Literary Chicago: Jeanette Winterson - "Gut Symmetries"

"When Mama and I left for Berlin, Jove was about to go to Chicago to study. He was nineteen, a dark teenage hero to a girl in old-fashioned clothes and dreaming about James Dean." (pg 126)

Like in many works of fiction, Winterson's characters go to school in Chicago. While this reference is as vague as Jhumpa Lahiri's Chicago school reference, the context implies the school to be the University of Chicago (see Tender is the Night) although Alaa Al Aswany's Chicago is primarily set in UIC. I don't think I've read any fiction that pays much attention to DePaul or Northwestern though I'm sure it's out there. Any fiction about Chicago State? My alma mater Columbia College? Northeastern? I'm curious...

Literary Chicago: Ruth Ozeki - "My Year of Meats"

"I had a lover in the Year of Meats. His name was Sloan and he was a musician from Chicago."

"Sloan lives in the penthouse of one of the high-rise apartment buildings that cluster along Lake Shore Drive as it winds around the southern perimeter of Lake Michigan. From his vantage, the horizon line is negligible, obscured by smog and slatted blinds. Floor-to-ceiling windows from the gray lake and the steel waves that lap the concrete shore. The carpet is gray and mimics the water."

This description of Chicago reminds me of Martin Amis's character riding the Blue Line from O'Hare in his book The Information (coincidentally, in that post, I reference Ruth Ozeki as well). Writers love to make this city sound bleaker than it actually is. It is setting the mood for a single scene, but it's interesting when it becomes a trend. Algren of course wrote about the roar of the L and the seedier parts of Wicker Park but he is probably most remembered for his over-quoted "never a lovely so real" to define the city.

This isn't to say that I think grittiness is an insult. But maybe perhaps the romanticiziation of the idea is a bit outdated. Then again, this story was taking place in 1991 (and The Information was written in 1995). This was a time when the murder rates and overall crime rates were even worse than in this year, which itself has seen a spike in murder and crime. So maybe the romanticiziation is appropriate, that things may have appeared to be too good in this city over the past decade, and now the ugliness is starting to rear it's thorny head again.

Or maybe I'm just trying to make the city sound worse than it actually is. 

Trump Protest

I am not a typical protester. I am not close with anyone who is. I am not informed of when protests are happening. I don't go out of my way to protest.

But there I was found myself in the middle of a protest against Donald Trump.

I believe protests are important. I believe that they do not hinder free speech, but that they are free speech.

On the outside of the UIC Pavilion, along Harrison between Morgan and Racine, there was chanting and shouting and percussion and people sitting in trees and waving posters and unity and old people and young people and families and people of all colors and nationalities. It was the great post-race revolutionaries wet dream. Every type of person was there.

When was the last time Trump visited the UIC campus?  Over half the student body is Asian, Latino, or African-American. According to UIC: "Foreign students comprise about 6% of the campus enrollment with the more than 1,600 visa students coming from over 80 different countries." That was in 1999 even and I wouldn't be surprised if that number has increased.
It was not violent. There were instances of violence and it seemed especially worse inside the arena. From what I've seen these spats only happened because he cancelled. Would there have been this violence without him cancelling? Without the chance for his supporters to scapegoat the protesters, to get in their faces, to scream awful things?

Did You Like That Picture?

Did you like that picture? I sent it to you not to show off. I sent it to you to remind you of the god-damned man-made majestic beauty of our world. Of this perfectly primary-colored edge of our world, edge of our country. The perfect golden-red; the cocksure azure water, crisp as the air that breathes ocean mist onto my skin; the typical colored sand: because we no longer need to describe what color sand is (unless it's atypical), because I think about how much sharper writers of the past had to be with their words. But now, we all experience everything from the seats of our desks, and what we used to seek at the top of the world, we seek at the top of our laps. So: typical is what this sand remains. 

I remember being impressed by Kerouac for painting the entirety of America in one simple pamphlet-tome. Now I am the one, within a span of a few months, who has ventured from statues of freedom, arches of note, and finally this bridge, the summation of this country, the end and the beginning of this country, our country, our world. I've heard the blues in Memphis, I've heard the blues in Chicago, I've heard the blues in Austin. And I've seen the blues in all these cities and I see the blues before me: the sky, the waves, my shoes. And I hope this picture finds you back home to help you escape your blues. 

