The Gapers Block Book Club is ready for another year. For the 2010 book list, Veronica and I not only considered some of the most current reading suggestions from the group, but we also looked back at previous book suggestions that had not yet been selected. Once again, we thank everyone for their input.
And, the 11 finalists are:
January
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (Picador USA, 2002; 576 p.)
As she loses her husband to Parkinson's disease, Enid Lambert is determined to bring her adult children together for "one last Christmas." The Corrections is a winner of the National Book Award. (Born in Chicago.)
February
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (Penguin, 1995; 361 p.)
This epic novel details the life of Daisy Goodwill from her birth in Manitoba in 1905 to her death nearly a century later. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. (Oak Park native.)
March
Red Azalea by Anchee Min (Anchor, 2006; 306 p.)
Red Azalea is Min's critically acclaimed memoir of growing up in the last years of Mao's China, ending with her emigration to the U.S. in 1984. (Earned MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago.)
April
Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh (Penguin, 2009; 302 p.)
Gang Leader for a Day is the powerful story of how a graduate sociology student at the University of Chicago befriended a leader of the Black Kings and gained unprecedented access to the inner working of Chicago's street gang and drug-dealing operations.
May
The Order of Odd-Fish by James Kennedy (Laurel Leaf Library, 2010; 416 p.)
Thirteen-year-old Jo lives with her Aunt Lily in California, but Jo and her aunt are taken to the fantastic world of Eldritch City, where Jo must discover who she is and fulfill her destiny. (Chicago resident.)
June
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware (Pantheon, 2003; 380 p.)
At age 36, Jimmy Corrigan meets his father for the first time in this acclaimed first graphic novel by cartoonist Chris Ware. (Oak Park resident.)
July
The Wild Things by Dave Eggers (McSweeney's, 2009; 288 p.)
Novelization based on the children's book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and Spike Jonze's screenplay for the film based on the same. (Former Lake Forest resident.)
August
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan (Ballantine, 2008; 377 p.)
Fictional account of the true story of Mamah Borthwick Cheney and her love affair with architect Frank Lloyd Wright. (Oak Park native.)
September
Young Lonigan by James T. Farrell (Penguin, 2003; 224 p.)
Originally published in 1932, this is part one of the classic Studs Lonigan trilogy, which covers five months of Lonigan's life in 1916, when he is sixteen years old. (Chicago native.)
October
Chicago: A Novel by Alaa Al Aswany (Harper Perennial, 2009; 352 p.)
An ambitious story following a short period in the lives of several students and faculty at the University of Illinois in post-9/11 Chicago. (Former Chicago resident.)
November
The Cradle by Patrick Somerville (Little Brown, 2009; 203 p.)
Matthew Bishop leaves on an impossible quest to recover an antique cradle once belonging to his wife Marissa, who is pregnant with their first child, but his fool's errand becomes a journey of self-discovery as mysteries unfold and long-held secrets are revealed. (Chicago resident.)
— Alice Maggio /
As we embark on our final Book Club selection for the year, Alice and I are preparing to pick our books for 2010 and we'd love to hear from you about what you're interested in reading. Remember that authors of fiction books must be connected to Chicago in some way and that non-fiction books must be about Chicago. Take a look at the sidebar to refresh your memory on all of our past reads, then put your suggestions in the comments or send them to bookclub[at]gapersblock[dot]com.
— Veronica Bond /
Our October meeting is coming up this Monday, Oct. 12. Below you will find some sample questions for our discussion.
1. How has Lords of the Levee changed your perspective of early 20th century Chicago?
2. How well do authors Wendt and Kogan convey the setting of this period in Chicago's history?
3. How would you describe John Coughlin and Michael Kenna?
4. How well did you understand the events in the book? How do Coughlin and Kenna fit into Chicago's history? Have they had any lasting impact on the city? On history?
5. What did you learn from reading Lords of the Levee that you didn't know before about this time period? What events in the book stand out the most for you?
6. How would you describe the writing style?
7. The authors use a lot of dialect in the speech of the characters. What did you think of the dialogue in the book?
8. How do the authors feel about their subject? Are they biased?
9. How does Lords of the Levee compare to other books we have read for the book club, especially Boss by Mike Royko and Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott?
— Alice Maggio /
The Book Club was featured in the Tribune this weekend as part of their series on Chicagoland book clubs. Here you'll find some basics on how we operate and some books that provoked good discussions. For further enlightenment on why these books, out of all of the ones we've read, were picked, here's the full answer to that question:
• The first one that comes to mind is Passing by Nella Larsen, a Harlem Renaissance writer who focused on two light-skinned African-American women, one of whom chooses to "pass" as white. It's a short novel, but there's so much to unpack about society and culture and how we decide who belongs to which group that we could have easily discussed this book for several hours without having touched on everything.
• Along the same lines, Richard Wright's Native Son made for a rousing discussion. My favorite comment from that evening came from an attendee who said that his experience reading the book now, while living in Chicago, was vastly different from his experience reading it in his Indiana high school. It is indeed shocking to realize that a story set in the 1930s can be still be so relevant today and it's uplifting to see that books like this still have the power to change someone's worldview.
• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, however, is one of those books that almost everyone deeply loved. The fantastical situation of the main character literally running away to join the circus combined with a frustrated love story made for a satisfying and endearing read.
• Joe Meno's Hairstyles of the Damned was our first selection and it was a very memorable one. The premise of two punk teenagers living out their adolescence in Chicago may not have seemed immediately relatable to everyone, but the beauty of Meno's writing is that it very much was. I don't think everyone who attended that meeting would have read that book if it hadn't been selected, but I'm fairly certain no one left having regretted it.
• I must, of course, mention Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama. The general consensus on this book was that even senators need good editors. While we enjoyed learning more about the man that would become our President, the wealth of information Obama packed into his book brought up very good questions of truthfulness in memoirs and the degree to which we can trust the author's memory.
I think many of our attendees would agree that even if not everyone loved these books, the discussions that came out of them were intellectually stimulating and very spirited. (In fact, one thing we've realized that it isn't those books that everyone loves that make for the best discussions, but the ones that provoke a variety of opinions.)
Also, over the weekend the Tribune profiled the Book Cellar, our Book Club home. Be sure to check that out too.
— Veronica Bond /
And all the single men! Hold your books up--according to the Sun-Times, the GB Book Club is the #2 way to meet your lover. Reading is sexy, indeed.
— Veronica Bond /
Our September meeting is coming up this Monday, Sept. 14. Below you will find some sample questions for our discussion. These questions are taken from the publisher's reading group guide, which you can download in .pdf format here.
1. What echoes do the cranes create throughout the novel? What do the cranes signify to those who admire them--tourists, environmentalists, local residents along the Platte River? What parallels exist between the echo of the migrating birds and the echoes lurking in Mark's shattered memory?
2. How would you characterize the sibling dynamics between Mark and Karin? How much of their former relationship remains intact after his accident?
3. What is Bonnie's stake in helping Mark heal? Is her perception of the world distorted, like Mark's, or is she actually his best chance for returning to rational thinking? How does she cope with Dr. Weber's assertion that faith in God has a neurological component?
4. Which segments of Mark and Karin's childhood do they most want to recall? Which memories of their parents continue to hurt them? Is either sibling on a path, perhaps even unwittingly, of carrying on their parents' legacies?
5. Were you suspicious of Barbara in the novel's early chapters? How did your perception of her shift? How would you have responded if you had been in her position on the night of the accident?
6. In part three, Karin tells Daniel she thinks Mark might have been better off if she had stayed away. How can we know the difference between selfless and self-serving caregiving? In the end, was Karin right to remain in Mark's life to such an intense extent?
7. In what ways did Gerald take on a fatherly role for Karin and Mark? Was their perception of him any more accurate than that of the fans who attended his lectures or saw him on television? What aspects of his true self was Gerald able to reclaim in Nebraska? What do you predict for his future with Sylvie and Jess?
8. Did Capgras syndrome make any aspects of Mark's perception crystal clear or even closer to reality than his caregivers' view of life? What universal experiences are reflected in his inability to accept the identity of someone who loves him, or, near the end, to acknowledge that he is fully alive?
9. How did you ultimately interpret the note? For each of the main characters, what did it mean to be no one? In the end, who else was brought back?
— Alice Maggio /
Our September book is The Echo Maker by Richard Powers, an engrossing novel about the mystery of the human brain. On a lonely stretch of highway in Nebraska on a cold February night, twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schulter is in a near-fatal car accident. He survives, but the accident leaves him with a brain injury that causes him to believe his older sister, Karin, is an imposter.
Karin enlists the help of Dr. Gerald Weber, a well-known neurologist and author of several popular books about patients living with rare neurological conditions. But Weber's most recent book is a flop, and as his career declines, Weber finds himself ill-equipped to help Mark.
Throughout the book, the point-of-view shifts between Karin, Weber and Mark. Karin struggles to recover the brother she seems to have lost; Mark delves into the mystery of the circumstances of his accident; and Weber sheds light on the fragility and resiliency of the human mind through his recollection of case histories. This complex and compelling narrative is part drama, part science and part detective story, all leading to a surprising conclusion.
In an interview with Powell's Books, Powers described the novel this way:
"The prose is an attempt to recreate that return from a complete loss of conscious mental functioning, or any sense of anchored self. Yes, and there is a way in which it's a recapitulation of the original process of self-assembly. There's a lot of suggestion on the part of the different stories of the characters in the books that baseline consciousness is always just a step away from other, stranger, earlier, lower processes that are part of us, but that we have to do a whole lot of footwork in order to hide, to keep invisible."
Ultimately, The Echo Maker is about how we make sense of ourselves, our past and our present.
The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award for fiction and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
About the Author
Richard Powers was born in 1957 in Evanston, IL, and spent most of his formative years in the north suburbs. When he was fifteen, his family resettled in DeKalb, IL, after spending four years in Bangkok, Thailand, where Powers' father was an administrator at the International School of Bangkok. Powers earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees in English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1992, Powers began a long association with the U of I, first as a writer-in-residence. He is currently the Swanlund Chair and Center for Advanced Study Professor of English at the university.
Resources
Richard Powers: American novelist
An authorized website dedicated to the author. Everything you wanted to know about Richard Powers. The site includes an extensive bibliography of articles by and about Powers, plus citations and links to interviews, reviews, criticism and more.
Richard Powers' Narrative Impulse
This interview with Powers from Powells.com was conducted shortly after the publication of The Echo Maker. In it, Powers provides plenty of insight into the novel.
Author Richard Powers
Listen to an interview with Richard Powers from NPR, which first aired on December 12, 2006, just after The Echo Maker had won the National Book Award.
— Alice Maggio /
Below are the questions we'll use to start discussing Jessica Abel's La Perdida. Feel free to post answers in the comments or join us on Monday, August 10, when we'll discuss the book in person at the Book Cellar. New members are always welcome to drop in.
- How do you feel about Carla? Is she a likeable character? What are her motivations throughout the story?
- How are Carla and Harry different? How are they similar? Why do they have a clash of ideals?
- Why does Carla trust Memo and Oscar so much? Why is it important for her to spend more time with that group of people rather than with the people Harry introduces her to?
- On p. 105 Memo tells Carla, "You don't know what it is to be a conquistadora. But here you are." What does he mean by that? What is he saying about American attitudes toward Mexicans? How does this help explain the inherent difference between Carla and Harry's group and Oscar and Memo's group?
- Oscar's dream is to move to the US to be a DJ. Is this similar or dissimilar to Carla's aspirations? Why is Carla able to see the futility in Oscar's plan but not her own?
- Why does Carla tear down her poster of Frida Kahlo? What is she trying to prove by this action?
- Carla's brother Rod feels much more comfortable in Mexico than Carla does, but Carla admits that she was embarrassed for her brother when they were younger. What does this say about Carla's ability to accept her ethnicity when she was younger? How does this drive her actions in the present? Why does this make her jealous of Rod?
- Why does Oscar get involved in the plan to kidnap Harry and Carla? What does he think he'll gain? Why does Carla try to talk him out of it?
- At the end, Carla says, "The thing is, I thought the rules were different in Mexico, but they're not different." What rules is she talking about? How did she break the rules and how did that result in her participation in the kidnapping?
- Has Carla changed at all by the end of the book? How does the author juxtapose scenes from Carla's early days in Mexico with her days since her return to Chicago? What point is she making by doing this?
— Veronica Bond /
What is ethnicity? What is nationality? And where do the two intersect and diverge? These are some of the questions Jessica Abel explores in her graphic novel La Perdida, the story of Carla, a young woman who travels to Mexico to delve into her paternal roots and find someplace where she feels she truly belongs. After crashing in the apartment of her sometime-lover Harry, a fellow expatriate intent on living out the dreams set forth by beat writer William S. Burroughs, Carla is immediately put on the defense when her stereotypical love of Frida Kahlo, her shaky grasp on the Spanish language and her inability to eat a taco without spilling the contents out of the backside of her tortilla relentlessly pegs her as an American.
For Carla, Frida Kahlo serves as a defining mark of what it means to be Mexican. "She was more than my ideal of an artist," Carla expounds. "All I wanted was to be more like her. But I was faced with a lot of obstacles. Not being able to draw, for one. Not being Mexican, for another. Not really. Sure, she was half-Mexican, half-German like me, but she grew up there, and that's what counts." It is this desperation to convince herself and those around her of her natural fit in Mexico that drives Carla's through the story and leads her to naively put her trust in less-than-exemplary "natives." The cast of characters is undoubtedly colorful: from Memo, the Marxist enthusiast who spouts diatribes attacking the American elite, to Oscar, the hanger-on and would-be DJ who is more than content to live off of Carla's meager salary once they embark on a questionable relationship, to Liana, Carla's one-time roommate and co-teacher at school where they both teach English, to El Gordo, the drug lord who takes an unseemly interest in Carla, Abel imbues her story with a wide range of characters who convey the idea of what it means to be Mexican to varying degrees.
Carla's dependence on the suspicious individuals she meets on her own and her rejection of the American friends to whom she's introduced through Harry work to complicate her character and make us question her motivations. At times it is possible to understand this desire to leave one's identity behind and at other times it is impossible not to look upon her naiveté with scorn, sure that we would never put such blind trust in those who are, essentially, strangers, but it is these complications and shifts in beliefs that keep Carla from simply being an ignorant American and make her a believable person struggling with the implications of her father's last name. Who are strangers and who are our countrymen? Which of the two has our best interests at heart and which will pursue the chance to take advantage of our willingness to belong? Those are the questions Carla struggles with in La Perdida, and though the answers may not always be so clear, Carla is fortunate to come out of her excursion a little bit wiser, a little bit more worldly and, perhaps, knowing who she really is just a little bit more.
* * *
Jessica Abel grew up in Chicago and started making comics during her time at the University of Chicago. She lived in the city until leaving it for a two-year stay in Mexico with her now husband. La Perdida is not, however, autobiographical. Abel has won the Harvey and Lulu awards for "Best New Talent" and a "Best New Series" Harvey Award for La Perdida. To learn more about Abel, visit her website and be sure to check out her Mexico diaries for more background information on her graphic novel.
— Veronica Bond /
Our July meeting is this Monday, July 13. We will be getting together to talk about Every Crooked Pot by Renee Rosen. I will be using the following questions for our discussion guide. Questions followed by an asterisk (*) are from the reading group guide on author Renee Rosen's website.
1. How would you describe Nina?*
2. How would you describe Nina's relationship with her father? Do you think Artie was too hard on Nina while she was growing up? Do you approve or disapprove of his brand of tough love?*
3. Why do you think Nina's father plays such a huge role in this story? Who is the dominate character in the book: Nina or Artie?
4. How does Nina's birthmark affect her self-perception? Could you relate to her feelings?
5. Nina also exhibits some extreme behavior in her attempts to fit in with her peers at school. Were her actions realistic? Could you relate to her behavior from your own experiences growing up?
6. The story is set in Akron, Ohio, from the late 1960s through the 1970s. How important in the setting and period to the story?
7. At the end of the book, Nina comes to the realization that the childhood she thought she'd had was not the one she'd actually lived. Why do some people tend to block the good experiences while growing up and focus only on the negative ones?*
8. Do you believe "every crooked pot has a crooked cover"?*
— Alice Maggio /
Our next meeting is coming up this Monday, June 8. We will be talking about Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Following are some of the discussion questions I may be springing on the group:
Why does the narrator, John, start the novel by saying, "Call me Jonah"? How does his story relate to the Biblical story of Jonah?
Is John any better (more intelligent, moral, responsible, etc.) than the other characters in the novel?
Was Felix Hoenikker an evil man? Are any of the Hoenikkers evil?
Why does Vonnegut tell us about the train model Frank constructs while working at Jack's Hobby Shop? What does it say about Frank's character?
How would you describe Julian Castle? Mona? H. Lowe and Hazel Crosby? What purpose do they serve in the story?
How would you describe Bokononism?
What do you think the cat's cradle symbolizes in the novel?
Why is the book titled Cat's Cradle?
How does Vonnegut use irony throughout the novel? For example, the story of George Minor Moakley (ch. 13) or the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy.
Is humanity inevitably doomed, according to the novel? Why or why not? What are the biggest problems facing humankind?
What is Vonnegut saying about truth and lies?
— Alice Maggio /
Below are the questions we'll use to discuss Nella Larsen's Passing. Join us next Monday, May 11, to discuss the book in person at the Book Cellar at 7:30pm. I'm looking forward to hearing all of your thoughts!
- What are your first impressions of Clare when she is described at the hotel having tea? What does this tell you about how Irene views Clare?
- What is Irene's first impression of Clare when they reunite at tea? Why is Irene hesitant to spend more time with Clare after this meeting? What does this tell you about Irene's character?
- Why does Clare decide to pass as white? Why does Irene decide not to pass? Is Irene interested in learning about Clare's life or does she disapprove of her choices?
- What do the women's husbands tell us about them and what they value? Why did Clare decide to marry a white man and not reveal her racial background? What effect do you think this will have on her daughter? Why did Irene marry a black man with a dark complexion? What effect do you think this has on her sons?
- What role does Gertrude play in the story? How is the author using her to express another view of "passing"? Is this view similar to or different from the ones expressed by Irene and Clare?
- After meeting Clare's husband, Irene regrets not speaking out against his racist remarks. Why did she keep quiet in the moment and why does she regret it later? Is it concern for Clare or is it a failing in her own confidence?
- Why does Clare begin to insert herself into Irene's life? What are her motivations and how does Irene react to these actions?
- What causes Irene to become suspicious of her husband and Clare? Are her suspicions merited or is it merely her own insecurities? What interest might Irene's husband have in Clare?
- What do you think happened at the end of the story? Did Clare jump out the window? Did Irene push her? Was it an accident? What effect does the author's ambiguity regarding this final scene have on your interpretation of the story?
- What is the theme of this story? What is the author trying to say about race and the society she lived in? Do you find it an effective way to discuss the ideas and problems of race?
— Veronica Bond /
I made a quick mention of this at our last meeting and the details are now official - we are teaming with the non-profit organization Open Books to hold our very first Book Swap/Drive! It'll be held on Thursday, May 14, from 6pm-9pm, at Black Rock, 3614 N. Damen. The way it will work is that everyone will be allowed to bring in as many books as they'd like, everyone will be allowed to swap and take as many books as they'd like, and any books left over will be donated to Open Books who will sell them and use the proceeds to fund their literacy programs. It's a great excuse to comb through your shelves and weed out those books you no longer need and pick up some new, free ones in exchange. And you'll be helping improve literacy while you do it! Whether you've been a regular at the meetings or just following us on the mailing list, all of you are welcome to come and join in the book swapping fun. Feel free to spread the word to friends, family, co-workers, or whoever else loves books, too.
Of course, such events cannot take place without the help of lovely volunteers. We've already got a few people on board to help us out, but we can certainly use more, so if you're interested in lending a hand for all or part of the night we'd love to have you there too. Just fill out the volunteer form on the Open Books website (link above) to let us know you'll be there.
We're very excited about this event and hope that you all enjoy it. If you have any questions, feel free to send us an email at bookclub[at]gapersblock[dot]com.
— Veronica Bond /
In Chicago in the 1920s, two women sit down at separate tables at a fancy hotel dining area, sipping cool drinks on a hot day. Both are elegantly dressed, are of upper middle-class appearance, fair-skinned women, comfortable at their tables and both are certain that no one at the hotel will suspect that they should feel otherwise. But when the two women recognize each other as childhood friends, the truths about their pasts and the presents, however well they are concealed from the unknowing eye, can no longer remain secret. Both women are African-American and both are "passing" as Caucasian, but with one key difference between the two: one has chosen to leave her home community to "pass" as Caucasian permanently.
For Irene Redfield, Clare Kendry's decision to "pass" is baffling. She's always wondered what became of Clare after Clare's father died and she was pulled away from the community in which she grew up to live in the care of her aunts. Irene, who maintains that she has always been proud of her heritage, is living in New York in Harlem with her black husband and their two sons and she is surprised to learn that the rumors she's heard of Clare's life are actually true: she has married a white man, together they have a fair-skinned daughter and she consistently upholds the appearance of being white, even to her husband who has no knowledge of her racial background. Irene is extremely curious about Clare's life under these circumstances, she "wished to find out about this hazardous business of 'passing,' this breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one's chance in another environment, not entirely strange, perhaps, but certainly not entirely friendly. What, for example, one did about background, how one accounted for oneself. And how one felt when one came into contact with other Negroes." Though Irene does not get up the courage to ask Clare these questions at their first meeting, she soon finds herself exposed to parts of Clare's life that make her wonder which one of them has truly got the right idea about race, identity and the need to belong.
Passing's ending remains ambiguous and arguments for various interpretations can be seen as equally valid. As Clare begins to insert herself into Irene's life, without Irene's willing invitation, Irene begins to begrudge the ease with which Clare seems to regard the problem of their shared race: "What she felt was not so much resentment as a dull despair because she could not change herself in this respect, could not separate individuals from the race, herself from Clare Kendry." Though the truth about Irene's and Clare's final actions are never revealed by the author, they are fraught with the anguish and hopelessness reflected by a society who has yet to find a place for all those they deem as "other."
