nothing to do with the cinema."

"I believe him," said Cayetano softly. "Ya lo creo."

 - from The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio

"What's he going to do?"
"Nothing."
"They'll kill him."
"I guess they will."
"He must have got mixed up in something in Chicago."
"I guess so," said Nick.

- from The Killers

Literary Chicago: Jack Kerouac - "The Subterraneans"

" - returning to the Red Drum for sets, to hear Bird, whom I saw distinctly digging Mardou several times also myself directly into my eye looking to search if really I was that great writer I thought myself to be as if he knew my thoughts and ambitions or remembered me from other night clubs and other coasts, other Chicagos - " 

This is the third work of Kerouac that I've read and the third that has a Chicago reference (previously: On the Road / The Dharma Bums). Although this is a peculiar inclusion in the literary Chicago encyclopedia, as it doesn't say much about Chicago itself, rather the narrator is reminiscing back to other nights, other clubs, other cities, and picks Chicago in particular to call out.

The Bird in question of course is Charlie Parker, who while he played here, isn't as assoicated with Chicago as he is with other cities, particularly New York City. And the story itself, inspired by Kerouac's nights in NYC, is fictionalized to take place in San Francisco.

I'm reminded of Sarah Ruhl's play "The Clean House" which takes place in a "metaphysical Connecticut." I think Kerouac uses this phrase in a similar vein, that maybe Bird noticed the narrator from a night club in another city, and perhaps that city was Chicago, and perhaps it was another Chicago. Is Chicago ever the same place twice or even to two different people? Consider Heraclitus.

Or maybe I'm overthinking a speed-induced ramble of one of America's great writer's lesser works. (Not to mention that cover; it wasn't enough to put one photo of the author on the cover but we need to get his good side too?)

The most interesting thing of this novella overall is the character of Mardou, inspired by Kerouac's real life girlfriend, Alene Lee, who protected her privacy. I stumbled across her biography, written by her daughter and posted in 2010. Certainly worth the read to learn more about the inspiration for one of the period's more complex and entirely underwritten characters.