Lit & Lectures, Chicago Reader

Country music's little white myth

Noah Berlatsky — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

The new book Hidden in the Mix details African-American contributions to country music. by Noah Berlatsky Country music is white music. Its performers are white; its repertoire is white; its audience is white.…

The Reader's guide to the Printers Row Lit Fest

Jena Cutie — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Reader critics' picks: Judy Blume, Art Spiegelman, D.T. Max, Haki Madhubuti, and more by Jena Cutie, Aimee Levitt, Kate Schmidt, Julia Thiel and Kevin Warwick The Printers Row Lit Fest is from 10 AM to 10 PM on Saturday, June 8, and from 10 AM to 6 PM on Sunday, June 9, in the Printers Row district—Dearborn between Congress and Polk—and a couple off-site spots, like the library. We've pulled a few favorites from the more than 200 author readings, discussions, and sundry other events; everything's free, though some talks require advance reservations.…

A killer stalks The Shining Girls through time

Janet Potter — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Chicago throughout the 20th century is the setting for Lauren Beukes's creepy novel, The Shining Girls. by Janet Potter When you give a sociopath the ability to time travel, nobody wins. But that's what novelist Lauren Beukes does in The Shining Girls, the atmospheric, mind-bending, creepy tale of a time-traveling serial killer and his extraordinary victims, woven through the history of 20th-century Chicago.…

Fin de siecle Chicago for dummies

Jerome Ludwig — Thu, 30 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

A new edition of Chicago by Day and Night is a guidebook to fin de siecle Chicago. by Jerome Ludwig "Chicago has been called, in its time, the wickedest city in the world, and somehow or other (in exactly what manner it matters not) the impression has gone abroad that it is really a very wicked place indeed." And yet: "It is possible for a perfectly moral person, one used to all the refinement and peace of the most law-abiding and self-respecting of communities, to spend any length of time in Chicago without being contaminated by the evil that may be found easily enough if sought.…

Susan Nussbaum's next act

Sam Worley — Thu, 30 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Celebrated playwright and disability rights activist Susan Nussbaum adds a novel, Good Kings Bad Kings, to her body of work. by Sam Worley Imagine the person you'd like to be. No—imagine the person you could be, if you let yourself.…

Queer histories in the making

Aimee Levitt — Thu, 23 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

LGBT luminaries Esther Newton and Holly Hughes speak at the University of Chicago. by Aimee Levitt Esther Newton is a pioneering scholar of gay and lesbian history, but she and her partner, Holly Hughes, also lived it. Newton trained as an anthropologist and made her name with ethnographic studies of drag queens and of Cherry Grove, the village on Fire Island that became America's first queer town.…

The unfinished business of Richard M. Daley

Mick Dumke — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:30:00 -0500

First Son, details the accomplishments of Mayor Richard M. Daley—but it barely sets foot in Chicago. by Mick Dumke On March 16, 2011, just two months before he left office, Mayor Richard M. Daley held a press conference in a vacant lot at 76th and Ashland. The event ended up illustrating many of the complexities and contradictions of his 22 years in power, the longest tenure of any Chicago mayor.…

Jackie Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis walk into a brasserie . . .

Aimee Levitt — Tue, 14 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Dreaming in French and French Lessons author Alice Kaplan speaks at the Blackstone branch library. by Aimee Levitt One of the strangest side effects of studying a foreign language is the desire not just to immerse yourself in a new culture but to become a part of it, indistinguishable from a native speaker. Few writers have chronicled this phenomenon better than Alice Kaplan, in her 1993 memoir French Lessons and last year's Dreaming in French, a triptych of portraits of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis, each of whom spent a year in Paris in her early 20s.…

Audrey Niffenegger's trans-species fairy tale

Sam Worley — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:00:00 -0500

Audrey Niffenegger's lovely new Raven Girl is a trans-species fairy tale. by Sam Worley Turnoff though it may be to read something described as a postmodern fairy tale, that really is the handiest label for Audrey Niffenegger's latest, Raven Girl, an illustrated novella about a mixed-species brood. It's a lovely story.…

Rock 'n' roll lifer Ian Svenonius tells you what it's like

Kevin Warwick — Wed, 01 May 2013 13:00:00 -0500

Ian Svenonius channels dead rock stars in Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock 'n' Roll Group. by Kevin Warwick "What you hold now is a serious volume of sensible advice." I imagine Ian Svenonius nodding contentedly to himself after typing that line, knowing he's about to plunge deep into satirical nonsense by "summoning" the spirits of dead stars (Brian Jones, Buddy Holly, and Jimi Hendrix, among others) to instruct the reader on how to build a better rock 'n' roll group.…