Born in Chicago in 1891, Nella Larsen was the product of an interracial union, with a Danish mother and a father from the Virgin Islands . As a brown-skinned child born to fair-skinned parents, Larsen's ideas on race were heavily influenced by her parents' decision to refashion their family as part of the white American majority. As a result, Larsen's novels depict the challenges facing women of color in the twentieth-century, exploring ideas of biraciality, the denial of existing racial mixes and the psychological conditions of women of color in modern society. For this, Larsen was nominated for a Harmon Award for Distinguished Achievements Among Negroes in 1928 and Passing was heralded as "new and thoroughly modern" in its representation of races and its opposition to racial stereotypes.
— Veronica Bond /
Below are some sample questions for our April book, Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. Feel free to comment below, and come join us on Monday, April 13, at The Book Cellar for our in-person discussion.
Why do think the book is titled Then We Came to the End?
What is the tone of the book? Is it more humorous or dramatic? How does Ferris balance the two?
Most of the novel is told in first person plural. Why do you think Ferris wrote the story this way? Does it work? Who is telling this story?
How would the novel be changed if Ferris had used a third person point-of-view?
What about a first person point-of-view? Which character would you like as a narrator? Who would be the most reliable narrator?
Ferris notably departs from the first person plural to describe Lynn Mason's state of mind on the eve of her surgery. Why does he change perspective here? Does it work?
Does this story have a hero? A villain?
How accurate or convincing is the description of the workplace? Could this novel have been set somewhere else?
How well do the characters communicate with one another?
What does the novel say about how well one person can know another? How well do we know the people with whom we spend the most time?
What are the themes of this book? What do you think Ferris is trying to say about work, co-workers, life?
— Alice Maggio /
"You don't know what's in my heart." That's what Tom Mota tells co-worker Benny Shassburger in the opening pages of Then We Came to the End when Benny questions Tom's recent practice of wearing three company polo shirts at the same time, one layered on top of another. But Tom's lament is also a reminder that sometimes the people with whom we spend the most time—our co-workers—are the ones we know the least.
Then We Came to the End is a darkly funny debut novel set in an unnamed Chicago ad agency. And although it is set during the dot-com bust of the turn of the twentieth century, the fear and insecurity of the characters in an atmosphere of corporate layoffs is timely and relevant.
Tom Mota, the office jerk, and Benny Shassburger are just two of the office mates we meet in the novel. There's also Janine Gorjanc, who is grieving her murdered daughter, Carl Garbedian, who is stealing Janine's anti-depressants, Joe Pope, who locks up his bicycle inside his office, and Chris Yop, who shows up to an input meeting after he's just been laid off because the "meeting's been on [his] calendar for a long time." They, plus several others, work under Lynn Mason, who everybody "knows" has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and Lynn has them working on a pro-bono ad campaign for a breast cancer fund-raising event. This assignment is their only remaining job in the economic downturn, and they are all trying to stay employed.
The novel is narrated in the first-person plural. The first paragraph starts, "We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise...We loved free bagels in the morning. They happened all too infrequently." Stories are related through the office grapevine, as folks gather around each other's cubicles. But rather than being distracting or difficult, the "we" narration has the effect of drawing us into this circle of co-workers, until we the readers feel part of the group, too, hanging out in Benny's office or talking in conspiratorial whispers in the break room.
At first glance, it might seem easy to compare Then We Came to the End to the television show "The Office" or the 1999 film Office Space for the way all three dissect modern office life, but that does the book a disservice. This novel not only brilliantly captures the absurdity of white-collar work, but also delves deeper to reveal one's co-workers as members of the most dysfunctional family of all.
Then We Came to the End was a 2007 National Book Award Finalist. Ferris is also a winner of the Barnes and Noble Discover New Writers Award and the winner of the 2008 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for a distinguished book of first fiction.
Joshua Ferris was born in downstate Danville, Ill. He graduated from the University of Iowa before moving to Chicago where he worked—wait for it—at an advertising agency. He currently lives in Brooklyn.
Additional Resources
Be sure to visit the very clever website for the book from publisher Hachette Book Group. The site includes a virtual office where you can eavesdrop on office gossip in the conference room, kitchen and copy room, plus learn more about the characters, including links to their MySpace pages. Guess who has a photo of a totem pole for his profile picture.
Powells.com also has a great interview with Ferris in which he provides compelling reasons for writing the novel in first-person plural.
According to this BookPage interview, Ferris wrote Then We Came to the End in just 14 weeks, working on the novel 14-16 hours a day.
— Alice Maggio /
Below are the questions we'll use to discuss John McNally's The Book of Ralph. Feel free to post answers in the comments section or join us on Monday, March 16 to discuss it in person at the Book Cellar. I look forward to hearing all of your thoughts then!
- Who is this story really about - Hank or Ralph? What effect is created by having Hank narrate the story and not Ralph? What might it be like if Ralph were the narrator?
- Why does Hank continue to remain friends with Ralph? Why does Ralph continue to remain friends with Hank? Is either one of them a positive influence on the other?
- How does Hank's family life contribute to his continuing friendship with Ralph? How does it shape his reactions to the events that occur in the story?
- Was it Hank's mother who agreed to meet him over the CB radio? If so, what would be her purpose in having him watch her get on a bus and ride away? What effect does this have on Hank?
- How would you describe this story? Is it a comedy? A tragedy? A coming-of-age story?
- How do you perceive the women in the story? What roles do Hank's mother, sister, wife, and girlfriend Janet play?
- What effect does the author's decision to break up the chronology of the story have? Does the flashback to Hank and Ralph in fifth grade and the flash forward to them as adults add anything to the story? Would it have been complete if we had ended with the boys in the police station knowing their friendship had ended?
- Is the flash forward believable? Is Hank's reunion with Ralph and joining his business venture in keeping with his character?
- Do you trust Hank as a narrator? Do you feel he is keeping anything from us? How do you feel about the story tells involving his supposed battering of a squirrel?
- Is the ending satisfying? Do the characters end up where you thought they would? Did you expect more from the story or did you find that it ended on a conclusive note?
— Veronica Bond /
Hank Boyd is in fifth grade when he first meets Ralph. Known for that fact he's been held back for two years, and later given the legacy of being the oldest student to graduate from their school, Ralph is the sort of student who finds himself passed around from teacher to teacher, from the librarian to the principal, yet seems barely conscious of the emotional havoc he's wreaking. Hank has no interest in befriending the odd boy who he remembers as always having had the sproutings of a moustache, but three years later, when this book begins, it would seem that Hank and Ralph have been an inseparable pair for all of their short years.
The Book of Ralph is Hank's story of a tumultuous childhood with a far from well-meaning friend. Shortly after we meet Ralph, he presents Hank with an unusual price list: "Punching - $2; Ear chawed off - $15; Doing the big job (murder) - $100 and up." While Hank is appalled that the list is composed on the back of a torn off page from a library book, Ralph is proud of his carefully written out list of services, crowing, "You won't find it any cheaper." But the list, and the fact that Ralph actually accepts money for the services on this list, is just the beginning of the debauchery the year will bring Hank. From a grandmother who's arrested for stealing shoes to a teen-controlled X-rated CB radio channel to a junk-filled Christmas display on his family's lawn, debauchery enters Hank's life from every side, with or without Ralph.
But, this one year that consumes more than half the book brings much more than this simple, comedic loss of innocence. It is also a year in which Hank witnesses the potential dissolution of his family, one in which he is hired for his first job and learns the dubious ways of shady businessmen, one in which he learns a little bit more about sex than he would have wished, and one, at the end of which, he and Ralph will part ways. His continuing friendship with Ralph is something Hank reconsiders often: "There were pluses to both sides. With Ralph, no one would mess with me; they'd know better. Without Ralph, I might stay alive longer, and my chances of doing any serious jail time would be kept to a minimum. There were the benefits, short- and long-term, and though the decision should have been easy, I knew it wasn't going to be. I liked Ralph. That was the sad part."
Of course, the story does not end there, at Hank's eighth grade graduation. In a coda set 21 years in the future, Hank and Ralph meet again under strange circumstances, only to embark on even stranger endeavors. In this period Hank will reunite with his grade school classmates and ignite the relationships that were just beginning to bud in their prepubescent lives. He will come to depend on Ralph far much more than he would have ever expected - or perhaps even wanted - all those years ago. And he will find himself in situations far more bizarre, and of far more consequence, than he did in those grade school days. Hank's adult life bears a distant resemblance to the futuristic 2001 that both he and Ralph were assigned to create in that fateful fifth grade class, but the one constant is that the two are as inseparable as ever. It is a coming of age story, a tragedy and a buddy comedy rolled into one - a fitting combination for the story of two teenage boys growing up in 1970s Chicago who rediscover each other in their not so grown up adult lives.
— Veronica Bond /
Below are the questions we'll use to discuss Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It. If you've read the two stories that accompany the title story in the book, we'll briefly discuss our reactions to them, however the majority of the discussion will focus on A River Runs Through It (so don't worry if you haven't read them). Feel free to post answers in the comments -- we'll meet next Monday, February 9, to discuss it in person at the Book Cellar. As always, new members are welcome to drop in.
- In the very beginning, the author states that there was no clear line between fishing and religion. Does this mean that they're on equal standing or does it elevate one above the other?
- How does fly fishing support the Maclean men's view of life? Why does Maclean spend so much time detailing it in the story?
- What has Neal done wrong and how is it a sin the Paul's and Norman's eyes? How do the women's reactions reflect on Norman 's feelings about Paul's situation? Should he be held responsible for Neal's actions?
- How do you feel about the way in which women are portrayed in the story? Is it a fair portrayal or are the women a marginal part of the story?
- There is a scene toward the end in which Norman 's father is reading a bible and says that he used to think that water came first, but "if you listen carefully you will hear that the words are underneath the water." Norman says that this is because he is a preacher first and a fisherman second, but his father disagrees and says that Paul will tell him the same thing: "The water runs over the words." What does he mean by this? What does it say about Paul and how he and Norman are different?
- What does the "river" in this book symbolize? For what is it, and fishing, a metaphor?
- By the end of the story, does Norman feel that he's failed Paul? How could he have possibly helped him? Does he believe he could have helped him?
- How successfully does Norman insert himself as a character in the story? Is he a trustworthy narrator or do you question the accuracy of the story?
- How do the book and the movie compare? In what ways does the movie remain true to the book and in what ways does it stray? Does one enhance your understanding of the other?
— Veronica Bond /
When he was past the age of 70, Norman Maclean published his first novel. Though he worked on other literary ambitions and served as a professor of English at the University of Chicago for the preceding forty-some years, it wasn't until Maclean recounted the stories about his brother and father that he used to tell to his children that the novel came to fruition. A River Runs Through It focuses on the male Macleans' shared passion for fly fishing, told from Norman's point of view and providing a vivid portrait of his troubled younger brother Paul. Through much of story Norman questions whether there is something more he can offer Paul, whether there is something else he can do to help him get his life back on track, but much like the battles they forge together in the waters, he can do no more than let Paul flow whichever way he chooses.
As the sons of a Presbyterian minister, the idea of fishing was never far from the idea of piety - Christ's followers were, after all, fishermen. The elder Maclean's passion for religion was matched only by his passion for fly fishing and Norman recalls that he and his brother received as many hours in fishing instruction as they did in "all other spiritual matters." Much of the story centers around these fishing experiences where Maclean often applies the perils and pitfalls of fishing to his greater worldview: "Poets talk about 'spots of time,' but it is really fishermen who experience eternity compressed into a moment. No one can tell what a spot of time is until suddenly the whole world is a fish and the fish is gone. I shall remember that son of a bitch forever." A pretentious and inexperienced brother-in-law serves as a bit of comic relief on one of the Maclean brothers' trips, but mostly it is Maclean's thoughts on life, the waters, and his brother's clear need for help that carry us through this narrative.
At barely over a hundred pages, A River Runs Through It is a brief but intense journey into the mind of a lifelong fisherman. Each reader's acquaintance with and interest in fishing may differ, but Maclean's descriptions of the glorious landscapes around him and his tugging family concerns will be attractive and familiar to all. A River Runs Through It is frequently published with two additional stories* - "Logging and Pimping and 'Your pal, Jim'" and "USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky." In the former, Maclean recounts the summer of 1928 while he was in graduate school and working as a logger for the Anaconda Company with the best logger in the company, Jim Grierson. This very short story details Jim's certain needs. The latter story focuses on the summer of Maclean's seventeenth year, which was spent working for the United States Forest Service in Elk Summit, Idaho. Here he was tasked with building trails, packing horses and mules and putting out wildfires.
In 1992, Robert Redford directed the film version of A River Runs Through It, starring Brad Pitt, Craig Sheffer and Tom Skerritt. It was nominated for the three Academy Awards and won for Best Cinematography.
— Veronica Bond /
Below are the questions we'll use to discuss A Raisin in the Sun. Feel free to post thoughts in the comments (spoilers allowed here) or join us next Monday at the Book Cellar when we'll discuss the book in person. I'm looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts on this classic play.
- Before there is any dialogue, the author goes to great lengths to describe the furnishings in the Younger's home. Why does shes do this and what does it say about the family's life?
- Is Walter a sympathetic character? How does he change throughout the course of the play? Have your feelings about him changed by the end?
- What can you deduce about the character of Mr. Younger? What does his memory mean to the members of the family?
- What does the Younger's new house signify to Lena? To Ruth? Why is Walter so strongly against he idea of moving to the new neighborhood?
- As a young black woman in the 1950s, what does Beneatha's desire to become a doctor say about her character? What does it say about Lena's character that she is completely supportive her daughter's wishes? Why is Walter resentful of this?
- Was Lena right to spend the money the way she wanted to? Should she have considered Walter's wishes first?
- Why do you think Lena changes her mind and gives Walter the responsibility of handling the money? Regardless of Walter's subsequent actions, was this a smart decision?
- Compare the personalities of Walter, George Murchison, and Asagai; how they different? Are they at all similar? How do they represent different archetypes of the "black man"? Would Beneatha be happy with either George or Asagai?
- What is Karl Lindner's goal? Do you think he believes that what he's doing is right? How do the members of the Younger family react to his suggestions?
- What is Beneatha's reaction when she realizes that she will not be able to go to medical school? How does her attitude and her wishes change?
- Is the ending a happy one? Is there any hope that the Younger family will prosper in their new neighborhood? Is it realistic to think that they will?
— Veronica Bond /
How much of a difference can $10,000 make? For the Younger family, $10,000 will give them the chance to change everything. When the patriarch of the family passes away, Lena, his wife, Walter Lee and Ruth, their son and daughter-in-law, Beneatha, or Bennie, their daughter, and Travis, their grandson, eagerly await the life insurance check that they are certain will alter the course of their working class lives. Set inside a small apartment in the impoverished South Side Chicago neighborhood of Woodlawn, this 1959 play evokes the feelings of desperation, oppression, hope and opportunity that consume each member of the family and their own particular wishes for the insurance money.
The $10,000 offers the chance for each of them to do something great. For Bennie, it is the chance to pay for medical school. Never satisfied with the idea of marrying rich, Bennie is set upon making something of herself through hard work and education. For Walter, it is the chance to make the business investment he is sure will take care of him for life. He dreams of being able to leave his job as a chauffeur, a servant, and provide a good home and luxuries to his wife and son. For Ruth, it is the hope that she will be able to care for her son and the new baby growing inside her. The tension has been thick between Ruth and Walter and she begins to contemplate drastic measures to maintain what they already have. For Lena, this money is not only the chance to purchase something to better their lives - for she is the only one who successfully acts upon the money - but the chance to move her family up on the social ladder, to finally be able to show something for all the hard years they've worked. It is the chance to, for once, move past the racial boundaries that have kept them immobile for so long. Though hasty decisions and poor judgment prevent these other dreams from coming to fruition, it is Lena's dream that the family is able to rally around and defend and make a reality, even when others try their best to knock it down.
A Raisin in the Sun was the first play written by a black woman and directed by a black man to be produced on Broadway. The original cast included Sidney Poitier as Walter Lee Younger, Ruby Dee as Ruth Younger and Louis Gossett, Jr., as George Murchison, one of Bennie's potential suitors. The play made Lorraine Hansberry the first black person to be awarded the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. In 1961, a film version of the play was released featuring the Broadway cast and several different film versions have been released since then, most recently starring Sean Combs and Phylicia Rashad. The play is loosely based on author Hansberry's family's own dealings with racial discrimination and segregation in Chicago. In the spring of 2003, A Raisin in the Sun was selected to be part of the Chicago Public Library's One Book, One Chicago program.
— Veronica Bond /
Goodreads is a social networking website for book lovers, where users can track which books they've read, let people know what they're currently reading, create wishlists, rate books, write reviews, see what their friends are reading, plus a whole lot more.
Although the site is rather bland, and the navigation is sometimes confusing at best, Goodreads is one of the fastest growing social sites around, currently boasting more than 1.5 million users. The site is free to join and use.
And now the Gapers Block Book Club is on Goodreads. If you're using the site, join our group here. Introduce yourself, start a new discussion or rate the books we've read. We hope this group will be one more way we can get to know each other.
— Alice Maggio /
Here are some sample questions for our November 10 book club meeting:
1. Who are the heroes and who are the villains in this story?
2. Do you empathize with Minna and Ada? With the reformers? With the prostitutes?
3. Why do you think the Everleigh sisters got into the business they did?
4. What kinds of double standards existed regarding the sexuality of men and women during this time period?
5. Did this book change your understanding of women's lives at the beginning of the twentieth century? How do their lives/roles/opportunities compare to women's lives today?
6. In what ways has our culture changed since the events of the book, and how is it the same?
7. How would you describe Karen Abbott's attitudes towards her subjects?
8. Sin in the Second City is best described as a work of creative nonfiction, blending fact with creative flourishes to imagine certain scenes. Does this style work for this book?
9. Early twentieth century Chicago is vividly brought to life in Sin in the Second City. Could the events of this book have happened anyplace else?
10. What do you think is the most important thing to know about the social world the Everleigh sisters lived in?
11. Abbott calls Charles Washburn's biography of the Everleigh sisters, Come into My Parlor, "slightly flawed," yet she heavily relies on it as a source. Does this affect your reading of the book?
12. What is the purpose of the book? Why do think Abbott chose to write about this subject? What are the central problems she raises in the book regarding prostitution, white slavery and reform?
13. What did you find most surprising about the book?
— Alice Maggio /
Sound the trumpets. Here are the official selections of the Gapers Block Book Club for 2009. Even if we do say so ourselves, Veronica and I believe we have another strong reading list, which includes a mix of classics, new titles, award winners, bestsellers and lesser-known works. We received a number of excellent book suggestions from our members, and tried to incorporate as many as possible. Special thanks to everyone who submitted ideas for the book club.
January
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry (Random House, 1994; 106 p.)
As a work written by a female, African-American playwright, this play was groundbreaking when it was first produced in 1959. A Raisin in the Sun tells the story of the Younger family. Lena Younger's husband has passed away, and as Lena and her family wait for a $10,000 life insurance check, they dream of leaving their tiny Chicago apartment and starting new lives. The play went on to win a New York Drama Critics Circle Award and has been adapted for TV and film several times.
February
A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean (University of Chicago Press, 2001; 239 p.)
Maclean taught English at the University of Chicago for 45 years, but he didn't publish his first novel until after he retired at age 70. A River Runs Through It was first published in 1976. It gained critical praise and later became an enduring bestseller after Robert Redford's 1992 film adaptation. The story is about two brothers growing up in rural Montana, who share a passion for fly fishing.
March
The Book of Ralph by John McNally (Free Press, 2005; 287 p.)
This collection of intertwined short stories chronicles the comic misadventures of eighth grader Hank Boyd and his trouble-making friend, Ralph. This coming-of-age tale is set during the late 1970s and early 1980s in southwest suburban Chicago.
April
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris (Back Bay, 2008; 385 p.)
The debut novel by Joshua Ferris is set in an unnamed Chicago advertising agency and brilliantly dissects office life as the employees of the firm face the threat of layoffs. Then We Came to the End is a 2008 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award winner and a National Book Award Finalist.
May
Passing by Nella Larsen (Random House, 2002; 304 p.)
First published in 1929, Passing tells the story of two light-skinned African-American women who try to pass for white in order to escape racism in 1920s New York. Born in Chicago to Danish mother and African-American father in 1891, author Nella Larsen was the first African-American woman to be awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in creative writing.
June
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (Random House, 1998; 304 p.)
Vonnegut's trademark satire is in full force in this science-fiction tale originally published 1963 about a young writer doing research for a book on the history of the atomic bomb, who discovers the existence of "ice-nine", an even more deadly threat to the planet.
July
Every Crooked Pot by Renee Rosen (St. Martin's Griffin, 2007; 227 p.)
Nina Goldman was born with a strawberry birthmark that covers one eye. This coming-of-age novel set in 1970s Akron, Ohio, is written in the form of a memoir, revealing Nina's struggles with self-acceptance and her love-hate relationship with her eccentric father. Author Rosen grew up in Akron but currently lives in Chicago.
August
La Perdida by Jessica Abel (Random House, 2008; 275 p.)
In this highly regarded graphic novel, Carla Olivares, a twenty-something Mexican-American woman, leaves the U.S. and heads to Mexico City in a misguided attempt to get in touch with her roots. Unfortunately, her life goes from bad to worse when she falls in with a group of drug dealers and wannabe revolutionaries.
September
The Echo Maker by Richard Powers (Picador, 2007; 451 p.)
Twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schluter is in a near fatal car accident that leaves him with a rare brain disorder that causes him to believe his sister is an imposter. As Mark's sense of identity unravels, he becomes determined to discover the truth about his accident. The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award.
October
Lords of the Levee by Herman Kogan and Lloyd Wendt (Northwestern University Press, 2005; 384 p.)
This engaging nonfiction work tells the story of "Bathhouse" John Coughlin and Mike "Hinky Dink" Kenna, the notorious First Ward aldermen who ruled Chicago at the start of the twentieth century. Originally published in 1943, Lords of the Levee is the perfect complement to our November 2008 selection, Sin in the Second City.