I am wearing a shirt that portrays a sketch of a sewer, a Chicago manhole cover. Our art is about the dirt, the filth, the overlooked, the dispirited, the dispossessed, the disposed, the disks that cover up our dirt, our filth, our waste. Our city works. Our workers make it work. Our civic pride is tied into the fabric of where we deposit our waste, our filth. We recognize the beauty of the sewer system and we're not ashamed to put our names on it. 

STL : MEM : ATX

This is a few weeks overdue, but I (semi-)recently took a road trip from Chicago to Austin with my girlfriend. Along the way, we made a few stops, of various lengths, in various cities, for various reasons.

I didn't want to write a series of posts about how great Austin is or the freedom of being on the road and away from work. You already know these things. Austin is just as great as everyone says it is. I'd love to go back. At the same time, it's not quite correct to say this was a vacation. I had too much on my mind to call it a vacation. The trip was thought-provoking in ways I did and did not expect.

At nearly 17 hours of driving, it'd be damn near impossible, and unnecessarily exhausting to reach Austin from Chicago in a day. We decided to rent a room in Memphis, TN for a night; folks in Memphis seemed used to the fact that many visitors were "just passing through." Along the way we stopped in Springfield, IL for gas, coffee, and to take a selfie in front of the Capitol building; we stopped in St. Louis, MO, for a more important reason.

We stopped in St. Louis, MO because I wanted to go to a bookstore. 

Literary Chicago: Ploughshares Summer 2015

Ploughshares, the collection of fiction and poetry put out three times a year by Emerson College (of which Denis Leary is a council member of the non-profit publication), was capaciously endowed with scenes from a Literary Chicago. Four stories mentioned this city, and at least three of the authors in the collection have called Chicago home at one point or another (Osama Alomar, Jesse Ball, Rebecca Makkai, and Alex Shakar). One story mentioning Chicago in a collection isn't particularly noticeable, but seeing the name of this city in four out of eighteen stories called for some attention, even if just a coincidence. Here's how a few contemporary writers fictionalized Chicago:

"That fall, she was starting graduate school at the Art Institute of Chicago. "Chicago," I said later that night, after our date. We were in bed; we'd just had sex. "You know, I've been a Cubs fan since I could stand on first base.""

"Later, we joked that the only reason I came to Chicago was because she needed someone to carry her paintings."

- Kevin A Gonzalez, Palau

"My racial color code as established by the Chicago Bank of Life is white...When I am donating to the Chicago Bank of Life, I do not think of her." 

- Fiona Maazel, Dad's Just a Number

Cyn Vargas 'On The Way' / Rey Andújar 'Saturnalia'

So.

First off.

There's not really too much of a reason to lump these two books together. Other than the fact that they are both collections of short stories written by authors living in Chicago, put out by Chicago presses, and I finished reading both on the same day. And the settings for both alternate between various locations in Latin America and the United States. Other than that, there's not much of a connection, and I'm writing about them together solely based on my timing of reading them. Let's start with On The Way.

I picked this book up at City Lit about a month ago. I'm always game to try anything Curbside Splendor puts out, even if the epigraph is a Radiohead lyric. But a blurb on the back from Bonnie Jo Campbell meant I would pick it up anyway.

Let's start with this: these stories are not uplifting. They're not always tragic, but they are often heartbreaking. It's not the fact that death always awaits us (it does sometimes), but that more often, bad things happen and the devastation permeates itself in its wake throughout a life; lucky are we who don't have to identify with many of these stories. The protagonists are generally women. They've been abused, they've been cheated on, they've been divorced, they've been abandoned in physical and existential ways. Vargas writes about women young and old, who've experienced a lot and who've experienced a lot of pain. Rarely do they find redemption. In an interview with Kati Heng, Vargas revealed her personal connection with some of these characters, how she identifies with them, and why they need their voices to be heard: "To appreciate the joy, you have to have the pain too. I think I am able to write bittersweet stories because I have lived through it."

Pitchfork Music Festival 2015

The following is a bit of notes I took on Saturday afternoon. An existential/Wallace Shawn style exploration on identity and creation. 

Attention. That's what's on my mind right now, sitting in the grass in Union Park at the Pitchfork Music Festival. What am I here to devote my attention to? How do I decide how to use my attention? Is attention the most important thing at an environment like this? Or is it best to have divided attention?

Are we here for art or diversion? Or other? (commerce)

Bully from Nashville starts. I'm still sitting. There's a decent crowd for the early side of the day on the smaller stage. Various forms of attention are around me. People totally focused, me with divided attention, as my attention is primarily on my thoughts. But I'm also processing the music.

