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 But maybe perhaps the romanticiziation of the idea is a bit outdated.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. 

...For The Time Being

This phrase. "For the time being."

It's all over literature. I first noticed it from the book A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki a couple years ago. Ever since, I think I've come across this phrase in nearly every book I've read. I thought this was just a coincidence at first. But it's almost like the real version of Stranger Than Fiction's "little did he know." As Hoffman's character wrote papers and taught a class on "little did he know," so too will I conquest to create a tundra-like database of "for the time being." There's so much I've lost. But I might as well start now, if not never.

Martin Amis - The Information

"Her mother was still around for the time being, fat and falling apart and still mountainously pretty somehow, in a bed somewhere."

So. Much like my Literary Chicago project, I'm going to try to keep track of this phrase being used and how authors use it. Do they actually reference what their 'for the time being' foreshadows? Or is it a throw away? A red herring?

Speaking of that other project, this novel is ripe with Chicago references. For a taste:

"He reread:

To recap: The itinerary is New York, Washington, Miami, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Boston, New York.

Denver. Why Denver?"