November
Travel Writing by Peter Ferry (Harcourt, 2008; 294 p.)
In this work of metafiction, Ferry acts as both author and character, telling the story of a high school English teacher named Peter Ferry who witnesses a fatal car accident that he becomes convinced he could have prevented. As a result, Ferry develops an obsession with learning about the life of the victim, the young and beautiful Lisa Kim.
— Alice Maggio /
Interested in reading what others think of our current Book Club selection? Here are some reviews and blog posts of varying opinions on Sin in the Second City:
Blog Critics: "Abbott writes the non-fiction book almost like a novel, with rich descriptions and an eye towards character. Sin in the Second City never gets salacious, though the author sometimes gets flowery with her descriptions."
New York Times: "'Sin and the Second City' is assiduously researched. And it is well put together, mixing brief and longer chapters rather than striving for a more arbitrary format. But Ms. Abbott has to narrate and debunk, and her task is complicated...It's no small matter to sift the facts from the hyperbole."
My Individual Take: "The author clearly sympathizes with the Everleigh sisters' shrewd business sense while raising an eye-brow at the male-dominated society that alternately condoned then condemned the sexual exploitation."
Steven Levitt's Freakonomics Blog: "Rarely do I get to the end of a book and wish that it had still more chapters. On the rare occasion when this does happen, the feeling usually passes quickly. When my longing for a book persists, I know I really liked the book." (Don't miss the accompanying New York Times Q&A with Abbott.)
Pop Matters: "You can almost see the jerky movements on an old-time cinema screen as Abbott parades her cast of often questionable characters: the shady politicians, the criminal and political bosses, the cops, the pimps, the patrons, the troubled sons of wealthy men. With real people like on-the-take aldermen Michael 'Hinky Dink' Kenna and 'Bathhouse John' Coughlin, who needs fiction?"
Claire Zulkey interviews Abbott: "I've seen your book linked with The Devil in the White City: what do you think it is about Chicago's sordid history that's captured more than the local imagination?"
Book Dork: "So: the first half of the book is all fanciful demimonde, with these bizarre unique characters flitting around in absurd amounts of jewelry and utterly invented personas (complete with birth dates moved up more than a decade), encouraging men to drink champagne out of their harlots' shoes and linger in tackily elegant rooms paneled entirely with mirrors or done up to resemble all the regions of the world or decorated entirely in monochrome...It's fantastic."
Chicago Daily Observer: "The story has been chronicled before, but never in such explicit detail. Despite the lurid subject matter, Abbott labors to make the operators of the Everleigh Club look as refined and respectable as members of the Junior League. Surprisingly enough, some people are buying into this revisionist argument."
Mark Bernstein: "The whole White Slavery question strikes us today as a strange mix of naïveté and hypocrisy, mixed with prudery and class friction. This is, pretty much, Abbott's diagnosis, and because she has little real sympathy with the reformers, nearly half of her book is devoted to preachers and reformers she clearly views as colorless and dull. I think more could be done with this material."
Wall Street Journal: "One doesn't hear much nowadays about bordellos, also known as cathouses, brothels, houses of ill repute or simple whorehouses. When I was an adolescent in Chicago, in the early 1950s, the trip to such a place was a rite de passage for nearly every male youth of unambiguous appetites."
You can also hear what Abbott has to say about the book herself:
Interview from a WGN appearance.
Interview on NPR.
Interview on WBEZ's Eight Forty-Eight.
— Veronica Bond /
Karen Abbott's Sin in the Second City will be our final selection for 2008. Alice and I will soon meet to decide what we'll read in 2009, but first we want to know what you want to read. Links to lists of all of the books we've read in the past can be found on the bar to the right - take a look at these first and then email us at bookclub[at]gapersblock[dot]com with your suggestions. The only requirement is that the book's subject must be Chicago-related or the author must have some ties to the city or the suburbs. Fiction, non-fiction, and comic suggestions are all welcome.
We look forward to another year of discovering great Chicago literature with all of you.
— Veronica Bond /
Interested in hearing Ayun Halliday talk about the food adventures she recorded in Dirty Sugar Cookies? Head over to Hungry Magazine to listen to a podcast of their 2006 interview with the author. (Thanks, Anne!)
— Veronica Bond /
I hope you all were able to find copies of Ayun Halliday's Dirty Sugar Cookies. For those that weren't but still want to come to the meeting, perhaps we can read aloud some of our favorite passages so that everyone can get an idea of what this memoir is all about. Below are the questions we'll use to discuss the book at our meeting next week.
- What do you think is Halliday's idea of comfort food? What do you think she means when she writes "No matter what the Thanksgiving issue of Gourmet would have us believe, comfort food is not always what one grew up eating or, more accurately, refusing to eat" (p. 3)? Do you agree? What does "comfort food" mean to you?
- In "Courtesy Bite" (p. 25), Halliday remembers her grade school lunch room politics. How do mealtimes create a social hierarchy? How does that change when she gets to seventh grade and has an unmonitored lunch period?
- How do Halliday's experiences at the cafeteria with her grandparents work as a sort of coming of age? How does this work to grow her food adventurousness?
- What happens when Halliday first eats spanakopita? Have you ever had a similar food epiphany?
- How does Halliday link her food advertures to her life adventures? It this way of recounting her travels and past relationships through the food that was shared an effective way to convey the tone of the memory?
- What did you think of Halliday's affair with vegetarianism? Did it have anything to do with concern for animals or was it something different? What does the vegetarian lifestyle mean to her?
- How does Halliday deal with food restrictions during her pregnancies? Is there any vindication in her reading about the listeriosis outbreak?
- In "A Different Kind of Chicken," what is the importance of finding her grandmother's recipe box? What do the recipes inside tell her about her grandmother?
— Veronica Bond /
If you're tired of reading foodie books where the author's roast lemon-thyme chicken, creamy mashed Yukon gold potatoes and crisp steamed asparagus come out perfectly just as his or her family or date or group of witty friends sits down to an elegant, yet bohemian, perfectly set table, then Ayun Halliday's Dirty Sugar Cookies is the perfect anti-foodie book for you. Filled with culinary mishaps, battles with picky eaters and reminiscences of morning meal with past romances, Dirty Sugar Cookies is a memoir of a woman's life with a truly universal love: food.
While much food-based literature may incite jealously over perfectly planned and enjoyed meals as well as a piqued interest in whatever succulent dish is being written about, Halliday's take on food is a far more honest and relatable one. She starts by admitting that she was not always adventurous with food and, indeed, her refusal to eat the canned pears and cottage cheese she prepared for her family - "Bunny Salad" from a Betty Crocker cookbook - is met jarringly by later confessions of her love affair with mangosteens in Bangkok. However, this admission is not delivered without an acknowledgment of irony - the now adventurous, food-loving traveler has become the mother of a girl whose finicky eating habits is a match for those of her own childhood.
Perhaps one of the most powerful elements of this memoir is the fact that food has the power to stir up great memories in us all. Halliday's recounts of eating dinner out with her grandparents at the cafeteria by their house will surely mesh with readers' memories of meals with their own grandparents. The brownies she baked with her school friends served as a ritual that kept them together and, when other girls were discovering alcohol, their hand-packed picnics were a failed attempt to catch the boys of their own desires. Halliday's foray into vegetarianism is filled with laughingly reported failures, from the lentil burgers that were never solid enough to form into patties to the suspicious pots of unidentifiable leftover brown stews and soups that filled her refrigerator for weeks. Her relationships are remembered by the shared breakfasts at greasy local diners where a true shot to the heart is seeing your ex bring a new fling to the site of your "postcoital breakfasts." For Halliday, food is not just what keeps you living - it's what's worth living for.
No foodie book would be complete without a few recipes sprinkled in for authenticity and Halliday does not disappoint. From veggie burgers (thankfully not the lentil ones that failed her so miserably) to watermelon with basil and feta to the eponymous dirty sugar cookies, Halliday's recipes are easy to follow and offer the same wit with which she peppers all of her writing: "Better taste some to make sure nobody poisoned it," she says of her friend's famous brownie batter; and "Stir the wet into the dry. Get your mind out of the gutter," she directs in her recipe for Postcoital Pancakes. A fun, touching and wholly absorbing read, Dirty Sugar Cookies is a perfectly mixed combination of food and memoir writing, leaving the reader wishing for just one more morsel to savor.
* * *
Ayun Halliday was born in Indiana, attended Northwestern University and was a member of the Neo-Futurists. She is the author of her own zine, The East Village Inky, a columnist for Bust magazine, and is the author of three additional books: The Big Rumpus, No Touch Monkey! and Job Hopper. She and her family currently live in New York. You can visit her food blog here.
— Veronica Bond /
Below are the questions we'll use to discuss Richard Wright's Native Son. Feel free to post answers in the comments (spoilers are allowed) or join us on Monday, September 8, when we'll discuss it in person at the Book Cellar.
- Is Bigger Thomas a character we are supposed to pity or sympathize with? How does the brutality of his acts affect your feelings toward him?
- What effect does the author create with the opening scene? How does this enhance your knowledge of Bigger's life? What effect, if any, does the black rat add?
- Was Mary's death an accident or murder? Does Bigger act "smart" in how he attempts to conceal it? Does he have any other real way he could have gotten out of the situation?
- Is what Bigger does to Bessie worse than what he does to Mary? Do you think he will be tried for his crimes against Bessie?
- Is Bigger's trial a fair one? How does racism affect the judicial process in the book? What role does the media play in determining "justice"?
- What role does blindness play in the story? Is there anyone other than Mrs. Dalton that you would say is blind?
- Much of the story is very monochromatic - Wright describes characters and objects as black or white in many scenes. How does affect your reading of the story?
- Why does Max choose the line of defense that he does? What are his goals? How does he try to implicate Mr. Dalton as a contributor to the crime?
- Why does the preacher attempt to bring Bigger closer to God and why does he fail?
- Has Bigger changed at all by the end of the book? Is there anything to admire about him? Does the author intend for us to relate to Bigger as a human or has he made him an embodiemnt of social and political forces?
- Does the book seem dated in its depiction of racism? Have we moved beyond the rage and hostility that exists between whites and blacks in the book? Could our culture still produce a figure like Bigger Thomas?
— Veronica Bond /
After a brief hiatus, all hail the return of Quotable Friday , where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris:
"We didn't know who was responsible for putting the sushi roll behind Joe Pope's bookshelf. The first couple of days Joe had no clue about the sushi. Then he started taking furtive sniffs at his pits, and holding the wall of his palm to his mouth to get blowback from his breath. By the end of the week, he was certain it wasn't him.We smelled it, too. Persistent, high in the nostrils, it became worse than a dying animal. Joe's gorge rose every time he entered his office. The following week the smell was so atrocious the building people got involved, hunting the office for what turned out to be a sunshine roll- tuna, whitefish, salmon, and sprouts. Mike Boroshansky, the chief of security, kept bringing his tie up to his nose, as if he were a real cop at the scene of a murder."
— Alice Maggio /
Bigger Thomas - a criminal at heart or a victim of environment? This is one of the questions we're forced to ponder while reading Richard Wright's groundbreaking Native Son, but even more, Bigger Thomas's story shines a harsh light on the social, economic and racial disparities present in the 1930s in Chicago, making modern readers question how far we've truly come. Excited to be able to help his impoverished family earn some money, 20-year-old Bigger begins a job as a chauffeur for the upper-class, white, Dalton family, a family that has made its riches dealing real estate in poor black neighborhoods. Despite boastful plans with his friends to rob a white-owned store, Bigger finds himself shy, afraid and, ultimately, angry in the presence the kind and gracious Dalton family. When their daughter Mary grills Bigger on his allegiance to unions and calls her father a capitalist, his nervousness increases and he realizes how much his own silence will help him.
It is Mary's outspokenness that will be Bigger's undoing. After driving Mary and her boyfriend Jan through the city, joining them and their friends at dinner despite his unease and partaking in a bottle of rum, Bigger finds himself in Mary's bedroom, both scared and lustful. Though Mrs. Dalton is blind, Bigger panics when she enters her daughter's room to check on her and struggles to keep Mary quiet by holding a pillow over her face. Confronted with Mary's lifeless body, Bigger must devise a plan to preserve the appearance of his innocence - a plan that will, unfortunately, go horribly awry when the public and the press decide his guilt even before he is caught and tried. Furthermore, the search for Bigger as he tries to escape his crime gives the white authorities an excuse to plunder and terrorize the South Side black neighborhoods. It is calamity that is clearly reflective of the social unrest of 1930s Chicago.
Native Son was an immediate best-seller when it was published in 1940 and made Richard Wright the wealthiest black writer of his time. Wright was also the first black American writer to have a publication chosen for the Book-of-the-Month club. It was during Wright's stay in Chicago that he joined the Communist Party and after he moved to New York he published reviews and political essays Communist publications. He remained a member through the 40s before leaving over ideological issues. Wright's Communist affiliations are apparent throughout the third book of Native Son, where much of the dialogue is spent on the Communist oratories of Bigger's lawyer who also argues that while Bigger is responsible for his crime, he is also a product of his fearful, desperate environment. In an essay on the creation of his most well-known protagonist, Wright explained that Bigger was a combination of men he had known during his childhood in Mississippi, men confronted by racism and oppression, resulting in antisocial and violent behavior. While in Chicago, Wright saw that this was not strictly a black phenomenon and came to believe that the structure of American society was at the root of this suffering. Bigger Thomas's story in Native Son serves as Wright's warning that without social and economic change, the oppressed masses will soon rise up violently against those in power.
— Veronica Bond /
News Thu Aug 07 2008
The Gapers Block Book Club is named as one of the "100 Places to Connect with Other Bibliophiles Online." You can find us in the blogs category, but be sure to visit some of the other great resources listed.
You can connect with us online here anytime, but remember you can also connect with us in-person this Monday, August 11, when we meet at The Book Cellar to talk about our current book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Hope to see you there.
— Alice Maggio /
Below are some of the questions we'll use to discuss L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz next week. I'm looking forward to hearing what everyone thought about the book and how childhood familiarity with the story or sole familiarity with the movie affected your readings. It's a fast read, so if you haven't picked it up yet, you still have plenty of time to get through it and join us for discussion.
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has been called the first American fairy tale and Baum's intentions were to write a fairy tale that differed from the older, European ones. How is this story different from other fairy tales you've read or are familiar with? Would you call Oz particularly American?
- Baum is said to have disliked the way traditional fairy tales taught morals and values. Does Oz express any particulary values or moral lessons? How does Baum communicate them in the story?
- Is this story accessible to a modern audience? Is there anything dated about it? Do you think it will continue to appeal to children in future generations?
- The Scarecrow yearns for a brain, but he's actually the most intelligent and logical person in the group. Is this irony present elsewhere in the story? What purpose does it serve?
- Why does the Wizard behave the way he does? Is his behavior excusable or not? He describes himself as a good man but a bad wizard - do you agree?
- Do money and capitalism play any roles in Oz? What is valued in the land of Oz compared to what is valued in the real world?
- In his Preface to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum says that he aimed to create a tale in which "wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out." Do you think he succeeded? Do you think that this type of optimism and pure entertainment are valuable?
- What are the power dynamics in Oz? How does one get and lose power in Oz?
- Baum's mother-in-law was a feminist and a suffragette. Do you think the ideals of feminism influenced Baum's writing of Oz? In particular, how would you view Dorothy and the witches in a feminist context?
— Veronica Bond /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is by Morris Markey, writing about Chicago for McCall's magazine in March 1932:
"The thing was explosive in its effect upon the eye—more the fabulous projection of a city than a city itself. New York and London, Paris and Berlin and Vienna suddenly became old-fashioned in the memory. This was like a monstrous theatrical spectacle, when the curtain first goes up and you are a little dazed and you say, 'But heavens! It's more stunning than the real thing!' I felt as if the fireworks would commence at any instant, with rockets soaring and terrible detonations shaking the air, and that a flaming screen a mile high would begin to spell in red and white and blue: 'Chicago—World's Greatest City.'"
— Alice Maggio /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from our August Book Club selection, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum:
"Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty-looking cooking stove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar—except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole."
— Alice Maggio
Come join us this month as we take a trip down the Yellow Brick Road to a place that many of us are already familiar with and love - the wonderful world of Oz. While most of us are well acquainted with the movie The Wizard of Oz, fewer people have been introduced to the book that originally inspired Judy Garland's famous performance. Written by L. Frank Baum in 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz broke sales records and was made into a play and the famous musical, all of which turned the author into a celebrity. After the success of this first book, Baum went on to write fourteen other books in the series as well as over 35 other non-Oz books, none of which were ever as successful as the original Oz book and its immediate successor, The Marvelous Land of Oz.
Set in Kansas, the orphan Dorothy lives with her Aunt Em, Uncle Henry, and dog Toto on a small farm that is one day hit by a horrible cyclone. Dorothy and Toto are carried away to a strange land where they are greeted by the Good Witch of the North and the Munchkins, the inhabitants of the land. Soon after landing, Dorothy is told that her house has killed the Wicked Witch of the East and only her silver shoes (not red!) remain. After imploring the Good Witch for directions on how to get home, she gives Dorothy a protective kiss on her forehead and sends her on her way, down the Yellow Brick Road, to find the Wizard in the Emerald City of Oz. It is along this way that she meets three characters she will never forget: the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion.
It is a great example of Baum's wit that the very characteristics Dorothy's friends most desire are also the ones they most exemplify. The Scarecrow yearns for a brain, yet he is the one who constantly provides well-thought, logical solutions for the obstacles the group faces on the way to Oz. The Tin Man wants nothing more than a heart, but it is his great empathy for all living things that makes him noble and virtuous. The Cowardly Lion may believe his fear warrants him his name, but it is his ability to carry forth in the face of his fears that makes him truly courageous. Just as Dorothy was always able to find her way home, the story holds up the notion that everything you need is already inside you.
Born in New York, Baum moved to Chicago after the birth of his third son where he worked as a reporter for the Chicago Evening Post, a salesman and editor of a magazine for window decorators. He began publishing children's stories at the encouragement of his mother-in-law and first collaborated with Chicago illustrator W.W. Denslow in 1898. Denslow served as the original illustrator of the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Baum never intended to write more than one Oz book, however financial difficulties later in his life prompted him to continue the series. A dispute with Denslow over the first book's royalties resulted in John R. Neill serving as the illustrator for all the subsequent books. The Oz books have since become the subject of much critical analyses, from political, gender, commercialism, exchange theory and more.
— Veronica Bond /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from An Autobiography by Frank Lloyd Wright:
"We do not choose the style. No. Style is what is coming now and it will be what we are in all this. A thrilling moment in any architect's experience. He is about to see the countenance of something he is invoking with intense concentration. Out of this inner sense of order and love of the beauty of life something is to be born — maybe to live long as a message of hope and be a joy or a curse to his kind. His message he feels. None the less it will be "theirs," and rather more. And it is out of love and understanding that any building is born to bless or curse those it is built to serve. Bless them if they will see, understand and aid. Curse them as it will be cursed by them if either they or the architect fail to understand each other. This is the faith and the fear in the architect as he makes ready — to draw his design."
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago by Lealan Jones and Lloyd Newman. The authors were 13 years old when they conducted two award-winning National Public Radio documentaries in 1993 and 1995 about their experiences growing up in Chicago's Ida B. Wells Homes. This book is comprised of unused material from those broadcasts.
"Our neighborhood is a fun neighborhood if you know what you're doing. If you act like a little kid in this neighborhood, you're not gonna last too long. 'Cause if you play childish games in the ghetto, you're going to find a childish bullet in your childish brain. If you live in the ghetto, when you're ten you know everything you're not supposed to know. When I was ten I knew where drugs came from. I knew about every different kind of gun. I knew about sex. I was a kid in age, but my mind had the reality of a grown-up, 'cause I seen these things every day!
"Like when I was eight years old, my cousin Willy had a friend named Baby Tony and another friend, Little Cecil. They used to hang out—watch TV, go to the park and hoop, sell drugs. They all went to jail. When Baby Tony acme out he was walking through the park when a boy lit him up and blew his face off. His face was entirely blown off. And then a couple of days later Little Cecil sold somebody a dummy bag of plaster from off the walls, so the man who was using it came back and asked for his money back. Little Cecil took off running and the man shot him. And Cecil was dead. That was both of my cousin's friends that died in one week!"
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from our current book club selection, Free Burning by Bayo Ojikutu:
"Over here is nothing like the strips downtown, where folks march fast as legs move them—fast and slow all at once. Those people are headed where they don't want to be without any other choice in life but going there. Marching lines straight and ordered. Northbound against the curbside, southbound against the buildings, marching and hustling in their own way, to some bosses' time.
But 79th Street's sidewalks are too narrow for such downtown order. Our blocks were built for Jews and Germans and Polish long ago, those tiny, straight-line folk. Now just one jive soul heads east, walking directly toward another headed west. Folk dip and limp and slide their way through just in time, some imagined time. When the sidewalk becomes too clogged, the hustlers walk out in the middle of the street and force the cars to limp and slide on by."
— Alice Maggio
Free Burning, the second novel by local author Bayo Ojikutu, is the July 2008 selection of the Gapers Block Book Club. It was first published in 2006 and takes place on Chicago's South Side in the fictional Four Corners neighborhood, which roughly translates to the South Shore area. Four Corners is beleaguered by poverty, gangs and drugs, among a host of other social and economic problems.
The protagonist is Tommie Simms, who, as the book's jacket copy declares, "was supposed to be the community's hope, the young man from the neighborhood who made good." Simms went to college and graduated from Southern Illinois University. He landed a corporate job with Global Mutual IndemCorp, a downtown insurance firm, with an office on the 32nd floor. But Simms is laid off from his job after 9/11, and he becomes desperate for a way to support his wife, Tarsha, and their baby daughter. He turns to his drug-dealing cousin Remi and begins selling pot to help pay the bills and make ends meet. The novel focuses on his quick descent into Chicago's underworld, as Simms finds himself on the wrong side of a crooked cop and crosses paths with loan sharks, rival drug dealers and others looking to get a piece of him. Ojikutu reveals how easy it is for a good man to fall on hard times, and how difficult it is to escape and climb back out of the hole.
