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Written by Francis Scudellari
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Saturday, 03 October 2009 00:31 |
 By Janet Potter
“Would anyone else, anywhere else in the world, sit around asking these questions? Or is it just Chicago?” This question was posed to novelists Audrey Niffenegger, Aleksandar Hemon, and memoirist Maria Venegas at the end of a panel on the literary tradition of Chicago.
They had spent an hour discussing Chicago as a home for artists and writers, and whether the great literature of Chicago had been written because or in spite of the city’s distance from literary meccas New York and London. The event, held at the Chicago Cultural Center, was part of a week-long program celebrating the release of Granta’s Autumn 2009 issue.
Granta, the quarterly journal of new writing, is a venerable trans-Atlantic literary institution that publishes a mix of fiction, memoir, poetry, non-fiction, and reportage. Granta is well known for frequently focusing an entire issue on one theme, such as the Titanic, fathers, jihad, London, and Chinese cricket fighting. The theme of the latest issue, released in late September, is Chicago.
Chicago cannot be understood via Al Capone and a Frank Sinatra song, according to Granta Acting Editor John Freeman, adding that “Chicago is more than just an echo of the past, and in this issue we call on the writers which have made it an exciting cultural space again, to bring to life the city from all angles, revealing that it’s not just a microcosm for America, tilting away from its industrial past, still struggling with violence and race, but a nexus for world culture.”
But as the panel discussed, Chicago cannot seem to settle on an image of itself. Is it the stalwart, Midwestern city of industry and hard work? Or is it stalled by a non-coastal inferiority complex? And why do we need to figure it out?
Novelist Aleksandar Hemon, born in Sarajevo and living in Chicago since 1992, claims that Chicago is an exhilarating place to live precisely because it is “incomplete.” While the mythology of a city like New York is already so well-documented, he says, Chicago’s personality is not so world-famous or entrenched that it can’t be re-molded or added to.
Hemon’s contribution to Granta’s Chicago issue is “If God Existed, He’d be a Solid Midfielder,” a remembrance of Hemon’s first years in the city when, still trying to find his niche, he joins a soccer league comprised entirely of fellow immigrants.
To them, Chicago is a blank slate, and given the hope of a decent job and a place to play soccer once a week, they are willing to call it their home. They require very little in the way of ideological compatibility with the city they’ve adopted, a trait that is not common in the issue’s other stories.
Most of the writers, as they were no doubt asked to, grapple very openly with what it means to live in Chicago. Stuart Dybek, Nelson Algren, and Tony D’Souza, all writers whose work is consistently infused with their Chicago roots, have short fiction pieces included that show the city as scarred and fragmented, and Chicagoans as people who identify themselves as much by what city they’re from as by what part of that city they’re not from.
Chicago’s ingrained problems – violence, race, class, geography – are omnipresent in the issue, but its strength lies in the fact that no essay or story tries to face them head-on. Rather, the variety of pieces, each touching on different strengths and weaknesses of the city, create a mosaic effect as beguiling as Chicago itself.
Chicago natives George Saunders and Rich Cohen each contribute essays in which the city appears nostalgic, bustling, even majestic. Dinaw Mengestu, Sandra Cisneros, and Maria Venegas, who all write of their time living in Chicago’s poorer neighborhoods, show a city where it’s possible to be respected and hard-working and get absolutely nowhere.
Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here and Chicago: Never a City So Real, contributes a heart-wrenching story of a Sudanese refugee and her son who move to Chicago in search of a better future, and whose lives are torn apart by gang violence.
Conversely, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg writes about Ed McElroy, an 83-year-old Chicagoan who seems to have dedicated his life to knowing people, and the giving and receiving of favors. He has chauffeured John F. Kennedy and President Barack Obama, and Richard J. Daley was at his wedding. His Chicago is an oyster for anyone willing to make friends.
The various studies of modern Chicago life are solidly balanced by regional history – a stunning photo essay on urban housing, an essay in praise of Jane Addams, and a little known piece of local lore.
Nobel Peace Laureate Wole Soyinka provides a detailed examination of Barack Obama’s place and potential in domestic and international politics, a scrupulously reasoned piece that should be read twice, and slowly.
The juxtapositions to be found in the issue are endless. Chicago can equally create or destroy great men, seemingly without reason as to which is which. Chicago can be a great place to grow up, or a place where it’s hard to survive high school. It can embrace its transplants and never give its natives a break.
Granta makes no attempt to explicate or justify, it merely holds up a mirror – an extraordinary, nuanced, pitch-perfect, complicated mirror – to an equally complicated city.
Cover illustration by by Oak Park artist Chris Ware |
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