If what and how we consume is dictated by marketing, is what and how we create also a product of that same marketing? Does the "I" ever have a say in creation? Is creation just an expression of consumption?, ie, what am I doing here? Is there an "I" here? Or is my "I" just someone else's creations that I've consumed? And if I've never decided what I've consumed, then how can I say I've created anything? And what have I consumed to have made me think these thoughts?

So why am I here? What's the difference between habit and ritual? There's supposed to be something sacred about ritual, right? (I may just be thinking that because a church is looking down at me) But what if you hold nothing sacred? Can that be true though, literature, the Clash, the simple act of helping someone up off the ground.

Tony Fitzpatrick and Spring

Last night I attended part of a Words+Music event at the Empty Bottle. Unexpectedly, the event seemed to had started on time, so I missed readings by JR Nelson and Jim DeRogatis. But I did see Jessica Hopper read her review of Miley Cyrus's Bangerz, and manage to hear the illuminant Tony Fitzpatrick read some recent articles of his that will appear in the forthcoming book Dime Stories that collects his column from New City over the past few years.

I've seen Fitzpatrick read at one of these events before, and have seen him perform elsewhere. He is a Chicago writer through and through: Nelson Algren and Mike Royko have undeniably left their mark on Fitzpatrick. If, as Ernest Hemingway states, "you should not read [Algren] if you cannot take a punch," then know that Algren's protege is an even more formidable wielder of the written word. His vulgar wit and sardonic humor are instantly recognizable, and have little match in the ring of literature.

And yet, Fitzpatrick seemed a little off his game this evening, as if the gloves weren't on as tight as usual. True to form, he was conscious of this unlikely wavering in his reading. He reminded the audience of his heart surgery a few months ago before reading a post-surgery reflection on life (appropriately titled, It's Spring).

The piece he read aloud has been on my mind since I first read it a few weeks back. The main point of it is to not let the little bullshit of life stack up and distract you from what you want to accomplish. This doesn't mean over-worry yourself with work however. For Tony, it means going to more baseball games, spending more time with his family, going for more walks, enjoying every breeze, the flowers, the birds; "put your cell phone in a drawer." It's a transition for Tony, even so late in life, from hanging up the gloves to finding more poetic ways to reassert how necessary it is to stop and smell the cliche roses; a lover yet still a fighter.

For my part, I've been creating a list of new places - restaurants, art galleries, bars, cultural institutions, old buildings - that I want to explore in and around the city, in neighborhoods I'm already familiar with and ones I've never stepped foot in. It's easy to get comfortable going to the same bars, seeing the same bands, biking down the same boulevards and streets, seeing the same people, eating the same things. This easiness leads to routine, and routine will make your life pass by quicker than you intend to. I'm 27 and I already know that. You can't have new thoughts and new feelings if you don't go to new places.

Of course, here's the dilemma. Routine, repetition, schedules - these don't necessarily lead to stagnation of the mind. These can lead to strong community building, whether that community is in a neighborhood, in artistic, or business. But the best way to help strengthen that community is inevitably to get outside of it, to introduce an outside perspective, and perhaps even bond your own community to another one. This is called growth.

So this year, I'm going to new places and new spaces, to get to know this city even more outside of the bubble I've grown familiar in. Yesterday, this included: a visit to Open Books in River North before they move to the West Loop next week; a small tour of the Midwest Buddhist Temple in Old Town, hosted by Jesse; hanging out at Oz Park in Old Town listening to a trombonist practice his scales and dog-watching; buying even more books at Bookworks in Wrigleyville; hanging out on the patio at Sheffield's than catching the first half of Reading Under the Influence; and then not something new but something always enjoyable, the aforementioned Words+Music at the Empty Bottle.

Onward to spring, and to life.



(note: this wasn't my exact route, but changing things on Google can be such a pain in the ass)

Literary Chicago - Gabi Gliechmann, 'The Elixir of Immortality'

Literary Chicago is series where I try to capture the essence of the city by how it is described in fiction, primarily from books that don't take place in Chicago.

"Shortly after the death of my mother I traveled to the United States. While I was changing planes in Chicago I happened to catch sight of an article in the city's leading newspaper, The Morning Star:"

pg 174 The Elixir of Immortality by Gabi Gleichmann (2013)

Ear Relevant 4.10.15 - 4.17.15

You've probably seen that Chance the Rapper video for Sunday Candy by now but just in case you haven't...the choreography is beautiful.