Library Journal said, "Ojikutu's harsh and often violent depiction of the street life, where everyone has developed his or her own hustle to get by, is riveting." And Kirkus gave Free Burning a starred review, calling the story gritty, lyrical and intense, and describing Ojikutu's writing style as "a cross between James Baldwin's soulful song and the nightmare poetry of Louis-Ferdinand Cline." And in Black Issues Book Review, Denolyn Carroll summed up the novel as "a powerful work of urban fiction."
About the Author
Bayo Ojikutu was born in 1971 and is a Chicago native, born and raised. His father, Owolabi, is from Nigeria, and his mother originally hails from Louisiana. Ojikutu attended the University of Illinois, and earned his master's at DePaul University. He still lives in the city and teaches in the English department at DePaul. His first novel, 47th Street Black, published in 2003, was a winner of the Washington Prize for Fiction and the great American Book Contest. Ojikutu is definitely a local author to watch, as his star continues to rise.
Additional Resources
Read an interview with Ojikutu from the Fall 2006 books issue of the Chicago Reader.
~*~
Read the book, and then join us on Monday, July 14, at The Book Cellar, beginning at 7:30pm for our discussion. New members are always welcome.
— Alice Maggio /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from The Sweetheart Is In by S.L. Wisenberg:
"Ruthie imagines sex without pain. She imagines it the way she tried to reconstruct dreams, really reconstruct. Or builds an image while she is praying. She imagines a blue castle somewhere on high, many steps, a private room, fur rug, long mattress, white stucco walls, tiny windows. She imagines leaving her body. It frightens her. If she leaves her body, leaves it cavorting on the bed/fur rug/kitchen table (all is possible when there is sex without pain), she may not get it back. Her body may just get up and walk away, without her, wash itself, apply blusher mascara lipstick, draw up her clothes around it, take her purse and go out to dinner. Big Ruthie herself will be left on the ceiling, staring down at the indentations on the mattress and rug, wishing she could reach down and take a book from a shelf."
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Battleground Chicago: The Police and the 1968 Democratic National Convention
by Frank Kusch:
"At issue was the belief that anyone donning counterculture dress was a threat. There were no more 'innocent flower children.' Former cop Norm Nelson, for example, viewed the Yippies as what the hippies had become, having now abandoned all pretense of flower power and peace. Nelson had read about them in the local papers. 'We knew who they were—they had metamorphosed into the real thing. Yippie was the myth. It was the coming of war; from ’67 on it was a battle, and they were showing their true colors in the weeks and months leading up to the convention in our city.…Let’s put it this way, we were ready for those SOBs.'”
— Alice Maggio
Below are some questions we'll use to discuss David Sedaris's Naked at our meeting next week. I can't wait to hear everyone's opinions on this unique form of memoir.
- How would you describe Sedaris's style? How does it compare to other memoirs you've read?
- Do you trust Sedaris as the narrator of his own story? Do you question the veracity of any of his stories?
- How are the essays in the book linked together? Did they flow together well or did you feel they were distinct and separate?
- Is Sedaris's portrayal of his family fair? Does it seem honest to you or do you think some of their characteristics were embellished?
- How does Sedaris deal with his sexuality in these essays? Do you find it an important element or do you think it could have been omitted or toned down?
- Do you find Sedaris as the narrator a sympathetic "character"?
- Do you think Sedaris is trying to elicit a certain response from his readers? Has the book changed or enhanced your view of the author?
- Sedaris uses a comic tone to deal with several sensitive topics. Does this tone take away from these issues?
— Veronica Bond /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from our current book club selection, Naked by David Sedaris:
"Growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina, one of the worst things you could say about a person was that he or she had a family member at Dix Hill, the common name for Dorothea Dix Sanitarium, the local state mental hospital. Designed by the same people who brought you Dreary Orphanage for Forsaken Children and Gabled House Haunted by Ghost of Hatchet Murderer, Dorothea Dix was a bleak colony of Gothic buildings perched upon a hilltop near the outskirts of town. In the winter its surrounding tree limbs resembled palsied fingers of mad scientists tapping against the windows in search of fresh brains. Come summer these same trees, green and leafy, served to hide something unspeakably sinister. Whenever we passed by the place, my sister and I would stick our heads out the car window, expecting to hear a hysterical voice cackling, 'I'm mad, I tell you, MAD!'"
— Alice Maggio
David Sedaris has gained much popularity from his witty personal essays, many of which have been published in magazines and read on NPR's "This American Life" before being collected into books for publication. Naked, his second books of essays, does not focus on any one particular period of time in the author's life, but flits through a variety of ages. From the peculiar tics he was prisoner to as a child to the birth of his younger brother – the family's sixth and final child – to the time he spent picking apples in Oregon to the impending death of his mother from cancer, Sedaris manages to capture a wide range of his experiences viewed through the lens of seemingly trite occurrences. This ability to take what we would merely see as bizarre or funny and extract a profound sense of value and significance – not only for himself but also for his readers – is perhaps Sedaris's greatest gift and the reason behind his incredible success.
The title of the book comes from its final essay, "Naked," which recounts the week Sedaris spent at a nudist colony. Apprehensive about appearing completely nude in public, Sedaris at first confines his nudity to his trailer, commenting on how accustomed to clothes he is: "I realize that it has long been my habit to stretch my T-shirt over my knees while sitting alone at a table. I'm also used to pulling my pants above my navel and tightening my belt to diminish my gut. Jangling the keys in my pocket, thoughtlessly gnawing at the collars of my shirts: these things are lost to me now. It feels dangerous to drink a cup of hot coffee, and twice in the last hour I’ve hopped up to brush glowing cigarette ash off what I once considered to be my private parts." Instead of freeing or exciting, Sedaris learns that seeing everyone naked is much more of a burden - even when he returns to clothed society he can't help imagining what everyone looks like underneath, something akin to a superpower gone bad.
The essays become longer and more involved as the book progresses, changing from simple memories to poignant ruminations on the universals of life. "I Like Guys" describes the moment when Sedaris knew he was gay. Stuck in Greece at a summer camp just before high school, a sexually-charged friendship with a campmate leads Sedaris to realize how, in insulting and ridiculing each other to appear part of the rest of the group, they only ended up further alienating themselves. "The Women's Open" is a sweet and sympathetic chance to explore his sister's feeling on the day she got her period and, later, how she must have felt upon delving into their mother's last gift, a tape of movies she recorded just before she died. "The Incomplete Quad" focuses on the cross-country hitchhiking trip Sedaris took with a college friend suffering from muscular dystrophy. Using her illness to mooch off innocent travelers, the two learn that it's not what you can take from others that's important, but what others are willing to give. Part autobiography, part comedic tale, Naked is fast, but absorbing and entertaining and can serve as the perfect light read while offering so much more.
* * *
David Sedaris was born in New York, was raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, and earned a degree at the School of the Art Institute. His other books include
Barrel Fever,
Holidays on Ice,
Me Talk Pretty One Day,
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and the upcoming
When You Are Engulfed in Flames, scheduled for release on June 3. You can listen to Sedaris read some of his pieces on the
NPR website.
— Veronica Bond /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from The Sea Fairies by L. Frank Baum:
"Why hasn't anybody seen a mermaid and lived?" asked Trot again.
"'Cause mermaids is fairies, an' ain't meant to be seen by us mortal folk," replied Cap'n Bill.
"But if anyone happens to see 'em, what then, Cap'n?"
"Then," he answered, slowly wagging his head, "the mermaids give 'em a smile an' a wink, an' they dive into the water an' gets drownded."
"S'pose they knew how to swim, Cap'n Bill?"
"That don't make any diff'rence, Trot. The mermaids live deep down, an' the poor mortals never come up again."
— Alice Maggio
Here are just a few sample discussion questions for our upcoming meeting to talk about The Grass Dancer by Susan Power.
1. Why is the book titled The Grass Dancer? Who is the true grass dancer in this book?
2. What role does Pumpkin play in Harley's life?
3. How does Margaret Many Wounds' idea of walking on the moon differ from NASA's?
4. Is Anna/Mercury Thunder a villain or a heroine?
5. Susan Power dedicates the book to her grandmothers, who gave her the "keys to two cities." How do the characters in the novel live between these two cities—one Native American and the other white?
6. What role does the modern world play in the novel?
7. How does Power's choice of using multiple points of view affect the story?
8. Why does Power tell this story in the order she does? How does the reverse chronological order influence the story?
9. A lot of this novel deals with memory. What happens when we forget the past?
10. Is The Grass Dancer a work of "magic realism"? Why or why not?
Remember our May meeting is this Monday, May 19 at The Book Cellar, starting at 7:30pm. Hope to see you there.
— Alice Maggio /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from The Chicago River: A Natural and Unnatural History by Libby Hill:
Humans ventured into the Chicagoland area approximately 12,000 years ago as the glacier receded and the climate became more inviting to plants and animals. Their successive cultures adapted to the changes in the landscape as the lakes ancestral to Lake Michigan varied in size.
If man or animal lived here before the Wisconsin glacial episode, all evidence was removed by the action of the ice. Huge animals came in as soon after the glaciers as the area was habitable for them. It is hard to imagine the immense woolly mammoth, a beast with long shaggy hair and huge curved tusks, grazing here in the meadow, while its smaller but still enormous reddish cousin, the mastodon, browsed on trees and in the grasslands, perhaps in the neighborhood of your own backyard. Both animals, relatives of the elephant, were probably common, and both were ideally suited to the cold climates that followed in the wake of the glaciers.
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from our current book club pick, The Grass Dancer by Susan Power:
Frank Pipe would never forget the sound of glass exploding in the dark room. Something had burst through the window behind him, and he was lucky for a hanging quilt, which stopped most of the spinning glass that flew through the air like shrapnel. In the sudden moonlight, Frank identified the creature as the largest coyote he had ever seen, tall as a pony. It lunged for one of the participants, and though hands stretched to hold him, the man was carried off like a bone, his head cracking against the window frame as the coyote leapt into the night with its victim. Leo Mitchell's body was found the next day at the foot of Angry Butte, punctured by incisors thick as pencils.
Herod said: "The spirits weren't satisfied with just identifying the person who did those terrible things. They wanted justice."
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from the autobiography American Daughter by Era Bell Thompson, which was first published in 1946:
Cranks, philanthropists, or plain, everyday Americans, I like them all. For every bad one, there are twenty good ones. We can't always find jobs for them, we aren't always successful at getting them to take the jobs we find, but we can give them a kind and sympathetic audience. It is surprising to know how many people in the world are hungry for kindness, to have someone believe in them. And I do believe in them.
When a forelady in a box factory asks, "Isn't it wonderful to live in a country where you can sit down and tell your troubles to someone and have them listen?"
— Alice Maggio
The May 2008 selection of the Gapers Block Book Club is The Grass Dancer by Susan Power, her magical debut novel that was first published in 1994, won the Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award for first fiction for that year, and was also named an American Library Association notable book in 1995.
The Grass Dancer is a collection of interwoven stories about the residents of a Sioux reservation in North Dakota, but while each chapter can stand apart as a separate story, together the stories create a complex portrait of Native American history and culture. The stories move seamlessly back and forth through time beginning in 1981 and reaching back to 1864 before returning full-circle to 1982.
Pumpkin is the title character, an 18-year-old Menominee woman from Chicago who wants to spend her summer dancing in as many powwows as she can. She is a talented grass dancer, a role traditionally performed by men. She meets the troubled 17-year-old Harley Wind Soldier at an inter-tribal powwow in North Dakota, and the two quickly fall in love. But Pumpkin's tragic fate early in the story sets the rest of the novel into motion as we gradually discover the intertwined lives, dreams and histories which led to the present events. The Grass Dancer is a vivid and magical novel in which spirits from the past continue to exert powerful influence over the present.
About the Author
Susan Power was born in Chicago in 1961 and is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. Her mother founded Chicago's American Indian Center, which is still located on Wilson Ave. in the Ravenswood neighborhood. When she was 17, Power was named Miss Indian Chicago, but then she left the city to attend Radcliffe College and Harvard University Law School, where she earned her J.D. Power only practiced law a short time, however, before she decided to pursue writing and returned to school to attend the Iowa Writers Workshop. In addition to The Grass Dancer, Susan Power is also the author of the novel Strong Heart Society and Roofwalker, a collection of short stories and essays.
Further Reading
Find out more about Susan Power at the Voices from the Gaps website, which includes a short biography and a 2000 interview with the writer.
See and hear Susan Power in a 36-minute webcast from her appearance at the National Book Festival in 2003 at the Library of Congress website. [Requires RealPlayer to view.]
~*~
Read The Grass Dancer and then join us on Monday, May 19, at 7:30pm at The Book Cellar in Lincoln Square to discuss the book. No RSVP is required, and new members are always welcome.
— Alice Maggio /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. April is National Poetry Month, so this week's quotable is Carl Sandburg's poem "At a Window" from Chicago Poems.
At a Window
Give me hunger,
O you gods that sit and give
The world its orders.
Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!
But leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness.
In the dusk of day-shapes
Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering, western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk
And wait and know the coming
Of a little love.
— Alice Maggio
Quotable Friday is back! every Friday on the book club blog we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from our current book club selection, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides:
"The most famous hermaphrodite in history? Me? It felt good to write that, but I've got a long way to go. I'm closeted at work, revealing myself only to a few friends. At cocktail receptions, when I find myself standing next to the former ambassador (also a native of Detroit), we talk about the Tigers. Only a few people here in Berlin know my secret. I tell more people than I used to, but I'm not at all consistent. Some nights I tell people I've just met. In other cases I keep silent forever."
— Alice Maggio
First, a note: next week's meeting marks the third anniversary of the GB Book Club and we hope to celebrate it with all who come with some tasty treats and drinks on us! Whether you're only able to follow us online or whether you've become one of our regular meeting attendees, we're very glad to have had you along for this literary ride.
Below are the questions we'll use to discuss Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex, in which I hope you're all thoroughly and wonderfully engrossed. Feel free to post answers, thoughts or additional questions in the comments. Remember - spoilers are allowed.
- Do you trust Cal as a narrator? How you feel about the parts where he was narrating his grandparents’ and his parents’ pasts? Were these truthful?
- Do you feel the author wrote Callie as a woman well? Were her thoughts and actions believable?
- What role does fate play in the story? How do people either depend on it or challenge it?
- What is Dr. Luce’s role in the story? Did you find him villainous or merely someone doing their job? What reaction did you have to Luce’s theories as influenced by current beliefs about gender?
- Why did Callie feel the need to run away after reading Dr. Luce’s report? Do you think Milton and Tessie would have accepted her decision not to have the surgery? Would Callie have been able to transform into Cal within her family or was it necessary for her to go out on her own?
- Is Cal being exploited during his time in San Francisco? What allows him to put his body on display when all of his life he’s made efforts to hide it?
- Both Cal and his grandparents are strangers in a strange land. How does Cal’s shift in gender compare to his grandparents’ shift in space? Are they similar experiences of immigration or are they different? How does Cal compare his own changes to that of his grandparents’?
- How does history shape the lives of these characters? How do the burning of Smyrna, the rise of Islam, the Detroit riots, etc., force the characters to go through their own transformations?
- What does America represent for these characters – for Desdemona and Lefty, for Milton and Tessie, and for Cal and his brother? Do their visions of America differ based on their status as first-, second- and third-generation immigrants?
- What do you think of Cal’s current relationship with Julie? How do you think the author wants us to believe it ends?
— Veronica Bond /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Lake Effect, a memoir by Rich Cohen:
In the autumn of 1972, my family moved to Glencoe from Libertyville, a farming town in northern Illinois. We were the only Jewish family in Libertyville. When I asked my father if he had met with much anti-Semitism, he smiled and said, "Are you kidding? When we moved in, the neighbors shook my hand and said, 'Thank God, we were afraid they would sell to Catholics.' They hadn't even worked their way down to us yet."
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Lost in the Forest by Sue Miller:
"As soon as Mark shut the door to his room, Emily sat down heavily at the foot of his rumpled bed and said, 'Oh, Daddy, it's John. John's dead.' Her face twisted, and tears immediately began sliding down it, as though she'd been waiting until this moment to allow herself her full measure of grief.
"'What do you mean?' John was Eva's husband, the girls' stepfather. Theo's father.
"'He's dead, Daddy.' Her hands came to her face now and covered her opened mouth. She inhaled sharply through her fingers, and then closed her eyes. 'He got hit…by a car. A car hit him.'
"Mark pictured it. He pictured it wrong, as it turned out, but he saw John then—his large body, bloody, slumped behind the wheel of his ruined car. He saw him dead, though he didn't believe it."
— Alice Maggio
“My genitals have been the most significant thing that ever happened to me,” writes 40-something Cal Stephanides as he looks back on his life. The same might be said for all of us. From the way we walk, talk, think and construct our identities, gender plays an immeasurable role in shaping our social beings. For many of us the meddling hand of gender may appear only in the background, but for Cal, born Calliope Helen, daughter to Milton and Tessie Stephanides, the role of gender is unmistakable in its ability to shape every aspect of a life.
Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex is much more than the story of a fictional pseudo-hermaphrodite. It is also a sweeping epic of three generations of the Stephanides family as they move from their Grecian homeland to settle in a deteriorating Detroit. To escape the Turkish invasion, Desdemona and Eleutherios (Lefty) Stephanides sail to the United States to live with their cousin Sourmelina and her husband Jimmy in Detroit. It is here that Lefty embarks on a brief stint as a Ford autoworker, defies prohibition by running alcohol across the Canadian border, and eventually sets up his business running a speakeasy called the Zebra Room from his family’s basement. It is also during this time that Desdemona becomes pregnant with Milton, always fearful that the choices she’s made in her life will prove harmful to her children. Fate, however, does not show its head here, as both Milton and his younger sister prove to be healthy children. Fate reserves itself for the next generation
Throughout the narrative, Cal is very conscious of the role fate played in his creation. Were it not for the fact that both his parents carried the same mutation on the same chromosome, his life would have differed greatly. Perhaps, if it were not also for his parents’ attempts to cheat God by timing their sexual encounter to conceive a girl – however scientifically valid their attempts may be, their intention stands firm – Cal’s life may have also been very different. But fate reveals itself on a summer day when a run-in with a tractor lands Calliope in the emergency room: blood tests reveal the presence of an XY chromosomal pairing. From the start of the book, Cal makes clear that he is not sexually androgynous - what he has is an inability to produce dihydrotestosterone (DHT) called 5-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome and it is DHT that plays a crucial part in the development of male genitalia. Thus, while Cal possesses all the secondary sex characteristics of a man, his underdeveloped genitals allowed his gender identity to go unknown for fourteen years. Whether this genetic abnormality is merely a confluence of random events or a matter of fate is something Cal ponders for much of his adult life.
The world of sexual ambiguity is perhaps so fascinating because for many of us it is simply unfamiliar and new. It would be easy for Cal’s story of a man raised as a girl to be conflated into tabloid fodder, but Eugenides’s attention to detail, his ability to capture what it means to feel different and draw us completely into Cal’s head makes this so much more. This is a story as much about history, place, family, secrets and love as it is about one person’s unusual life. Far from a sensational account of Cal’s abnormalities, Middlesex serves as a beautiful and grand (fictional) autobiography of a person on a search for something that captivates us all: identity.
* * *
Jeffrey Eugenides is also the author of The Virgin Suicides, which was made into a film by Sophia Coppola. It was not for another nine years that Middlesex, his second book, would be published and win the Pulitzer Prize. Though Eugenides shares many traits with Cal – right down to the Musketeer-style mustache – he has made clear that he does not possess Cal’s hormone deficiency. He is currently living in Chicago.
For more information on 5-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome, click here.
You can also read more on Eugenides and Middlesex on Oprah’s website.
— Veronica Bond /
These are just a few sample questions for our discussion of Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky.
1. How would you describe V.I. Warshawski?
2. How would you describe her methods as an investigator?
3. How effective was the way the story was structured? Are there any elements of the story or plot twists that surprised you?
4. How believable is the plot of Fire Sale? Did you find the mystery plausible?
5. How do you feel about Paretsky's portrayals of South Chicago and Barrington? Do you think the portrayals are accurate?
6. How is Fire Sale a "political" novel?
7. Have you read any of the other books in the series? How does this book compare to other mysteries you have read?
— Alice Maggio /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from The Book of Ralph by John McNally:
"Ralph ran a hand up and over his head, flattening his hair before some freak combination of wind and static electricity blew it straight up and into a real-life fright wig.
"We were standing at the far edge of the blacktop at Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Grade School, as far away from the recess monitor as we could get. It was 1978, the year we started eighth grade, though Ralph would have been in high school already if he hadn't failed both the third and fifth grades. He was nearly a foot taller than the rest of us, and every few weeks new sprigs of whiskers popped up along his cheeks and chin, scaring the girls and prompting the principal, Mr. Santoro, to drop into our homeroom unexpectedly and deliver speeches about personal hygiene.
"'Boys,' Mr. Santoro would say. 'Some of you are starting to look like hoodlums.' Though he addressed his insult to all the boys, everyone knew he meant Ralph."
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Selling the Race: Culture, Community, and Black Chicago, 1940-1955 by Adam Green:
"When asked in 1955 to account for the successes of Black Chicago's music, guitarist Bill Broonzy remarked that it was 'just born in us to sing and play the blues.' Naturalizing genius in this way remains the signature of most accounts of African-American music in the Windy City. Black music, by most lights, signifies the staying power of blackness itself: LeRoi Jones once described it as 'the one vector out of African culture impossible to eradicate.' Given Chicago's historic representation as the site of change and even destabilization for its black inhabitants old and new, such promises of enduring nature held special attractions. Little wonder then that accounts of Black Chicago so often present musical culture and community as synonyms for one another, reminding us of Jones's further variation on Bill Broonzy's theme: 'the song and the people is the same.'"