Hello Kitty blurs the lines of art and commerce

Noah Berlatsky — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Hello Kitty as both art and commerce in Christine Yano's Pink Globalization by Noah Berlatsky "Undoubtedly, Hello Kitty—as product, as logo, as design—is artistic expression." Christine Yano makes that assertion in Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty's Trek Across the Pacific, her new anthropological study of all things Hello Kitty, but it seems open to question.…

Howard Goldblatt's life in translation

Aimee Levitt — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Meet Howard Goldblatt, the premier English-language translator of contemporary Chinese fiction. by Aimee Levitt If Howard Goldblatt is doing his job well, no one realizes that he's doing it at all. This is because his job is translation, which, if done correctly, is invisible—with all the characters, plot points, descriptions, and, most challengingly, the jokes reading as seamlessly as though they'd been originally created in English.…

A history of gang violence: The Almighty Black P Stone Nation

Mara Shalhoup — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:00:00 -0500

A conversation about the five-decade evolution of a Chicago street gang by Mara Shalhoup It was only the third week of school, and already 12 boys had been killed in gang-related shootings on the south side. Another 42 had been wounded.…

Pain becomes parable in Vampires in the Lemon Grove

Eleni O'Connor — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:00:00 -0500

Stories can both harm and heal in Karen Russell's new collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove. by Eleni O'Connor In her new collection of stories, Vampires in the Lemon Grove (Knopf), Karen Russell continues her exploration into the fantastical with characters including the eponymous bloodsuckers, human silkworms, and dead U.S. presidents reanimated as farm horses. But her real subject matter here (as in an earlier book of stories and a novel, Swamplandia!, that was a finalist for last year's Pulitzer) is storytelling—specifically the role of memory at the intersection of personal and national histories and the ways in which stories can both harm and heal.…

Gun Guys: Not quite lock, stock, and barrel

Aimee Levitt — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:00:00 -0500

Dan Baum's latest could use more guys, less Baum. by Aimee Levitt We've heard often that guns don't kill people—people with guns kill people. But think about Sandy Hook, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Tucson, Columbine.…

Who's to blame for violence against Native women?

Steve Bogira — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:00:00 -0500

In The Round House, Louise Erdrich assigns easy blame for a tough problem. by Steve Bogira "Small trees had attacked my parents' house at the foundation," says Joe Coutts, the 13-year-old narrator, in the opening sentence of The Round House (Harper), Louise Erdrich's latest novel. They were just seedlings, but they'd grown into the cement blocks, and Joe says it's "difficult to pry them loose."…

From Averill to Zeus: A local lit roundup

Sam Worley — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:00:00 -0500

From Averill to Zeus: A local lit roundup by Sam Worley, Aimee Levitt, Kevin Warwick, Tal Rosenberg and Jena Cutie Good authors can not only set a scene anywhere (in the wake of a tornado, on the top of Mount Olympus) but also intrigue readers wherever they happen to be—which is why there's one quintessential bathroom book in the roundup that follows. What further binds this group is that they're Chicagoans—or, in the case of Kate Southwood, a Chicago-born expat who created a fictional world in southern Illinois all the way from her adopted home: Oslo, Norway.…

The Books Issue: Violence

Reader staff — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:00:00 -0500

The Books Issue: Violence by Reader staff Last month I read the strangest book: Frank Bill's novel Donnybrook, which follows a bunch of crusty backwoods reprobates on their way to the titular event, a sort of Hunger Games-style throw-down in southern Indiana. Not that long to begin with, Donnybrook would've been shorter but for the characters needing to stop every few minutes for a scene of brutal, disgusting, almost comically graphic violence, out of which one or two people would emerge to dust off, pop an eye back in its socket, smoke an unfiltered cigarette, and sally forth.…

No easy answers in David McConnell's American Honor Killings

Sam Worley — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 03:00:00 -0500

There are no easy answers in David McConnell's American Honor Killings. That's the best thing about it. by Sam Worley Not long after Adam Lanza killed 26 people at Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Connecticut, Princeton professor Christy Wampole contributed to the New York Times an essay called "Guns and the Decline of the Young Man." She argued that two previously valued social identities—whiteness and maleness—are on the wane, and what we're seeing in incidents like the one in Newtown is a sort of death rattle. "Young men—and young white men in particular—have increasingly been asked to yield what they'd believed was securely theirs," Wampole wrote.…

Mad Men, Mad World looks at the 60s through smoke-colored glasses

Janet Potter — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:30:00 -0500

Mad Men, Mad World looks at the 60s through smoke-colored glasses. by Janet Potter Created by TV auteur Matthew Weiner and positioned somewhere between period piece and soap opera, Mad Men inspires loyalty and scrutiny in equal measure. It's also inspired blogs, books, clothing lines, theme parties, college courses, a Mad Men Yourself web app, and countless Halloween costumes—and now a collection of academic essays.…