Baltimore-via-Chicago keys and drums duo Wume announced a new album, Maintain, coming out May 19th on Ehse Records. Their bandcamp has a couple songs to tease ya.

I wrote about Liturgy's new album The Ark Work and why they're the only black metal band I like for Since I Left You. They played at Subterranean last week. Baltimore's Horse Lords opened who are just as worthy of your attention.

Strawberry Jacuzzi released a new song called 'Bitch Jam' on Midwest Action.

White Mystery made a film and it premiers at CIMM Fest on Monday. Check out the trailer below. The movie looks...it's...just watch the trailer.

Runoff

Wrote the majority of this a week ago. Better late than never. Better luck next time, Chuy. 

The skies are spitting at us trying to deter us from voting today. I say us but I mean you. I voted when it was sunny a week ago. Early voting lasts for two weeks and we can still barely get one third of the city to vote.

So that's why the skies spit at us. Because we get the weather we deserve.

I'm sitting at the bar at the Hideout waiting for Mick Dumke and Ben Joravsky to woefully announce the imminent results of Chuy Garcia's loss in the mayoral runoff, the first in this city's history. It's only a matter of time. The bar being out of Daisy Cutter is a sign. That scattered laundry basket on Elston Ave. is a sign. My flat tire last night was a sign: Chuy won't win.

It sometimes feels like I live in a bubble. I saw exactly one (1) sign in someone's yard supporting Rahm Emanuel in my neighborhood. Logan Square is populated by Chuy. My social media is nothing by Chuy supporters. My hood has more 'Raht' stickers than 'Rahm' posters. Creative signs and wheat-pastes have sprouted on brick walls like buds on the trees along the boulevards are about to.

And he's still going to lose.

Aleksandar Hemon - 'Nowhere Man'

This was Hemon's first novel, published in 2002. It's the third book of his I've read but it's the first that has really showed me how brilliant of a writer he is. Within the first few pages I was hooked and didn't want to put it down. There are so many great lines. Here's a few that stick out from just the first few pages:

• "...listening to the mizzle in my pillow,"
• "The blinds gibbered..."
• "The toilet bowl was agape, with a dissolving piece of toilet paper in it throbbing like a jellyfish."
• "The faucet was sternly counting off droplets."
• "Smashing the boxes was my favorite part, the controlled, benign destruction."
• (about a cat, eating a mouse)..."patiently exposing its crimson essence."
• "...a grimace of perplexed horror..."
• "...despair was my loyal ally."
• "...on a steel beam high up above perched a jury of pigeons, cooing peevishly."

His use of similes, adverbs and other modifiers, particularly with smell, offer a unique perspective, often accompanied by a morbid Eastern European sense of humor. Even without context, his sentences spring to life.

Literary Chicago - Maxine Hong Kingston 'China Men'

Literary Chicago is series where I try to capture the essence of the city by how it is described in fiction, primarily from books that don't take place in Chicago.  

"Ed's legs ached. At about eleven o'clock, he spoke the bitter verses of "The Laundry Song" by Wen I-to of Chicago:

          A piece, two pieces, three pieces - 
         Wash them clean, 
         Four pieces, fives pieces, six - 
         Iron them smooth, "

pg 63. China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston (1977)

Teju Cole and Aleksandar Hemon: Bicultural Writers

A couple weeks ago, Teju Cole and Aleksandar Hemon had a conversation posted on Bomb Magazine's website. Cole is possibly my favorite contemporary author, after I was blown away by Open City two years ago. His twitter account is real-time literary insight. The Lazarus Project by Hemon was my only real knowledge of the author until I read last year's memoir, The Book of My Lives, which compiles autobiographical essays written over the past decade.

In the conversation, the two talk about the distinctions between fiction and non-fiction, photography, wandering, urban culture, and more. The two are very illuminating and seem to have a natural sense of humanity they reflect off each other. Says Hemon:

"If we ever find ourselves writing only for the present—which would essentially mean that tweeting is all we can do—I would feel absolutely defeated as a human being and a writer."

And Cole on cities:

"But the other side is that they are simply so congested with material history and the spiritual traces of those histories, including some very dark events. Your contemporary Chicago is haunted by the Chicago of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Chicago of innovation and of systematic exclusions." 

The whole interview is fascinating and more than worth your time. I will never be able to recommend Open City enough (until I read Everyday is for the Thief at least). For the Chicagoans out there, Hemon's The Book of My Lives is a great read as well. It encompasses stories from his childhood in Bosnia, to his immigration to Chicago. His early days in Ukrainian Village and Edgewater are a particular fun read (while still thought-provoking), and the final chapter about his daughter's illness is sobering.