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from our current book club selection, Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky:
"I hadn't expected the fire—I hadn't expected anything when I came here. It was only some prickling of unease—dis-ease—that sent me back to Fly the Flag on my way home. I'd actually made the turn onto Route 41 when I decided to check on the factory. I'd made a U-turn onto Escanaba and zigzagged across the broken streets to South Chicago Avenue. It was six o'clock then, already dark, but I could see a handful of cars in Fly the Flag's yard when I drove by. There weren't any pedestians out, not that there are ever many down here; only a few cars straggled past, beaters, people leaving the few standing factories to head for bars or even home."
— Alice Maggio
Earlier this month, one of the the Book List book groups read Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants, our own Book Club selection back in August of last year. Like most of us, the group loved it and offered some interesting opinions on the characters, the idea of family in the story and how the narrative itself was arranged like a three-ring circus. Most interesting was the moderator's thoughts on the group after someone confided they didn't feel smart enough to join in the discussion: "Yes, I am impressed by the intelligence and the thoughtfulness of many of the readers in the group," she admits. "But it's about so much more...it's about bringing your whole self to the reading of the book and sharing with the group...a book group should be like a circus - it should be a place where we can all be different and all fit in." My thoughts exactly.
— Veronica Bond /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from The Public Dance Halls of Chicago by Louise de Koven Bowen, an investigation into and condemnation of Chicago's dance halls, circa 1910. You may read the complete text online at the Library of Congress website. It is part of the online exhibit, "An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals, ca.1490-1920"
:
"All the investigators report that up to about eleven p.m., generally speaking, the dances are well conducted; the crowd then begins to show the effect of too much liquor. Men and women become intoxicated and dance indecently such dances as 'Walkin' the Dog,' 'On the Puppy's Tail,' 'Shaking the Shimmy,' 'The Dip,' 'The Stationary Wiggle,' etc, In some instances, little children—of whom there are often large numbers present—are given liquor and become intoxicated, much to the amusement of their elders. Many of them are forgotten by their parents in the excitement of the dance, and play upon the filthy floor, witnesses of all kinds of degradation.
"At most halls the crowds begin drinking their liquor from glasses, then later they take, it from bottles and toward the close of the evening it is brought in by cases. One investigator counted one hundred empty cases of beer bottles and a large number of empty cases of wine bottles in one room at a recent North Side dance."
— Alice Maggio
For our March meeting we are reading Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky, the twelfth novel in her bestselling V.I. Warshawski mystery series.
For those who have never read any of the Warshawski novels, Fire Sale is a great introduction to the character. Readers learn a lot about her background in this story as she returns to the South Chicago neighborhood where she grew up in order to help an old friend who has been stricken with cancer. Warshawski agrees to coach the girls' basketball team at her former high school, Bertha Palmer High, but she finds the facilities are dilapidated and the girls are struggling with poverty, gangs and single motherhood. Undaunted by the challenge, the tough private investigator approaches the owner of By-Smart, the local megastore and largest employer in the neighborhood, in the hopes of securing some much-needed funding for the beleaguered team. Instead, Warshawski becomes involved in an elaborate mystery involving corporate sabotage, murder and the disappearance of the teenaged grandson of By-Smart's founder. Paretsky deftly combines social criticism and mystery in Fire Sale to reveal a portrait of a crumbling community still reeling from the loss of Chicago's steel industry and struggling to survive on minimum wages.
Warshawski is one of the best-known and strongest female detectives in the genre, and the books in the series have been translated into more than twenty languages. The character was introduced in Indemnity Only, first published in 1982. Indemnity Only was also the basis of the V.I. Warshawski film released in 1991 starring Kathleen Turner in the title role.
Sara Paretsky is an award-winning writer whose recent memoir, Writing in an Age of Silence, is currently a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award. She is also the founder of Sisters in Crime, an organization dedicated to fostering support for women mystery writers. She lives in Chicago.
Additional Resources
Visit Sara Paretsky's homepage at http://www.saraparetsky.com/.
She also writes for the excellent Outfit Collective blog. The Outfit Collective is a group of local mystery and crime writers including Paretsky, Barbara D'Amato, Libby Hellman, Kevin Guilfoile, Michael Allen Dymmoch, Marcus Sakey and Sean Chercover.
~*~
Read Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky, and then join us on Monday, March 10 at 7:30pm at The Book Cellar to discuss the book. No RSVP required, and new members are always welcome. Hope to see you there.
— Alice Maggio
This month's Book Club author recently did an interview with the BBC's World Book Club. It is well worth listening to -- she discusses Chicago, as well as her desire to create a female private eye. Here's a link to the mp3.
— Brian Sobolak /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Seven Moves by Carol Anshaw:
"Chris and Taylor hope to eventually join the ranks of the renovators, but have had the house only a few months and so far have been able to afford only the most meager and necessary improvements. This is the first house either of them has ever owned, and it makes them feel as though they've moved to America. After years of apartments with stairwells full of peculiar cooking smells, ceilings throbbing with other people's stereos, discouraging connections with the flooding bathrooms and stray roaches of strangers, they are now blessed with autonomy and silent nights, and a backyard for grilling and letting the dog out in the morning, for planning a garden. They no longer have to lug everything long blocks from parking spaces in their former, high-density neighborhood."
— Alice Maggio
Time for another Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from "Puzzle Man" by Asa Baber:
"I'm not crazy, no matter what people say. I have valid reasons for everything I did, and I am at peace. My complete story will never be told, but when my heart is stopped by Uncle Sam's pharmaceuticals, my spirit will ascend like a white balloon over the Wabash River and fly up to heaven. God will welcome me into his house, saying, 'Well done, my good and faithful servant. You followed your beliefs and acted on them. You have been a steadfast patriot to your cause, and I hereby place you at my right hand.'"
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from our current book club selection, The Enchanters Vs. Sprawlburg Springs by Brian Costello. Narrator Shaquille Callahan tells us how it felt to play for The Enchanters:
"The practices were played like shows in front of thousands of people, and the shows were played like practices where it was just us. There was no difference. We were always fully in the moment, and the songs never got old because we played them differently each time, always caught up on that thin line between creation and falling on your face. Me and that red sparkly drum set exploded and reformed continually, my head swimming in the wine and cough syrup torpor. Donald leapt around and smashed the guitar into his head and smiled, and Mickey stared at the floor in dextrapamorphanic ecstasy. It was the best."
— Alice Maggio
The February book for the Gapers Block Book Club is The Enchanters Vs. Sprawlburg Springs, the debut novel by Brian Costello. And, when it was released at the end of 2005, Enchanters was also the first book published by local press Featherproof Books.
The Enchanters Vs. Sprawlburg Springs tells the story of Shaquille Callahan, a twenty-something musician living in the fictional Florida suburb of Sprawlburg Springs. One summer he becomes the new drummer for a local garage band, The Enchanters. The first time he meets his new band mates is when he plays at a local party with them attended by a dozen teens. Shaquille doesn't know his band mates — or the songs, but with The Enchanters none of that matters.
Shaquille falls for Renee, the flamboyant lead singer of the band, and the novel charts their relationship and the meteoric rise — and inevitable fall — of The Enchanters over that one magical summer. When not rehearsing, getting high on cough syrup or drinking cheap red wine, the band members work minimum wage jobs to make ends meet. Shaquille cuts squid at Cleveland Steamerz Good Time Bar and Grille World while Renee sells shampoo at a shop at the Perimeter Square Circle Centre Mall. They all dream of making enough money over the summer to move to Brooklyn and take the New York City music scene by storm. Their dreams are nearly realized when The Enchanters land a gig at the Latent Republican Hipster Music Club, but the concert turns out to be the beginning of the end for the band that dared challenge the middle-class sensibility of Sprawlburg Springs.
The Enchanters Vs. Sprawlburg Springs is a free-spirited novel with a punk attitude, and it comes as no surprise that writer Costello counts Lester Bang and Hunter S. Thompson among his influences. Enchanters especially evokes Thompson in the novel's Ralph Steadman-inspired illustrations by Mark Dunihue McKenzie.
Brian Costello grew up in Orlando, and Sprawlburg Springs certainly reflects his own suburban Florida adolescence (two of the characters are named Mickey and Donald — get it?), even while the town is depicted as a kind of suburban American anywhere. Costello moved to Chicago in 1997 and currently teaches at Columbia College Chicago. He also plays drums for the Functional Blackouts, and his obvious passion for and knowledge of music give the story its authentic punch.
But the most fitting review of the novel comes from punknews.org, in which the reviewer enthusiastically writes that the book "made me want to bore a hole through 174 of its 193 pages and just have sex with it." (emphasis his) If you can identify with that sentiment, then Enchanters is just the book for you.
So, read The Enchanters Vs. Sprawlburg Springs, and then join us on Monday, February 11 at The Book Cellar (4736 N. Lincoln Ave.) at 7:30pm to talk about the book. New members are always welcome.
— Alice Maggio /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Hunting for Frogs on Elston by Jerry Sullivan, a collection of nature essays Sullivan wrote for the Chicago Reader during the 1980s and '90s. I pick this paasage this week because orientation for the Chicago Wilderness Calling Frog Survey starts next week, and volunteer frog monitors are still needed. Visit the website to find out how to get involved.
"We didn't hear another frog until the last stop on our itinerary, a former forest preserve north of Oakton Street along the North Branch of the Chicago River. These were chorus frogs again, and we sat along the roadside to enjoy the music. Our presence attracted the police, but after Laurel offered the sensible explanation that we were counting frogs, the policeman drove off, his expression suggesting that we were nuts, but probably harmless nuts."
— Alice Maggio /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from And Then They All Sang by Studs Terkel, as he writes about Mahalia Jackson:
"On Sunday mornings, I visit the Greater Salem Baptist church. It is on the city's West Side. There are intimations of rubble arouns and about. urban renewal is just getting under way. here are parishoners, bone-weary after a week of unsung work, for a wage not worth singing about; here they are, listening to song, such as I, whose work is so much easier and whose wage is so much better, have never heard. It is at such time and circumstance that I become aware of my own arrogance. For a stupid moment, I had thought I discovered Mahalia Jackson. On occasion, I run into somebody who obtusely insists it is so. Most disheartening are those quite gifted singers of gospel music in this city who, God help us all, attribute Mahalia's 'success' to me. It is cause for tears as well as laughter. The people of Greater Salem know better."
— Alice Maggio
On Monday, January 14, the GB Book Club will be kicking off a new year with our discussion of Never a City So Real by Alex Kotlowitz. Join us at The Book Cellar (4736-8 N. Lincoln Ave.) at 7:30pm to participate. Below are some questions, co-written by Brian Sobolak and Alice Maggio, that we will use to start talking about the book.
1. Who is the audience for this book? Or, how would you categorize this book?
2. Is this a fair and accurate portrait of Chicago?
3. Is the format of the book a good one for telling the story as compared to one with a more linear time line?
4. Who is better placed to write a portrait of a place: someone who was born there and has a native connection to the place, or an outsider who has a different perspective?
5. Kotlowitz lives in Oak Park. Was it fair to exclude the suburbs from his story, esp. considering most people that consider themselves "Chicagoans" now actually live outside the city?
6. "This city is the story of newcomers, the Irish, Poles, Croats and Serbs, Mexicans, and more recently, Asians and Africans, but in the end it's defined by race, by a history that is by turn ugly and celebratory, from the 1919 race riots to the 1983 election of the city's first black mayor, Harold Washington." Did he
get it right — is Chicago defined by race?
7. Kotlowitz quotes sociologist Marco d'Eramo saying, "Chicago expresses the truth about the United States." What do you think he means by that?
8. Which was your favorite story? Why?
9. What themes tie the stories together?
10. Why doesn't Kotlowitz include photos? Would they help readers understand the book better or are the words enough?
11. Do you think this book, like other books about Chicago we've read, will stand the test of time?
Add your questions or thoughts about the book in the comments!
— Alice Maggio /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from "The Cold War", just one of the stories collected in Trouble by Patrick Somerville:
"When he woke up Saturday morning, Dr. Richard Eaves took a shower, dressed, found his red hat, and went out to the driveway to shovel. It had snowed overnight. Freezing wind and gray, dead grass had mutated into a pleasant landscape of quilted houses and frozen lawns. He sometimes wondered whether the winters were really getting warmer, whether corroded layers of gases were allowing more insidious gases into the planet. It sounded unlikely, and political, but he didn't know. He didn't have the information. He had once cared about science, and intellectual honesty, and empirical data, but his love for these things had slowly faded over the years, and now he cared mainly about shoveling."
— Alice Maggio
This month the Gapers Block Book Club is reading Never a City So Real by Alex Kotlowitz. Book club staffer Brian Sobolak writes the introduction below. Read Never a City So Real, and then join us on Monday, Janury 14 at The Book Cellar at 7:30pm for our first meeting of 2008.
Introduction
Who is best qualified to lead you on a tour of a place: a native-born resident or someone who's shown up later, someone who's seen something of the world and decided to stay?
Alex Kotlowitz explains in his introduction to the short and delightful Never A City So Real that he only planned to stay in Chicago for a year or two and instead stayed for twenty. And in this series of vignettes highlighting different corners of Chicago, Kotlowitz shows us the city he has come to know and love.
The city presented in Never A City So Real is very different from Kotlowitz's first draft on Chicago, the powerful There Are No Children Here, a book that followed a family in Chicago's squalid public housing. For many, it was a detailed portrait of a Chicago seen but not heard.
Never A City So Real employs the same techniques. Kotlowitz introduces us to Chicagoans who operate well outside of the traditional picture of a Cubs fan drinking beer or tourists taking pictures of the Bean. Piecing together many stories—a labor historian from the South Side, a diner owner in Albany Park, a muralist who paints panthers in living rooms, an artist who works in dive bars—Kotlowitz begins to explain the city in a way that the Not For Tourist's guide to Chicago
couldn't.
Along the way Kotlowitz drops hints that slowly reveal the character of the city and its history. "There's much history here," he writes. "The Pilgrim Baptist Church, formerly a synagogue (in this city of ever-changing neighborhoods, churches adorned with stars of David are a common sight), was designed by Dankmar Adler, whose father was the synagogue's rabbi, and Louis Sullivan, with a helping hand from a young Frank Lloyd Wright (who worked for Adler and Sullivan's firm at the same time." [1]
That's a lot to pack in to a single sentence. But these breadcrumbs of history along the way show us where the city came from without forcing us to use it to define the present. Kotlowitz often reminds us of where the city came from without a nostalgia for a previous, better Chicago; it's a refreshing view and different from too many other published works about our city.
This casual blending of past and present, showing a city by revealing its characters, works well. A faithful portrait of Chicago emerges, and Kotlowitz's command of all sides of the city and his engaging prose make for a very readable portrait.
My only criticism of the book is perhaps one of the items that makes it engaging: it's short. The quick portraits of Chicagoans might not work in a longer book, but I did wish for a few more stories, or more of a meditation on some aspects of the city. (By way of comparison, Suketu Mehta's Maximum City was a length that worked.)
Did he get it right? That was what I felt myself wondering as I read through the book. While no work of a scant 150 pages can attempt to cover the lives and history of 3 million people, Kotlowitz got it about as right as you can get. It's a book certainly worth reading.
Note: I happen to live two blocks from the subject of one of the chapters, GT's Diner. For the book club, I'll bring some pictures of what this area looks like and an update on the story he writes about.
[1] An aside: The grandeur of this church is no longer, as it burned down in 2006 and awaits restoration.
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from our current book club selection, Never a City So Real by Alex Kotlowitz. In this excerpt, Kotlowitz relates his first meeting with one of the Chicagoans profiled in the book, artist Milton Reed:
"I first met Reed in 1999, while visiting a woman in the Stateway Gardens Public Housing complex, which was then a collection of eight seventeen-story high-rises. He was in the living room of my hostess, where he was painting a gold-trimmed black panther on the cinderblock wall. He had a forty-ounce bottle of Colt 45 beside him, and he was so completely engaged in his work that he didn't say a word. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the rendering, though it was clear that Reed had taken great care with it. He had first sketched the outlines of the panther in pencil, using a ruler and right angle, and then had gone to work with oil-based house paint. Because of its permanence, there was little room for error. I assumed at the time that the panther was meant to conjure up more radical days. I later learned, however, that a number of years before a woman had asked Reed to paint a black panther with gold trim on her kitchen wall to match her black and gold furniture, a common color pairing among public-housing residents. ('They all follow that same tradition,' Reed told me.) word quickly spread, and soon Reed had a reputation. Public-housing residents came to know him as 'Mr. Artist — as in 'Mr. Artist, how much you charge for one them murals?'"
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from The Common Lot by Robert Herrick (1863-1938). Herrick was an English professor at the University of Chicago who wrote more than a dozen novels, most written in the tradition of social realism. The Common Lot was first published in 1904.
"Business was war, he said to himself again and again, and in this war only the little fellows had to be strictly honest. The big ones, those that governed the world, stole, lied, cheated their fellows openly in the market. The Bushfields took their rake-off; the Rainbows were the financial pimps, who fattened on the vices of the great industrial leaders. Colonel Raymond might discharge a man on his road who stole fifty cents or was seen to enter a bucket shop, but in the reorganization of the Michigan Northern ten years previously, he and his friends had pocketed several millions of dollars, and had won the lawsuits brought against them by the defrauded stockholders.
"It was a world of graft, the architect judged cynically. Old Powers Jackson, it was said in Chicago, would cheat the glass eye out of his best friend in a deal. He, too, would follow in the path of the strong, and take what was within his reach. He would climb hardily to the top, and then who cared? That gospel of strenuous effort, which our statesmen and orators are so fond of shouting forth, has its followers in the little Jackson Harts. Only, in putting forth their strong right arms, they often thrust them into their neighbors' pockets. And the irresponsible great ones, who have emerged beyond the reign of law, have their disciples in all the strata of society,—down, down to the boy who plays the races with the cash in his employer's till."
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Dutch Chicago: A History of the Hollanders in the Windy City by Robert P. Swierenga:
"The lives of Chicago Dutch Calvinists revolved around their churches. The church stood at the center of the community and defined the religious culture that differentiated the Dutch from other groups. While mannerisms, dress, lace curtains, and a miniature windmill on the front lawn might betray their Dutchness, it was in the religious realm that it came to fullest expression. The church was the one institution brought from the motherland that they could preserve. The Dutch language almost immediately gave way to English in the streets and workplace, as did American style dress and demeanor. But within the ethnic community and its many societies, services, and extended families, one could live from the cradle to the grave among fellow believers and enjoy a measure of security not available to those outside the pale."
— Alice Maggio
Every other Tuesday (er, Wednesday?) we ask a new lit-inspired question in Ink.
Since the holiday season is upon us, this time I'd like to know: What is your favorite book that you received as a gift? Tell us above in Ink.
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow:
"The temperature was in the nineties, and on hot nights Chicagoans feel the city body and soul. The stockyards are gone, Chicago is no longer slaughter-city, but the old smells revive in the night heat. Miles of railroad siding along the streets once were filled with red cattle cars, the animals waiting to enter the yards lowing and reeking. The old stink still haunts the place. It returns at times, suspiring from the vacated soil, to remind us all that Chicago had once led the world in butcher-technology and that billions of animals had died here. And that night the windows were wide open and the familiar depressing multilayered stink of meat, tallow, blood-meal, pulverized bones, hides, soap, smoked slabs, and burnt hair came back. Old Chicago breathed again through leaves and screens."
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from The Pit: A Story of Chicago by Frank Norris, which was first published in 1903.
"But when at last Laura entered upon possession of the North Avenue house, she was not—after the first enthusiasm and excitement over its magnificance had died down—altogether pleased with it, though she told herself the contrary. Outwardly it was all that she could desire. It fronted Lincoln park, and from all the windows upon that side the most delightful outlooks were obtainable—green woods, open lawns, the parade ground, the Lincoln monument, dells, bushes, smooth drives, flower beds, and fountains. From the great bay window of Laura's own sitting-room she could see far out over Lake Michigan and watch the procession of great lake steamers from Milwaukee, far-distant Duluth, and the Sault Sainte Marie—the famous "Soo"—defiling magestically past, making for the mouth of the river, laden to the water's edge with whole harvests of wheat. At night, when the windows were open in the warm weather, she could hear the mournful wash and lapping of the water on the embankments."
— Alice Maggio
Every other Tuesday we ask a new lit-inspired question in INK.
I want to know what book or books you've been recommending lately. I need something good to read!
Post your response above in INK.
— Alice Maggio
News Fri Nov 09 2007
The Critical Mass blog has two offerings from this week related to our current book club author. First, find out which five books J.M. Coetzee believes every book reviewer should own. Then, read a review of Inner Workings, a new collection of essays of Coetzee's work from the New York Review of Books.
— Alice Maggio /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from The Spook Who Sat by the Door by Sam Greenlee:
"Spring ended abruptly. A hot, moist air mass moved up from the Gulf of Mexico across the plains and into Chicago, smothering the city and turning the night into a furnace, the brick buildings radiating the heat collected from the sun during the day. Life in the ghetto moved outside, onto the door steps of the houses, into the air-conditioned bars and the cinemas that sold cool air and Doris Day dreams. On the South Side there was Washington Park, and families moved at night into its cool greenness, sleeping on blankets under the stars until the first rays of the sun, returning to their stifling rooms to snatch a few more minutes of sleep before meeting the hot, humid day. Beer, watermelon, ice cream, anything cool, but there was no way to leave the engulfing heat. The city lay gasping like a big beast, tempers shortened, and the ghetto lay like a bomb waiting to explode."
— Alice Maggio
Below are the questions we'll use to discuss Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee. Feel free to post any responses in the comments - spoilers are allowed and exist below - or share your thoughts with us at our meeting on November 13 at the Book Cellar. It's a complex story that doesn't have the happiest of outlooks, so I'm looking forward to hearing all of your thoughts on it.
- Can David’s affair with Melanie be considered abuse? How do you read her character? Does Coetzee give us enough of her character to be able to make an informed decision?
- Why do you think David immediately relinquishes his teaching position upon hearing that charges are being brought against him? Why does he accept all responsibility without even hearing what those charges are?
- Why do you think David chooses to have an affair with Bev Shaw? How is it different from his previous affairs as they’re described in the book?
- Do you think Petrus had anything to do with the attacks? Does he believe that Lucy and David, being white, owe a debt to the society in which they live?
- Does Lucy’s homosexuality affect David’s perceptions of her decisions? Why do you think she’s so bent on staying in her house?
- Why does Lucy take Petrus up on his offer of marriage? Is this a rational decision? Are we meant to understand her reasons?
- How do David’s views of women change throughout the book? Think of his interactions with different women – Soraya, Melanie, Bev, and Lucy. How does his opening thought of having solved the problem of sex prove troublesome for him?
- What does David’s visit to the Isaacs’s house accomplish, if anything? What is he hoping to accomplish by visiting Melanie’s family?
- Is it possible to sympathize with David? Does Coetzee write him as a sympathetic character or are we supposed to feel something else toward him?
- How is David affected by his work in the animal hospital, taking it upon himself to put the deceased dogs in the incinerator? Why does Coetzee choose to end the book on this note? Did you find it a satisfying ending or were you looking for more?
- By the end of the book, what do you think is meant by the word “disgrace”? Who experiences the greatest disgrace in the book – David, Lucy, Bev, Melanie or anyone else?
- Is there a purpose in any of the suffering David has endured? Has he changed at all by the story’s end?
- Could this story have taken place in the US?
— Veronica Bond /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Peel My Love Like an Onion by Ana Castillo, our September 2007 Book Club selection:
"For some reason looking Mexican means you can't be America. And my cousins tell me, the ones who've gone to Mexico but who were born on this side like me, that over there they're definitely not Mexican. Because you were born on this side pocha is what you're called there, by your unkind relatives and strangers on the street and even waiters in restaurants when they overhear your whispered English and wince at your bad Spanish. Still, you try at least. You try like no one else on earth tries to be in two places at once. Being pocha means you try here and there, this way and that, and still you don't fit. Not here and not there."
— Alice Maggio
We received many excellent suggestions for our 2008 book list (thank you!), but from the dozens and dozens of titles on our list of potential selections, we had to whittle it down to just 11 books. This task gets harder every year as more great new books get published, and we keep discovering classic titles that shouldn't be overlooked. But, decisions had to be made, and without further ado, here is the complete reading list for the 2008 Gapers Block Book Club.
January
Never a City so Real by Alex Kotlowitz (Crown, 2004)
Explore Chicago in this collection of essays in which Kotlowitz profiles of some of the city's uncelebrated citizens.
February
The Enchanters vs. Sprawlburg Springs by Brian Costello (Featherproof, 2006)
Costello's debut novel is a comic story about a garage band called The Enchanters and their fictional suburb of Sprawlburg Springs.
March
Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky (Signet, 2006)
In the 13th book of Paretsky's celebrated V.I. Warshawski mystery series, the detective finds herself coaching basketball at her former South Chicago high school and investigating sabotage at a local factory.
April
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002)
This coming-of-age story about a hermaphrodite growing up in Michigan in the mid-20th century won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
May
The Grass Dancer by Susan Power (Berkley, 1997)
Power weaves a unforgettable portrait of the Dakota Sioux Indians in this collection of inter-related stories that draw from contemporary life on the reservation and Dakota Sioux legends. This book won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award in 1995 and was named an ALA Notable Book.
June
Naked by David Sedaris
A collection of autobiographical essays from one of this country's most well-known humorists.
July
Free Burning by Bayo Ojikutu (Three Rivers, 2006)
This powerful second novel from Ojikutu continues the story of Tommie Simms. When Simms loses his job at an insurance firm, he begins selling pot to make ends meet and quickly spirals downward into Chicago's dark underbelly.
August
The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (Scholastic, 2001)
Harmless children's fantasy or dark political allegory? Let's discuss.
September
Native Son by Richard Wright (Harper Perennial, 2005)
First published in 1940, Native Son tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a young African-American man living on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s who becomes swept up by forces of fear, violence, racism and hopelessness after he accidentally kills a white woman.
October
Dirty Sugar Cookies by Ayun Halliday (Seal, 2006)
A light-hearted culinary memoir from a self-described "anti-foodie."
November
Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott (Random House, 2007)
The true story of Ada and Minna Everleigh, the two sisters who ran the infamous Everleigh Club brothel on Chicago's Near South Side at the beginning of the 20th century.
— Alice Maggio /
Every other Tuesday we ask a new lit-inspired question in Ink.
Reading and writing go hand in hand (here at the book club, we should know). So, there have got to be some budding and aspiring novelists among our ranks. National Novel Writing Month begins November 1. Has anyone here participated? Let us know above in Ink.
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Coffee Will Make You Black by April Sinclair, our August 2006 book club selection. The narrator, Jean "Stevie" Stevenson, is a young woman growing up on Chicago's South Side in the mid-1960s in this coming-of-age tale.
"I still thought breasts might be more trouble than they were worth. Growing up reminded me a little bit of Hide and Go Seek. When it was your time to grow up, Nature said, 'Here I come, ready or not.' And Nature could always find you."
— Alice Maggio
Could a story like Disgrace have taken place in the United States? One thinks immediately of the ongoing social-economic and racial strife that plagues our nation and is tempted to say yes. In a story that focuses on the disparities between black and white and male and female, America would be the perfect backdrop to explore social inequalities. After all, who among us has not had first hand experience with at least one form of social injustice? But there is something else fueling the story of David and Lucy Lurie that is unique to their environment. Author J.M. Coetzee is famed for his focus on the change in social relations in post-apartheid South Africa and, as such, it is important to take in a bit of South Africa’s history to better understand the perils of Coetzee’s characters.
* * *
“It was history speaking through them. A history of wrong. Think of it that way, if it helps. It may have seemed personal, but it wasn’t. It came down from the ancestors.” – David Lurie to Lucy
* * *
South Africa has held a long history of racial segregation, far before apartheid became an official government policy. Though whites have always been the minority -- with nonwhites making up the majority of South Africa’s population -- parliamentary membership was limited to whites in the early 20th century and black land ownership was restricted to a small percentage of South Africa’s total area. In 1948, the National Party introduced apartheid as a part of their campaign and, with their win, apartheid became the governing political policy for South Africa. The word itself means “separateness” in Afrikaans and with its implementation, laws were introduced to classify citizens into three major racial groups – white, black, or colored/mixed descent. These laws determined where members of each race could live, what level of education they could receive and what jobs they could hold, going so far as to limit most interracial social contact. Nonwhites were denied any form of representation in the national government and people who openly opposed apartheid were considered communists. These policies would be in effect through the end of the 20th century.
The African National Congress (ANC) was founded in 1912 to fight unjust and segregationist government policies. As a nonviolent civil rights organization, the ANC worked to promote the interests of black South Africans through the use of delegations, petitions and peaceful protests. In the 1940s, younger and more outspoken citizens joined the group and the ANC Youth League was formed by new members Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela. The ANC actively opposed apartheid and in 1955 issued its Freedom Charter, stating that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.” Those ANC members who believed that South Africa belonged only to black Africans formed a rival organization called the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC). In an effort to overthrow the ANC, the PAC led mass demonstrations that resulted in the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960, during which police opened fire on black protestors, some of whom were burning the identity papers they were forced to carry. Sixty-nine people were killed and many more were injured. As a response to the massacre, the South African government declared a state of emergency and banned all black political organizations. In the following years Oliver Tambo left South Africa to create an external faction of the ANC; Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela were sentenced to life in prison.
* * *
“In the old days one could have had it out with Petrus. In the old days one could have had it out to the extent of losing one’s temper and sending him packing and hiring someone in his place. But though Petrus is paid a wage, Petrus is no longer, strictly speaking, hired help…Petrus is a neighbor who at present happens to sell his labour, because that is what suits him. He sells his labour under contract, unwritten contract, and that contract makes no provisions for dismissal on grounds of suspicion. It is a new world they live in, [David] and Lucy and Petrus. Petrus knows it, and [David] knows it, and Petrus know that he knows it."
* * *
The ANC continued operating in secret while Mandela and other leaders were in prison. It was during this time that Mandela wrote much of his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. A 1976 revolt outside Johannesburg led to the reemergence of black politics and renewed the fight against apartheid. In 1984 the South African constitution opened up parliament to Asians, who were then classified as the fourth major racial group, and coloreds, but despite making up 75% of the population, blacks continued to be excluded. It wasn’t until 1990 that, in response to international and domestic pressure and under the leadership of new president F.W. de Klerk, the South African government officially lifted the ban against black political groups, released Mandela from prison, and formally ended apartheid. Four years later, millions of South Africans of all races participated in their first democratic elections and Nelson Mandela became the country’s first black president.
* * *
“What if that is the price one has to pay for staying on? Perhaps that is how they look at it; perhaps that is how I should look at it too. They see me as owing something. They see themselves as debt collectors, tax collectors. Why should I be allowed to live here without paying?” – Lucy Lurie to David.
* * *
The effects of apartheid can still be felt in South Africa today and Coetzee makes this clear in the interactions between the white David and Lucy and the black Petrus, a man who helps on Lucy’s farm, and the three men who attacked them. It is David’s belief that they are not responsible for any feelings of animosity between the races, that they should not be made to pay for what history has done, but Lucy takes a more sensitive approach, conceding that this is something with which she must deal to live in the country of her choosing. Coetzee does not provide an answer as to whether these black attackers came to claim a debt or were simply acting out of random violence, or whether David and Lucy, as white South Africans, owe black citizens a form of payment, but these questions are pervasive throughout Disgrace. For his American readers, for whom race relations continue to be in a state of upheaval hundreds of years after the abolition of slavery, Coetzee forces us to wonder if there are any answers at all.
References:
"African National Congress," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2007
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
"Apartheid," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2007
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
"Nelson Mandela," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2007
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
"Sharpeville Massacre," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2007
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
"South Africa," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2007
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
— Veronica Bond /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg, our May 2007 Book Club selection. Betta tries to deal with her husband's terminal cancer in this excerpt:
"Near the end, I started looking for signs that the inevitable would not be inevitable. I watched the few leaves hat refused to give up their green to the demands of the season. I took comfort in the way the sun shone brightly on a day they predicted rain—not a cloud in the sky! I even tried to formulate messages of hope in the arrangements of coins on the dresser top—look how they all landed heads up, what were the odds?"
— Alice Maggio
Just a reminder: We're at the end of our 2007 Book Club picks and we're still in the process of selecting what we'd like to read for next year. That means this is the perfect time for you to tell us what you want to read. Whether it's something you've read and loved and want to share with others, or something you've heard about and are interested in reading, send us your book club requests and recommendations at bookclub[at]gapersblock[dot]com. The only requirement is that the books be somehow related to Chicago (and if you're not sure how your book relates, send us the title anyway and we'll do a little research to see if we can make it work). We're definitely looking forward to another year of great reads.
— Veronica Bond /
Every other Tuesday we post a new literary discussion question in Ink. This time I'd like to know if you have a favorite place to read. Do you read in bed? Have a special reading chair? Prefer to head out to a particular café or coffeehouse? Where do you like to read? Tell us above in Ink.
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from The Chicago Produce Market by Edwin Griswold Nourse (Houghton Mifflin, 1918). This passage describes the great produce market that used to exist right along the south side of the Chicago River downtown:
"South Water Street is a short east-and-west street, which
lies between the downtown business district ("the Loop")
on the south and the Chicago River on the north. The
portion used for produce-market purposes is a scant half-
mile in length — from State Street west to the turn of the
river. Since the re-numbering of the city a few years ago,
this has become officially West South Water Street, but,
in common usage, little or no attention is paid to this distinction. In fact, to those most concerned it is — and probably will always remain — simply "the Street." Generally
speaking, fruit and vegetable dealers are located in the
eastern part of the district, while the western end contains
the establishments which specialize in meat, poultry,
and dairy products. Likewise, the initiated observe a distinction
between the north and the south sides of the
street, the latter being known as the "busy side." It has
the obvious advantages in summer of being the shady side,
and stores on this side of the street run back to an alley,
which is convenient for handling goods, whereas those on
the other side, besides being quite shallow in depth, back
up to the Chicago River, from which no goods are received.
Both sides of the street are lined with low brick stores,
none of them new and many of them dating back to the
days just following the great fire of '71."
— Alice Maggio
Disgrace
J.M. Coetzee
(Penguin Books, 1999)
A man who brings his own shame upon himself; a woman who must live with the indignities forced upon her – these are the fates of the characters in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. Though set in a world unknown to most of us, Coetzee’s David Lurie and his daughter Lucy engage in a universal exploration of what it means to be a man and a woman, a father and a daughter. Their story is one of opposing ideas – learning, outrage, indignity, tolerance, disbelief – at discovering the cruel nature of the world in which they live.
For David Lurie, a communications professor who teaches at Cape Technical University in South Africa, disgrace happens when his affair with a student is found out and he does nothing to save himself from the worst fate possible. It’s never clear who leaked the information about the affair and whether the girl in question truly wants him punished, but Lurie refuses to make excuses for his behavior when tried by his peers and is subsequently fired from his teaching position. With little more to keep Lurie going than the his suppressed love of Romantic literature and his work on a book about Lord Byron, he leaves Cape Town to spend some time with his daughter on her farm in the Eastern Cape. It is here that Lurie undergoes an event that forces him to examine what disgrace and punishment really are.
Lurie is a man dissatisfied with his place in life. He’s been married and divorced twice, his passion for literature has been whittled down to a single class he’s allowed to teach at the university and he uses women for sex while never once offering them love. “Yet the old men whose company he seems to be on the point of joining, the tramps and drifters with their stained raincoats and cracked false teeth and hairy earholes – all of them were once upon a time children of God, with straight limbs and clear eyes,” he thinks, pondering the type of man he sees himself becoming. His affair with his student has nothing to do with love, but rather is a product of how seducing and exploiting a young girl - both physically and, as he would like to believe, intellectually - makes him feel. Little does Lurie know that his move to rural South Africa will teach him more about what it means to have the passion for subjugation dominate one’s life.
A product of Lurie’s first marriage, Lucy lives, by Lurie’s own comparison, a more-small minded and simpler life. She walks barefoot to greet him, keeps dogs in a kennel on her farm, and maintains friendships with people who are unattractive to him. This simplicity is part of reason he chooses to spend time with her following his hearing, hoping that he’ll be able to complete his Byron book, but it is also something he tries to change in her. “And this? Is this what you want in life?” he asks Lucy, gesturing toward her house. “It will do,” she replies. When the two are later confronted by a group of men who not only rob them of their possessions, but also rob them of their dignity and, for Lurie, social power, they find themselves dealing with the calamity in very different ways. While Lucy’s method of coping is one of quiet acceptance, Lurie is outraged that such things can happen with little recourse for justice. This is the first time he truly knows what it means to be used and exploited and to be left in a state of disgrace.
Though the novel’s outlook and central story may be grim, Coetzee’s sparing and exacting prose wonderfully complicate an otherwise depressing tale. Disgrace could easily be read as little more than a depiction of political unrest in post-Apartheid South Africa, but the trials undergone and perspectives gained by the father and daughter make their plight universally recognizable. Disgrace was awarded the Booker Prize in 1999 and was named as the “greatest novel of the last 25 years” written in English outside the United States by The Observer. A film starring John Malkovich as David Lurie is currently in post-production and is scheduled to be released this year.
* * *
John Maxwell Coetzee was born in Cape Town, South Africa where he received degrees in both Mathematics and English at the University of Cape Town. He has worked in London as a programmer for IBM, received his PhD in Linguistics at the University of Texas, Austin and served as a professor on the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Coetzee won his first Booker Prize for Life & Times of Michael K in 1983, making him the first author to have been awarded the Booker Prize twice. In 2003 he was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Currently he maintains Australian citizenship.
— Veronica Bond /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Chicago and Its Suburbs by Everett Chamberlin, which was published in 1874. You can read the book in its entirety through Google Book Search, but the following passage is from a description of Lake View, which was then a suburb of Chicago:
"This is a large township, extending north from the city limits, a distance
of over 5 1/2 miles, and from the lake shore west from two to three miles.
The south boundary is but two and a half miles from Clark street bridge.
Its natural features are among the best in the vicinity of Chicago. The wooded
section, in the southern edge of which Lincoln Park is situated, extends along the
lake shore, far to the north, and many miles beyond the northern limits of Lake
View. This gives the place the very desirable advantage of grove lots throughout
its length and breadth and affords many very pretty residence sites which have been
largely taken advantage of by citizens of Chicago whose means enabled them to
enclose large lots and build handsome homes upon them. The place is thickly settled
as a consequence of these advantages, and its nearness to business centers in
Chicago. The area of the township is about ten square miles. The lands in Lake
View attracted early attention. The settlement dates back over a period of
twenty years, and many of the lots having, during this long stretch of years, been
subjected to constant improvement, the place bears something of the appearance
of the older suburbs about the cities in the East. Viewed from the observatory of
the new United States Marine Hospital, the whole village resembles a beautiful
park."
— Alice Maggio
Here are some sample questions for you to think about before our discussion coming up this Monday, October 8. If you have not yet finished the book, beware of possible spoilers. Yes, even nonfiction works can have spoilers. If you cannot join us on Monday, please share your thoughts about the book in the comments!
1. Why do you think Obama begins his memoir with him learning of his father's death?
2. How does his father's absence from much of his life affect Obama?
3. When Obama's father visits him in Hawaii, how does the man compare to Obama's prior image of him?
4. Why did he title the first section of the book "Origins"?
5. What roles did his other family members play in shaping Obama's youth, especially his grandparents, mother and stepfather?
6. In the first section of the book, Obama writes, "I learned to slip back and forth between my black and white worlds, understanding that each possessed its own language and customs and structures of meaning, convinced that with a bit of translation on my part the two worlds would eventually cohere." How does he "slip back and forth" between his worlds, and is he ever successful at making them cohere?
7. As a child, how does Obama come to learn about the existence of racism?
8. Why does Obama decide to become a community organizer?
9. What problems does he encounter in the Altgeld Gardens project? What factors does he talk about that contribute to these problems?
10. What successes do Obama and his group achieve in Chicago?
11. What does he learn during his years as a community organizer?
12. How does the visit from his sister Auma affect Obama's understanding of and attitude towards his father?
13. When Obama visits Trinity church, he picks up a brochure that makes a distinction between "middleincomeness" and "middleclassness." What is meant by those terms, and why is the distinction important? Why do you think Obama includes this?
14. What does he mean by the phrase "the audacity of hope"?
15. Why does he decide to go to Harvard law school?
16. When Obama goes to Kenya, what does he learn about his father's family?
17. How is his relationship with his African family the same or different from his relationship with his American family?
18. About his stay in Kenya, Obama writes that he felt that "a sense that everything i was doing, every touch and breath and word, carried the full weight of my life; that a circle was beginning to close, that I might finally recognize myself as I was, here, now, in one place." What does he mean by this?
19. How does his trip to Kenya change him?
20. Why do you think he titled the book Dreams from My Father? What dreams does he feel he received from his father? How did these dreams shape him?
21. Bonus question: Some editions of the book include Obama's keynote address from the 2004 Democratic Convention. How do the themes in that speech reflect the themes in his memoir?
Note: Many of these questions are borrowed or adapted from the excellent discussion guide for this book created by the Truman College library.Thank you.
— Alice Maggio /
Every other Tuesday we post a new literary discussion question in Ink. This time I want to know who your favorite fictional bad guy, or bad lady, is. Captain Hook? Dracula? Sauron? Iago? The Wicked Witch of the West? Tell us your favorite above, in Ink.
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea, our March 2007 book club selection. In this passage the old healer, Huila, is trying to teach Teresita how to pray one morning:
"Should we have brought God coffee?" Teresita asked.
This caught Huila up short. Did God take coffee? And if He did, would He want it black, or did He enjoy milk and sugar — all items He, in His own wisdom, had made in the first place? It was obvious God enjoyed wine — only red wine — but coffee, that was altogether a mystery.
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Chicago: City on the Make by Nelson Algren:
"Chicago...forever keeps two faces, one for winners and one for losers; one for hustlers and one for squares. One for the open-eyed children of the thousand-windowed office buildings. And one for the shuttered hours. One for the sun-lit traffic's noontime bustle. And one for the midnight subway watches when stations swing past like ferris wheels of light, yet leave the moving window wet with rain or tears. One face for Go-Getters and one for Go-Get-It-Yourselfers. One for poets and one for promoters. One for the good boy and one for the bad."
— Alice Maggio
Every other Tuesday we post a new literary discussion question in Ink. This week is the "liar, liar, pants on fire" question. I want to know if you've ever faked reading or finishing a book. What book(s) have you only pretended to have read? Leave your comments above in Ink.
— Alice Maggio
Our October 2007 Book Club selection is Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama. And, although the upcoming primary elections influenced our decision to add this book to our book list this fall, as Mary Mitchell wrote for Black Issues Book Review in 2005, "Obama may be the first candidate whose political campaign sparked interest in his memoir, rather than the other way around." Dreams from My Father is not a campaign book, and readers expecting an account of his seemingly meteoric rise in politics will be disappointed. But, that is exactly why we chose it over his second, more politicized book, The Audacity of Hope, or even Living History, the memoir of Chicago-area native Hillary Clinton.
Dreams from My Father was originally published in 1995, two years before Obama first took office as an Illinois state senator. It received favorable reviews, but was not exactly a bestseller, for the 34-year-old attorney was then best known as the first African-American president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. But the book was reprinted in 2004 to coincide with his run for U.S. Senate and after his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention had everyone wondering who he was.
Instead of a campaign book, we get a thoughtful, engaging memoir that chronicles Obama's struggle to understand himself within his ethnically and racially diverse family. The story begins in New York, where Obama, then just a 21-year-old Columbia University student, learns that his father was killed in a car accident in Kenya. He barely knew his father, who left him and his mother when Obama was a toddler. He met him once after that, at age ten, during a brief visit his father made to his maternal grandparents' house in Hawaii.
The first section of the book traces Obama's mother's family from Kansas to Hawaii, where his mother, who is white, and father, a black man from Kenya, met as fellow students at the University of Hawaii. It also tells the story of his own childhood and upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia, and his growing awareness of racial divisions, both in the world and within himself.