Cole was born in Nigeria but calls NYC home now. Hemon refers to him as one of the foremost "bicultural writers" (for lack of better term). Whatever the term may be, Hemon is up there as well; I'm glad he's decided to call Chicago his adopted home, expanding the literary scope of our city with a unique perspective.

Literary Chicago: Toni Morrison, 'Sula'

Literary Chicago is series where I try to capture the essence of the city by how it is described in fiction, primarily from books that don't take place in Chicago.

"...Then he leaned forward and whispered into the ear of the woman in the green dress. She was still for a moment and then threw back her head and laughed. A high-pitched big-city laugh that reminded Eva of Chicago. It hit her like a sledge hammer, and it was then that she knew what to feel. A liquid trail of hate flooded her chest."

via Calumet 412

pg. 31, Sula by Toni Morrison (1973)

Algren, Allen, Baudelaire

"Yet once you've come to be part of this particular patch, you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovlier lovlies. But never a lovely so real."

- Nelson Algren, Chicago: City on the Make (pg. 23)


"Then a kid came along to offer a hand
But before she had time to accept it
Hits her over the head, doesn't care if she's dead
Cause he's got all her jewelery and wallet

You might laugh you might frown
Walkin' round London town

Sun is in the sky oh why oh why?
Would I wanna be anywhere else"

- Lily Allen, 'LDN'

Why yes, I did just put a Nelson Algren quote and Lily Allen lyrics side by side. Something about them makes sense though. Both of their civic pride stems from things people generally hate about cities. There's a grittiness to the city that each tries to capture. Ok, so Allen has been accused of inauthenticity about the people she's describing since her dad is rich and famous (which Algren was neither the former and still isn't the latter). Perhaps its both's understanding of irony that makes me equate one with the other. Going even further back, Baudelaire, about Paris, as quoted in the intro to Algren:

"I love thee, infamous city! Harlots and
Hunted have pleasures of their own to give,
The vulgar herd can never understand. "           (from 'Epilogue')

This attraction is odd. Because I feel it too. Maybe it's because I grew up in the suburbs, but I like living in a city that has a rough reputation. Of course, it doesn't even have to be as ugly as all that. Looking at the 10 day forecast, the temperature doesn't ever reach above freezing, and it's been like that consistently for months. Why the actual fuck do so many of us live here? "The Cubs suck." "The trains suck." "The politicians are corrupt." The city is demonstrably and demon-ously segregated. There's little support for artists. That's why even Algren moved away!

So obviously there's great things about the city. The food is great. The music is great. The parks are great. The coffee is great. Malort is great. The skyline and architecture are phenomenal. I walked into the Silver Cloud alone last night and left feeling better. I met drunks that argued about music and started conversation before introducing themselves.

Everyone that lives in this city has a broken nose. If they don't, they move to New York (but something else is probably broken inside of them). I take my broken nose and I stare right at you and make you look at it, and the city does the same. LOOK AT ME the Sears Tower demands. LOOK AT ME the El train roars. LOOK AT ME the South Side pleads. LOOK AT ME the city sings in unison.

Why oh why would I want to live anywhere else?

Literary Chicago: Jack Kerouac, "On the Road"

Literary Chicago is series where I try to capture the essence of the city by how it is described in fiction, primarily from books that don't take place in Chicago.  

via Calumet 412

"Great Chicago glowed red before our eyes. We were suddenly on Madison Street among hordes of hobos, some of them sprawled out on the street with their feet on the curb, hundreds of others milling in the doorways of saloons and alleys. "Wup! wup! look sharp for old Dean Moriarty there, he may be in Chicago by accident this year." We let out the hobos on this street and proceeded to downtown Chicago. Screeching trolleys, newsboys, gals cutting by, the smell of fried food and beer in the air, neons winking - "We're in the big town, Sal! Whooee!""

pg. 239, On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1955)

Magritte X Chicago

Trying (yet again) to get back into the blogging game. I feel shitty when I can't find the motivation or subject matter to write about. For some reason last year I became really inspired, and I feel that coming on again. So, for my first post in what has become a handsome amount of time, obviously I'm going to share some sketches!

I've had the idea to paint 'The Son of Man' with the Chicago star instead of an apple for some time now, and hope to get around to it eventually. Rene Magritte has long been one of my favorite painters. Chicago has long been one of my favorite cities. It only makes sense to combine the surrealism with one into the surrealism of the other.