As a young adult, his father's death fuels Obama's determination to understand his complex heritage. The second part of Dreams from My Father chronicles his work in Chicago as a community organizer in the troubled Altgeld Gardens neighborhood on the South Side, where he learns some hard truths about Chicago-style politics and confronts this city's own poverty and racial strife.
Then, in the final part of the memoir, Obama travels to Kenya to connect with his father's family and encounters the bitter tribal conflicts and poverty of his father's country. But through all these episodes, Obama finds community within these common struggles and is able to begin to heal the divisions of racial identity within himself.
Dreams from My Father is well-written, has a wonderful narrative flow and has been compared to the writings of Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois. But Obama's reflection on race and identity transcends race, teaching all of us how to navigate a world that is neither black nor white, but many shades of grey.
So, read the book, and then join us on Monday, October 8 at The Book Cellar in Lincoln Square to talk about it. And, audiobook fans, remember Barack Obama won a Grammy Award in 2006 for his recording of Dreams from My Father. So, tune in.
— Alice Maggio /
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, "Happiness" entry, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, our June 2006 Book Club selection:
"I'm turning left. Look, everyone, my blinker is on, and I'm turning left. I am so happy to be alive, driving along, making a left turn. I'm serious. I am doing exactly what I want to be doing at this moment: existing on a Tuesday, going about my business, on my way somewhere, turning left."
— Alice Maggio
Below are the questions we'll use to help us discuss Ana Castillo's Peel My Love Like an Onion at next week's Book Club meeting. Feel free to start forming your answers now or to come up with questions of your own - both questions and answers can be posted in the comments and everyone is welcome to start a discussion there. Spoilers are allowed, so keep that in mind if you haven't finished the book. I look forward to hearing what you all thought of the book on Monday!
- Do you trust Carmen as a narrator? Do we get to have any objective views of Manolo and Agustin or are they all clouded by her love for them?
- Are Manolo and Agustin simple or complex characters? How do you think they would be different if the story were told in the third person?
- Do you sympathize with Carmen or just pity her? What do you think the author intended for you to feel? How does it differ from how you actually felt?
- Is Carmen’s sharing of Agustin believable? Does it give any strength to her claim of love for him or does it take away from it?
- How does Carmen’s parents’ marriage affect her relationships with Agustin and Manolo?
- Does Carmen’s pregnancy fit into the story? How does it affect your feelings about Carmen and Agustin?
- Much of the story is concerned with how Carmen identifies herself, whether she’s hiding her disability or revealing it. How do her two loves help her delineate those identities? Do they help at all? How much does the return of Carmen’s polio affect the identity she’s created?
- Would Carmen’s story be any different if she were not a legal US citizen? Think about the scene in the factory where her friend Vicky calls the INS (p. 125). How would Carmen feel about making a living if she could have been deported? How would that have affected her passion for flamenco?
- “Dignity is the sexiest thing a woman can learn,” Carmen says (p. 51). How does she incorporate this belief into her life? Do you think she managed to maintain her dignity throughout her trials with Manolo, Agustin and her polio?
- Why do you think the author chose to write the novel as a series of short stories? How does it affect your reading of it? Would the story be any different if it were told more linearly?
- Does the ending of Carmen’s new life as a famous singer fit? How important is her fame to the way she deals with her lost loves?
- Is there any sense of satisfaction or closure with Carmen’s relationships by the end of the novel? Has anything really changed? Has Carmen learned anything in her time apart from her loves?
— Veronica Bond /
Every other Tuesday we post a new literary discussion question in Ink. This week I want to know if you've ever read an entire book in one sitting. I think the last book I read in one day was Stardust by Neil Gaiman, but it wasn't quite in one sitting since I started it at the laundromat one morning and finished it at home later that day. What about you? Let us know at the top of the blog in Ink.
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Memory Mambo by Achy Obejas, our April 2006 book club selection:
"Although no one would admit it, Tio Pepe's passing seemed to free Tia Celia. She foundered a bit at first. For instance, she said she wanted to re-decorate the house but didn't know how, then felt guilty and worried that people might think she was trying to erase Tio Pepe from her life. Eventually, she bought new curtains and painted the bedroom an off-white that showed off the new pictures of Rosa on the wall and on her bureau. Tia Celia hadn't had citrus fruit for more than thirty years because Tio Pepe was horrifically allergic to them and now, without him to worry about, she gorged on oranges and pineapples, grapefruits and mangoes. When she served water at her house, lemon slices floated with the ice."
— Alice Maggio
Whether you just joined the Gapers Block Book Club, missed these books the first time around, or are just curious about what we've read, here is the complete book list from 2006.
January
Bellow, Saul. The Adventures of Augie March. (Penguin, 2006; 566 p.)
Augie March was first published in 1953 and tells the sprawling story of a young man growing up in Depression-era Chicago.
February
Terkel, Studs. Division Street: America. (New Press, 2006; 381 p.)
Terkel's first collection of oral history tackles the issues of race and class in Chicago, and, by extension, throughout the country. It was originally published in 1967.
March
Dybek, Stuart. I Sailed with Magellan. (Picador, 2004; 307 p.)
Eleven loosely connected short stories create a revealing portrait of Chicago's South Side.
April
Obejas, Achy. Memory Mambo. (Cleis Press, 1996; 200 p.)
Juani is a Cuban American living in Chicago with her family and struggling with her identity and trying to discover what is true and what isn't in her family's past.
May
Eastwood, Carolyn. Near West Side Stories: Struggles for Community in Chicago's Maxwell Street Neighborhood. (Lake Claremont Press, 2002; 355 p.)
Eastwood chronicles the lives of four community leaders, including Florence Scala and Nate Duncan, in their own words in this oral history. Carolyn Eastwood joined us for our discussion in our second author event.
June
Rosenthal, Amy Krause. Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. (Three Rivers Press, 2005; 225 p.)
A touching memoir written in an encyclopedia format with alphabetized entries.
July
Algren, Nelson. Man with the Golden Arm. (Seven Stories Press, 1997; 348 p.)
This dark novel about the downward spiral of Chicago card dealer Frankie Machine was the first winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1949.
August
Sinclair, April. Coffee Will Make You Black. (Harper Perennial, 1995; 256 p.)
Jean "Stevie" Stevenson is a young woman growing up on Chicago's South Side in the mid-1960s in this coming-of-age tale.
September
Larsen, Erik. Devil in the White City. (Vintage Books, 2004; 464 p.)
The gripping true story and best-selling account of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and Chicago serial killer H.H. Holmes.
October
Cisneros, Sandra. House on Mango Street. (Vintage Books, 1984; 128 p.)
The young Esperanza Cordero is a sharp observer of her Pilsen-area neighborhood in this modern classic, told in a series of vignettes.
November
Guilfoile, Kevin. Cast of Shadows. (Vintage Books, 2006; 320 p.)
This fast-paced, genre-bending novel (part mystery, part thriller, part sci-fi and more) tells the story of Davis Moore, a Chicago fertility doctor who clones his daughter's killer. Author Kevin Guilfoile joined us for our discussion.
And, if you missed it last week, you can also check out our complete 2005 book list.
— Alice Maggio /
As the book club continues to move forward, it is helpful to look back and remember what we have already read. Whether you just joined the book club, missed these books the first time around, or are just curious about what we've read, here is the complete book list from 2005, the first year of the GB Book Club.
April
Joe Meno. Hairstyles of the Damned. (Akashic Books, 2004; 290 p.)
Joe Meno's third novel was our first book club selection. Hairstyles of the Damned is a coming-of-age story filled with punk music and mix tapes, about Brian Oswald and his friend Gretchen, two teenagers growing up on Chicago's South Side in the early 1990s.
May
Upton Sinclair. The Jungle. (Penguin Books, 2006; 388 p.)
We dove right into the classics with our second book. The Jungle, first published in 1906, is a novel about social injustice and the plight of the working poor at the turn of the twentieth century, told through the story of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant who comes to Chicago and finds work in the city's infamous stockyards.
June
Audrey Niffenegger. The Time Traveler’s Wife. (Harcourt, 2004; 546 p.)
An unusual love story about Henry, a Chicago librarian who travels through time as a result of a genetic abnormality, and Clare, the woman he is destined to love.
July
Adam Langer. Crossing California. (Riverhead Books, 2005; 512 p.)
The story of the intersecting lives of three families living in West Roger's Park in the late 1970s. Although the novel is filled with memorable characters, it is the touching, heartbreaking friendship between the young Jill Wasserstrom and Muley Wills that lingers long after the book is finished.
August
Eric Klinenberg. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. (University of Chicago Press, 2003; 320 p.)
On the 10th anniversary of the deadly 1995 heat wave that swept Chicago, we read sociologist Klinenberg's devastating account of the social and political conditions that contributed to the deaths of 700 people during that fatal week in July.
September
Ray Bradbury. Dandelion Wine. (Bantam, 1985; 256 p.)
This semi-autobiographical work tells the story of 12-year-old Douglas Spaulding and a magical summer in 1928 in fictional Green Town, Illinois. Dandelion Wine is the perfect end-of-summer book.
October
Aleksander Hemon. Nowhere Man. (Vintage Books, 2004; 256 p.)
An extraordinary novel about Jozef Pronek, a young Bosnian who visits the United States and becomes stranded here as war breaks out in his own country.
November
Wendy McClure. I’m Not the New Me. (Riverhead Books, 2005; 308 p.)
Our last book for 2005 also marked our first author event. Wendy McClure joined us to talk about her memoir about losing weight and finding oneself.
Next week I will post the complete 2006 book list.
— Alice Maggio
Am I the only one with a stack of books on the bedside table these days? I am reading three different books right now, and I have two more that I should read in the next few weeks. So, this week in "Ink" I want to know what's on your "to-read" pile. Leave your comment above.
— Alice Maggio
"Then the party became aware of another strange thing. This, too, like the odour, was a thing elemental; it was a sound — a sound made up of ten thousand little sounds. You scarcely noticed it at first — it sunk into your consciousness, a vague disturbance, a trouble. It was like the murmuring of the bees in the spring, the whisperings of the forest; it suggested a world in motion. It was only by an effort that one could realize that it was made by animals, that it was the distant lowing of ten thousand cattle, the distant grunting of ten thousand swine."
Upton Sinclair writes about life near the Chicago stockyards in The Jungle, our May 2005 Book Club selection.
— Alice Maggio
“When you are in love no single metaphor is enough. No metaphor appears just a tad clichéd. You are dizzy with desire. Yes, dizzy, virtual vertigo. Someone catch me, I’m falling in love. Nothing too serious, no ambulance will be necessary. Just a few days of bed rest is needed, I’m sure. With him.”
So begins Ana Castillo’s Peel My Love Like an Onion, the story of Carmen Santos, a woman with not one, but three great loves of her life. Carmen is six years old when she’s struck with polio, the disease leaving her left leg undeveloped and weak, and it’s in her Physical Rehabilitation class at her School for the Handicapped that Carmen meets her first great love. A vibrant and inspiring teacher, Miss Dorotea, encourages Carmen to stand up in front of the class, forget her disabilities and dance flamenco. After some initial misgivings and efforts to compensate for her left leg, Carmen ends up studying flamenco with Miss Dorotea for five years, the intense practice eventually allowing her to walk without her crutches. It is this dance and her passion for it that brings Carmen to her two other loves: Agustin and Manolo.
The leader of a dance troupe, Agustin is a gypsy who travels back and forth between the States and his self-proclaimed native Spain (Agustin was actually born in Cleveland). The two carry on a love affair for seventeen years, even while Carmen is fully aware that Agustin’s Spanish travels are for the purpose of visiting the wife he keeps back home. Carmen’s affair with Manolo is much shorter by comparison, spanning only one year of their lives, but the eventual loss of both is devastating to Carmen. As a fellow flamenco dancer and godson to Agustin, Manolo comes in to Carmen’s life suddenly and their love is intense and instantaneous: “I am dead,” Carmen says to a friend after recounting her first kiss with Manolo. “It’s the beginning of the end. That boy is my destiny and I am his.” The affairs carry on simultaneously and while it may be Manolo for whom Carmen feels that sharp, vise-like grip of love and lust, it’s Agustin who is her teacher in life and in love, who watches her grow up into a woman and whose far-away wife still manages to incur her jealousy. They are “two faces of the same ancient coin,” and they are both the best and the worst of her worlds.
The point at which the reader is introduced to Carmen is after both relationships have ended. Both Agustin and Manolo have left Carmen and the country and, in her 40s, Carmen’s polio has come back and robbed her of her last true love. She’s living at home with her parents, at first making some money in an airport pizza shop and later sewing at home after her pain gets so bad she’s unable to stand for long periods of time. Her depression is palpable, the overflowing emotions of a woman who feels she’s come to an end long before she’s due: “I tell my mother one day that I feel just lousy, lousy all the time, even in my sleep and when I wake I feel worse, and then I just look over at her and start crying.” For a woman who has lost all that she lived for and all that composed the identity she claimed, it is not difficult to sympathize with the heart of this otherwise exotic tale.
Castillo tells Carmen’s story in a series of short chapters, vignettes that could very well stand on their own. Every one is a whole thought unto itself, but together they work to pull the reader deeper into Carmen’s narrative, each peeling away to reveal the next affecting layer until the heart is reached, much like the image the novel’s title evokes. Peel My Love Like an Onion is undoubtedly a story about love – clichéd and unique, owned and shared, found and lost. It’s a story about knowing oneself and reinventing oneself when all aspects of that former self have gone. It is a story about the intersection of passion and reality and what one woman must do when she realizes the two no longer meet.
* * *
Ana Castillo was born and raised in Chicago and her novels, essays and poems have won many awards, including the Carl Sandburg Literary Award in Fiction, the American Book Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the co-founder of the literary magazine Third Woman and a contributing editor to Humanizarte magazine. She has been a writer in residence for the Illinois Arts Council and has Master’s degrees in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from the University of Chicago; she later earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Bremen in Germany. Castillo currently lives in New Mexico. For more on Ana Castillo, visit her website at www.anacastillo.com.
— Veronica Bond
We had one of our biggest turnouts ever last night at The Book Cellar as people came from all over Chicago, and even from the suburbs, to talk about Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Thanks to everyone who came out. It was so much fun to see so many new faces, and wonderful to see our returning and regular members, too. Thanks also go to the staff at The Book Cellar for putting up with us and taking such good care of everyone. We will post some photos from the event later this week.
— Alice Maggio
"Thinking this, he wondered if Mozart had had any intuition that the future did not exist, that he had already used up his little time. Maybe I have, too, Rick though has he watched the rehearsal move along. This rehearsal will end, the performance will end, the singers will die, eventually the last score of the music will be destroyed in one way or another; finally the name 'Mozart' will vanish, the dust will have won. If not on this planet then another."
Protagonist Rick Deckhard thinks about entrophy in this passage from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, our June 2007 Book Club selection.
— Alice Maggio
The Gapers Block Book Club always welcomes new members. If you're thinking about joining, you might have a few questions about the group. The answers to the following questions should give you a better idea of who we are and what we're about.
Who are the book club members?
The group includes men and women of all ages and backgrounds. On average, those who come to the discussions are mostly in their 20s and 30s, although we have many active members who fall outside that range.
How do I join?
Joining is easy. Just read our current book and come to the discussion (and be ready to talk!). You might also like to sign up for the book club mailing list to receive meeting reminders and other alerts about the group. See the sign-up box in the right column.
What kinds of books does the group read?
We read both fiction and nonfiction, and we aim for a variety of subjects, genres, writing styles and literary voices. But all of the selections have a couple things in common: We only read nonfiction books about topics related to Chicago, and fiction by local writers. The primary focus of the Gapers Block Book Club is learning about our city and the great literary talents with local roots. Past selections have included classics (The Jungle), best-sellers (The Time Traveler's Wife; Devil in the White City), memoirs (I'm Not the New Me) and first novels by major emerging talents (Crossing California; Cast of Shadows).
When, where and how often does the group meet?
We read one book each month, and we meet on the second Monday of the month at The Book Cellar bookstore in Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood (4736-8 N. Lincoln Ave.). During December, however, the group takes a break, so December has no book and no meeting.
How do the discussions work?
GB Book Club staffers Alice Maggio and Veronica Bond take turns moderating the discussions. We start with introductions, so everyone has a chance to speak and get to know each other a little. Veronica and I prepare questions to get the conversation going, but we encourage everyone to jump in with their own questions at any time. The group is very laid-back and informal, and the conversation is free-flowing. Discussions typically last between 60-90 minutes.
Those are the basics. If you have additional questions, feel free to contact us at bookclub{at}gapersblock.com. And, maybe we'll see you at an upcoming meeting!
— Alice Maggio
"Ink" is our section for discussing random reading-related questions. This week in Ink, we want to know: What is the worst movie ever made that was based on a book? Which film do you think messed up the original book the most? Tell us what you think above in Ink!
— Alice Maggio
Water for Elephants
by Sara Gruen
(Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2006)
Our August book is Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, a novel about life in a Depression-era circus.
The story is told from the point-of-view of the 90-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski, who is living in a nursing home in the present day, and remembering the time he spent with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth in 1931. Jacob joins the circus almost accidentally when he drops out of veterinary school at Cornell and hops on a train, which happens to be a circus train. When the circus' owner, "Uncle Al" Bunkel, finds out about his veterinary training, Jacob is put to work caring for the troupe's substantial menagerie. The collection of animals notably includes an elephant named Rosie who only responds to commands in Polish. While working for Benzini Brothers, he falls in love Marlena, one of the circus' star performers, but she is married to August, the abusive head animal trainer. The ensuing love triangle forms the heart of the novel. But this old-fashioned romance is also an engrossing, fast-paced page-turner.
Author Sara Gruen grew up in Canada, but has lived in north suburban Grayslake since 1999. She spent months researching Water for Elephants, visiting circus museums, hunting down rare books and talking to circus historians and former performers. As a result, the novel is a seamless blend of fact and fiction that vividly brings to life the world of the circus and Depression-era America. The book is even illustrated with historical circus photos.
Water for Elephants became a surprise bestseller for indie publisher Algonquin Books when it was published last year. It was chosen by Book Sense as the top pick for June 2006, and was later named the 2007 Book Sense Book of the Year.
So read Water for Elephants and join us to talk about the book on Monday, August 13, at 7:30pm at The Book Cellar in Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood. New members are always welcome! Hope to see you there.
Additional Resources
Visit the official website for Sara Gruen at http://www.saragruen.com/index.html.
Read an excerpt from the book at Book Browse.
Find sample discussion questions at ReadGroupGuides.com. (Warning: Questions may include plot spoilers.)
— Alice Maggio
For July 2007, we are shaking things up a little and reading our first graphic novel for the book club: Ghost World by Daniel Clowes.
Ghost World tells the story of Enid and Becky, two friends facing the uncertainties of life after high school. Enid is the bold one, seemingly fearless in her experimentation. In the eight interconnected stories that make up the graphic novel, Enid is trying on a new look and new hairstyle in each one. Her more forceful personality typically drives the narrative. Becky is her foil, getting caught up in Enid's schemes and adventures. But Becky is no mere follower either, just more cautious.
They hang out at a faux '50s diner, make crank calls, mock the people around them, and mercilessly tease their friend Josh. And although they are navigating their way towards adulthood, Enid and Becky still cling to childhood things, like a favorite toy or children's album. But when Becky finds out Enid may be leaving for college, they are forced to learn that growing up means allowing each other to grow and change, even if it risks their friendship.
The dialogue in Ghost World is pitch-perfect. Clowes has an uncanny way of capturing the way teenagers really talk. The language is frequently raunchy – Enid and Becky don't talk like "nice" girls – but it is authentic for the characters.
And the artwork of Ghost World is beautifully drawn, consisting of simple, elegant illustrations. Yet Clowes has an eye for ugliness – either for finding ugliness in beauty, or beauty in the ugly. His characters are tinged with strangeness and are frequently depicted with slack lips, bulbous noses, lank hair, beady eyes and prominent teeth.
Clowes does not even exclude himself from this treatment. When Enid goes to Zine-A-Phobia to meet famous cartoonist "David" Clowes, he turns out to be a leering, balding, creepy guy sitting alone at a table. Enid leaves without speaking to him.
About the Author
Daniel Clowes was born in Chicago in 1961. His parents divorced when he was still a baby. About a year later his mother remarried. Her second husband was a stock-car racer, but he was killed in a racing accident when Clowes was just four years old. Then he was sent to live with his grandparents. His grandfather, James Cate, was a medieval history professor at the University of Chicago, and Clowes spent his formative years among distinguished visitors like Norman Maclean, Saul Bellow and John Hope Franklin. Clowes left Chicago after high school and currently lives in Oakland, California.
Resources
Official Author Page at Fantagraphics Books
A Daniel Clowes Bibliography
Possibly more than you ever wanted to know about Clowes.
Hermenaut Interview (Thanks, Mike!)
Salon.com Interview
— Alice Maggio
Imagine a world where most of the population has taken off for another planet, where all animals are endangered and where robot servants come to escape their human masters. This is the world in which Rick Deckard lives in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick's post-apocalyptic vision of a war-torn earth. Set in a future and desolate San Francisco, Androids follows Deckard's job as an android bounty hunter and the one day that determines the course of his life.
After World War Terminus, the earth is left mostly barren. The United Nations has encouraged people to emigrate to Mars where they'll be free from the radiation poisoning and, as an extra incentive, all emigrants receive an android servant. Most people who remain on earth are the "specials" who were deemed unfit to emigrate. Taking care of an animal is an almost noble act, bestowing a certain amount of social status among the caretakers, and animals can be bought and sold through a catalog for high prices. Those unable to afford a real animal often turn to purchasing electric animals in the hopes of keeping up their social standing.
As technology has progressed, androids have become more and more like humans, making them difficult to detect by the normal person. The current test used by bounty hunters is the Voigt-Kampff Empathy test, which doesn't detect intelligence but relies on certain reactionary measures such as blushing and pupil dilation in response to emotional questions, most of which involve harm to animals. A number of androids have returned to Earth from Mars, breaking free from the role of humans' slaves, making it necessary for android bounty hunters to search them out and "retire" them. When the foremost bounty hunter in San Francisco is done in by one of the androids he's pursuing, Rick Deckard gets his chance to go after the six remaining androids in the area, the bounty from which will enable him to get rid of his electric sheep and buy a real animal.
In an interesting juxtaposition, humans are also very much in need of the emotion and empathy lacking in the escaped androids. Emotions can be conjured up through the use of a mood organ – by dialing in a certain code the user can feel depression, satisfaction, the desire to watch television or any other emotion possible. Similarly, Mercerism has taken over as the dominant religion/philosophical belief and involves the use of an empathy box. By gripping the handles of the box, the user is pulled into the world of Wilbur Mercer, a man who lived before the war and is believed to have the power to bring animals back to life. While watching the monitor of the empathy box, the user views Mercer's Sisyphusian ascent up a hill while his adversaries hurl rocks at him. All those who are using the empathy box inhabit Mercer's mind, feeling the emotions of every other person using the box at that time as well as receiving physical injuries from the thrown rocks. Much like every other religion, whether Mercerism is based on a real man or only manages to stay alive through the power of a zealous audience is up for debate.
By retiring six androids in one day Deckard will become one of the most successful bounty hunters in history, but he finds himself struggling with his growing feelings for them. He admires the efforts of some to become to more than the slaves they were on Mars and even allows himself to get close to one working for the Rosen Association, the manufacturers of the latest and most sophisticated androids. In short, his inherently human ability to empathize is getting in his way. Through encounters with another bounty hunter who thoroughly enjoys the kill, an attempted romance with a female android and a fusion with Mercer that convinces him that sometimes he has to do what's wrong to ultimately do what's right, Deckard's life and belief system is forever changed. Whether for the better or for the worse, neither he nor us really know.
* * *
Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928, was raised in California and became one of the most prolific and influential writers in science fiction. He produced thirty-six novels and five short story collections, winning the 1962 Hugo Award and 1974 John W. Campbell Memorial Award. A number of Dick's novels have been translated into memorable films including Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly and, most recently, Next. Dick died in 1982 of heart failure. To learn more about the author, visit his official website at www.philipkdick.com.
— Veronica Bond
Have you been reading The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg along with us this month? Our May meeting is just around the corner, coming up this Monday, May 14 at 7:30pm at The Book Cellar.
And, if you want a few things to get you thinking before the meeting, check out the sample discussion questions from the publisher's website. [If you have the paperback edition, these are the same questions found in the back of the book.]
— Alice Maggio
This could be a very simple story, and in a sense it is. A woman, not too old but not young either, loses her husband to a devastating sickness and is left to pick up the pieces of her once secure and comfortable life. This is what’s happened to Betta Nolan, and as we’re introduced to her as she picks out an ice cream cone in a small town shop we’re immediately set to wonder what she’s doing, where she’s going and what brought her to this town of Stewart, Illinois, just outside Chicago.
Before her husband John’s cancer diagnosis, Betta’s life seemed perfect. She recounts the trips they took together, the pictures they took, the food they ate, the wildflowers he used to pick for her at a moment’s notice and even their seemingly sparse fights take on the role of the ideal push and pull of a perfect relationship. Betta’s marriage to John is so great that she practically envelops herself in him, cutting herself off from the rest of the world. While John may be all Betta needs, his death leaves her completely alone, wishing she had even just spent more time getting to know the neighbors. A promise to John during his last few days of life is what drives Betta to sell their Boston home to seek refuge elsewhere –- after retirement they’d always planned to move out to a small town in the Midwest, with John running a little neighborhood grocery store and Betta maybe opening a luxury store for women, filled with candles, bath scents, stationery and other items of indulgence. Betta’s promise to John is that after he dies she will follow through on the plan.
At times The Year of Pleasures seems predictable. There is no dearth of stories about women learning to live and love again after the loss of a husband, whether through death or infidelity or just sheer boredom, and Betta’s story travels dangerously close to these tracks. After appearing on the local early-morning radio show, a man interested in writing contacts Betta to discuss her work as a children’s book author and the two explore the option of romance; a college boy turns to her for inspiration and comfort just as he provides the same for her; the young son of the single mother next door looks up to her as a friend and teacher; and three friends who Betta hasn’t seen since college all rush to gather around her the second she reaches out to them. In her way, Betta is “getting her groove back,” but what keeps this story from becoming another Lifetime special is Elizabeth Berg’s talent for capturing emotion and detailing it in ways those who have felt it know to be true. Beyond the immediate anguish of John’s death, Betta finds grief popping up in the most normal of circumstances: “Who would I tell my old-lady fears to now?” she wonders. “Who would tell me I had lipstick on my teeth, or that the story I was telling, I’d already told? Who would, sotto voce, suggest a mint and not have it embarrass me?” Far from letting Betta wither up without her husband or do the character a disservice by having her discover she was always whole without him, Berg takes the time to explore what happens to a person when they fill themselves up with the love of their lives and later find them gone.
“Love what you love without apology.” This is one of John’s final messages to Betta and a fitting theme for the book. In what is usually a mourning period, Betta decides that the year after John’s death will be devoted only to those things that bring her pleasure. Betta’s never quite sure how to do that and some steps take her forward while others take her back, but this uncertainty is what makes Betta real. “This was the way we all lived,” she muses on the ebb and flow of hope and grief, “full to the brim with gratitude and joy one day, wrecked on the rocks to the next. Finding the balance between the two was the art and the salvation.” With Berg’s rich writing, Betta’s struggle to find that balance and end up on top makes The Year of Pleasures a worthwhile and heartwarming read.
— Veronica Bond
A Chicago Tavern: A Goat, a Curse, and the American Dream
by Rick Kogan
(Lake Claremont Press, 2006) 115 p.
In a recent interview for the Chicago Writers Association, author Rick Kogan said, "It's kind of amazing that no one thought to write this story before Sam Sianis sat me down and, God love him, asked me if I'd be interested." I agree. The Billy Goat Tavern is so much a part of the Chicago consciousness and, thanks to Saturday Night Live, the national consciousness, that it does seem incredible that this story has not been told until now. But, what a story it is.
In its scant 115 pages, A Chicago Tavern: A Goat, a Curse, and the American Dream tells the stories of tavern founder William "Billy Goat" Sianis, who arrived in Chicago from Greece in 1912; his nephew and current tavern owner, Sam Sianis; the whole story of the goat and the fabled Cubs curse; the Saturday Night Live skit that made the tavern famous; and stories of the journalists, newspaper people and other regulars, such as Tim Weigel and Mike Royko, who have inhabited the Billy Goat over the years.
Throughout A Chicago Tavern, Kogan employs the present tense, even when describing events that occurred 30, 50 or 70 years ago. Although unusual, it gives the stories a strong feeling of immediacy and intimacy. As readers, we're not just reading about the Billy Goat — we become one of its patrons, sitting alongside the bar, listening to these stories as if we were shoulder to shoulder with Rick, Mike, Sam or Billy. At its heart, A Chicago Tavern is about family, both the Sianis family and the family of the tavern's regulars. Reading this book, for a few hours we feel like part of the family, too.
A Chicago Tavern: A Goat, a Curse, and the American Dream by Rick Kogan is the April book for the Gapers Block Book Club. Read the book, and then come to The Book Cellar in Lincoln Square (4736 N. Lincoln Ave.) on Monday, April 9 at 7:30pm for our discussion. Author Rick Kogan is scheduled to join us, so it promises to be a special evening.
About the Author
Kogan is a senior writer at the Chicago Tribune and writes the "Sidewalks" column for the Tribune's Sunday magazine. He is also the host of "Sunday Papers with Rick Kogan" on WGN radio and the author of several books, including America's Mom: The Life, Lessons, and Legacy of Ann Landers and, most recently, Sidewalks: Portraits of Chicago, a collection of his columns accompanied by photos by Charles Osgood. In 1999 New City named Kogan Chicago's Best Reporter, and he was inducted to the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame in 2003 by the International Press Club of Chicago.
Linkworthy Resources
The official website of the Billy Goat Tavern includes photos, a brief history, souvenirs and more.
Visit the book page for A Chicago Tavern at the Lake Claremont Press website to read an excerpt and find out more about the title.
Read the whole interview with Rick Kogan at the Chicago Writers Association website from their March newsletter. (Scroll about halfway down the page.)
And, the Sun-Times also recently talked to Kogan about life, the Billy Goat and his other recent book, Sidewalks.
— Alice Maggio /
The book club mailing list is currently down, so I cannot send out my usual reminders to everyone, but, yes, the GB book club is meeting this evening (Monday, March 12) at The Book Cellar at 7:30pm to talk about The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea. Did you finish it? Heh, heh. I finished it just in the nick of time, although I thought for sure I would be frantically skimming the last 50 pages on the CTA just before the meeting.
You can also find the publisher's reading group discussion questions online here, or in the back of the book if you have the paperback edition. These publisher reading group guides are always a bit odd, but the questions may get you thinking about some of the themes in the book.
— Alice Maggio
Veronica and I have been talking and emailing each other back and forth the past couple weeks trying to put together the rest of our 2007 booklist, and we are finally ready to reveal the results. Here is what we'll be reading for the rest of this year:
[January's book was Boss by Mike Royko and February's book was All This Heavenly Glory by Elizabeth Crane.]
Now: The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea
This is our current book, which we'll be meeting to talk about on Monday, March 12.
April: A Chicago Tavern: A Goat, a Curse and the American Dream by Rick Kogan
We'll be kicking off baseball season by reading this new book about Chicago's Billy Goat Tavern, written by one of Chicago's most celebrated journalists. Don't miss this meeting on April 9 because Mr. Kogan is scheduled to join us for our discussion.
May: The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg
A novel about a woman who moves to a small town to try to rebuild her life after the death of her husband, written by best-selling author Elizabeth Berg.
June: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
First published in 1968, this classic work of science-fiction tells the story of Richard Deckard, a bounty hunter for the San Francisco Police Department in the year 2021, who is charged with the job of finding rogue androids passing for humans on Earth. The 1982 film Blade Runner was adapted from this novel.
July: Ghost World by Daniel Clowes
Ghost World is one of the most popular graphic novels of all time, and the basis for the 2001 film of the same name, about two teenagers struggling through life after high school.
August: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
This historical novel about one man's career in a Depression-era circus was a surprise indie bestseller last year.
September: Peel My Love Like an Onion by Ana Castillo
A passionate novel about love and flamenco dancing by an award-winning writer.
October: Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama
The critically-acclaimed memoir about race and identity by our popular Illinois senator and current presidential hopeful.
November: Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
Disgrace, which won the Booker Prize in 1999, tells the bleak story of one man's downfall in post-apartheid South Africa. Coetzee, a former U. of C. professor, was also awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.
That is the complete list for this year, and we will have more about all these books in the coming months. Happy reading!
— Alice Maggio
The Hummingbird's Daughter
by Luis Alberto Urrea
(Back Bay Books, 2005; 499 pages)
Our March book is The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea, an epic novel about the life of Teresita, the Saint of Cabora. The story is a fictionalized biography of the author's real-life great aunt, a woman some regard as Mexico's Joan of Arc.
Teresita was born in Mexico in the late 19th century, the illegitimate daughter of a powerful rancher, Tomás Urrea, and a 14-year-old Indian girl, Cayetana Chávez, who works on the ranch. Teresita grows up on the ranch and shows a great gift for healing. An old Indian midwife and healer, Huila, takes Teresita under her care and tutelage. One day Teresita is brutally assaulted and murdered by miner, but she rises from the dead at her memorial, and her healing powers only seem to multiply. As her story spreads, she attracts thousands of pilgrims who declare her a saint, even as the Church denounces her as a heretic. Finally, when the government blames her for inciting an Indian uprising, Teresita must flee her country or face a death sentence.
This is not a short book. The Hummingbird's Daughter is fully 500 pages long, but the pages fly past rather quickly. (I promise.) Urrea's prose seems effortless. The narrative is straightforward, yet graceful, and the imagery is vivid. The world of late 19th century Mexico rises up from the pages and surrounds the reader like a dream.
The Hummingbird's Daughter received much critical acclaim when it was first published in 2005. The New York Times Book Review said, "Teresita is a saint we could really use right now, and I fervently hope she can be summoned to save the universe." Publisher's Weekly gave it a starred review, saying, "The book is wildly romantic, sweeping in its effect, employing the techniques of Catholic hagiography, Western fairy tale, Indian legend and everyday family folklore against the gritty realities of war, poverty, prejudice, lawlessness, torture and genocide." And, the book has drawn frequent comparisons to the work of Gabriel García Márquez. Last fall, the city of San Francisco even chose the novel for its "One Book, One City" program.
Author Luis Alberto Urrea was born in Tijuana, but currently lives in suburban Chicago and teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Hummingbird's Daughter is his eleventh book, but Urrea spent 20 years researching and writing the story. It is clearly a labor of love, and his affection for his subject contributes to the charm of the novel. His last book, The Devil's Highway, told the tragic true account of a group of men who tried to cross the border from Mexico into the Arizona desert. It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His other previous works include three collections of poetry and two novels. For more information about the author, visit his website at luisurrea.com.
Read The Hummingbird's Daughter and then join us on Monday, March 12, at The Book Cellar (4736-38 N. Lincoln Ave.), beginning at 7:30pm, to talk about the book. New members are always welcome, and, if you don't quite finish the book in time, that's perfectly understandable. Join us and share how far you got.
— Alice Maggio
Memoirs are hot right now, especially quirky ones with nonlinear narratives and secondary characters who speak the memoirist's thoughts. It's getting easy to dismiss the latest trendy autobiographical efforts, but in some cases the writings merit a second look. Elizabeth Crane's All This Heavenly Glory is one of these. Not quite a memoir, and yet with a feeling too real to believe completely fictional –- one can't help but wonder how much Crane gleaned from her own life -– All This Heavenly Gloryi is every bit as experimental and unusual as any other chic, personal tell-all out there, but with one important difference: It's also very good.
Charlotte Anne Byers is the subject of the book, told in part by an omniscient third person narrator and in part from the first person viewpoint of Charlotte Anne herself. We follow Charlotte Anne from the age of six to the age of forty, following her as she begins a short lived opera career as a numbered character in La Boheme through ill-advised relationships and alcoholism through her father's remarriage and her mother's death through a failed name change, and finally to love. Don't let the love part deter you – in Charlotte Anne's world, this is perhaps the most suspect of all human emotions and is not spared from the cynicism she applies to the rest of her life. Charlotte Anne may find love in the end, but her life in interim is wonderfully fleshed out, making her eventual recognition of love far from the neatly tied up, sappy endings most contemporary literary heroines are given.
Charlotte Anne is a highly flawed character whose awkwardness and uncertainty speak to an audience who never had the newest shoes or the latest toys or knew the right and cool things to say. Charlotte Anne may even be a bit naïve, but her acute and interesting observations serve her well for a social education. Two stories deal directly with her "perversions," describing certain incidents with childhood friends that introduced her to some of the less fine life experiences. Although she's never personally hurt in either of these instances, she comes out feeling that a when a friend, however flippantly, accuses a father of displaying his genitals to her, or when a friend outfits her Barbie dolls with hidden books so as to be prepared for the inevitable parental belt-beating, something just isn't right. Best friend Jenna is present throughout the book and she acts as both a foundation and a source of antagonism for Charlotte Anne, as only the people closest to us can be. Jenna is just as flawed with her own set of troubles and her, at turns, loving and heartbreaking relationship with Charlotte Anne is far more realistic than female friendships are usually portrayed.
Heavily employing run-on sentences and speech disfluencies, Crane joins the new generation of stream-of-consciousness writers who perfectly capture their characters' thoughts. By the end of the book we know Charlotte Anne not as others know her, but as she knows herself, which is to say, in a self-deprecating, doubting, questioning, hardened, vulnerable, yet ultimately self-assured way. The realism with which Crane writes Charlotte Anne is a refreshing turn from the hordes of young women characters whose only problems are which stilettos will match their new designer bag. All This Heavenly Glory is also in possession of perhaps the most subtle, best-worded September 11th recollection in new writing. Owing to its quiet existence, this may not be the first passage that will comes to literary critics' minds when picking out early 21st century historical references to the day. Without mentioning the date once, Crane writes it as merely a day in a life –- a day on which innocence was lost, but still a day in a life, which, for many of us, is what it was.
The book's title refers to Charlotte Anne's filmic accomplishment, but it could also refer to Crane's own literary accomplishment. It is a glorious portrait of a genuine individual, indeed.
~*~
Visit Elizabeth Crane's website at www.elizabethcrane.com to learn more about her work.
— Veronica Bond
We want to know, "What was your favorite book that you read this year?" Maybe you rediscovered an old classic, were introduced to a great new writer, or read the book you think should have won that fancy literary award. Whatever it was, tell us about your favorite book read in 2006. Just tell us the title, the author and why you liked it in 150 words or less, and send it to bookclub[at]gapersblock.com before December 25. Responses will be published in our December 27 book club feature.
— Alice Maggio
In 2007, we are starting the New Year right by reading Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago by legendary Chicago journalist Mike Royko. Boss paints a scathing portrait of one of Chicago best-known mayors. But even more than that, Boss may be one of the few biographies written in which the subject is only slightly better known than the author. Is the book biased? Yes. Is it entertaining? Absolutely.
When Boss was published in 1971 Richard J. Daley was serving his 16th year as mayor of Chicago. Daley Sr. had long been a target of Royko's wrath in the writer's newspaper column. But in Boss, Royko's "steely contempt for his subject," as one reviewer put it, was given free reign. The book is a thoroughly researched and compelling account of Daley, his administration and his political machine.
Boss was a national bestseller when it was released, although reviewers were divided in their criticism. One reviewer wrote that Royko's "intense dislike of Mayor Daley is clearly evident on nearly every page" and dismissed the book as "simply an extended attack on a public official." A second reviewer felt Royko characterized Daley as "a two-dimensional villain, a man of bad will, bad manners, bad grammar, and — one feels certain by the end — bad breath." Ouch. But many more critics praised the book as a "well-directed, devastating attack on the mayor and his machine." A review that appeared in the Tribune acknowledged that, while Royko "does not even pretend to be fair," Boss is an "impassioned portrayal of the arrogance of power, of the curious mixtures of innocence and cynicism, wisdom and stupidity, loyalty and nepotism, honesty and corruption, principle and expediency through which the last of the great city bosses gained control of the nation's most powerful political machine."
Perhaps not coincidentally, Mike Royko earned the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1972, just one year after the publication of Boss.
Mike Royko was born in Chicago in 1932 and grew up in Wicker Park, which was then a predominately Polish neighborhood. He was an indifferent student, and his school career was spotty. He dropped out of at least three different high schools before graduating from the Central YMCA High School in 1951. The following year he joined the U.S. Air Force. His newspaper career began a couple years later when Royko volunteered for the job as editor of the base newspaper while stationed at the air force base at O'Hare.
Royko went on to become on of Chicago's most celebrated journalists. He wrote more than 8,000 columns over his career, and his column was, at one point, syndicated in more than 600 newspapers. Some of his columns are collected in separately published anthologies, copies of which can often be found in local bookstores. Mike Royko died in 1997 at the age of 64.
— Alice Maggio /
Below you’ll find the questions we’ll use to guide our discussion of Cast of Shadows. Use the comments screen to answer one, answer them all, or answer them in any order you’d like. Spoilers are allowed, so please keep that in mind when looking through the comments if you have yet to finish the book. Feel free to post your own questions or bring up any aspect of the book you’d like to discuss; this is just a guide and, like our monthly meetings, the discussion is free to go in any direction we choose.
- The driving force of the book is Davis’s intense desire to look into the eyes of his daughter’s killer. Is this desire is normal or realistic? Are his actions?
- Do you think that by taking these extreme actions Davis will bring an end to his grief? Does Davis believe they will?
- In regards to their use in the story, how do you feel about the acceptance of genetic cloning and impregnating women with cloned cells? Does this plot device work in the book?
- In his meeting with Martha and Terry Finn, Davis goes over some of the legal and physical restrictions and ramifications of cloning. Do these explanations adequately cover the consequences of birthing a cloned child? Did your thoughts on this change over the course of the story?
- Does your opinion of Davis change throughout the story? Do you find him a sympathetic character or a person fueled by negative emotions?
- The Hands of God denounce the idea of reproductive freedom and a woman’s right to carry cloned children. How do their ideals affect your views of cloning in the novel? What parallels can you draw between their tactics and current anti-abortion activists?
- Is it possible for Davis to be objective about nature vs. nurture? Which side does he fall on?
- Early on, the Finns start to wonder about Justin’s genes, for example when he starts swearing and later when he becomes interested in philosophy at a young age. After knowing Davis’s secret, Joan also starts questioning Justin’s past, but Davis assures her that there’s no hereditary link for violence. Does Davis remain firm on this issue throughout the story? How does he feel about it by the end?
- What role does Shadow World play in the book? How does it help us learn about Justin?
- How well does Shadow World mirror current video and computer games and can you imagine a similar game in our future? How would it affect our society?
- What roles does the Wicker Man play? Are the Wicker Man and Shadow World successful plot devices?
- When Justin finally confronts Davis, does Davis owe it to him to tell him the truth? Knowing how the story ends, would Justin have been better off not knowing the secrets of his past?
- Is there any ethical or scientific merit to what Davis has done? Is it all for selfish reasons?
- Both Davis and Mickey the Gerund go to extremes to do what they believe is right. In what ways are their quests similar? Dissimilar?
- Do you sympathize with one of the men, Mickey or Davis, more than the other? Why or why not?
- Was the ending satisfying? Did you already have it all figured out or were you shocked?
— Veronica Bond
Cast of Shadows is a lot of things. It's a mystery story, a sci-fi thriller, a troubling tale of murder and revenge, and a heartbreaker about loss of purpose and love. When Dr. Davis Moore's daughter, Anna Kat (AK), is found raped and murdered in the dressing room of the Gap where she worked, Davis embarks on a maddening trail to avenge her death. He will stop at nothing and will let no one keep him from bringing her killer to justice. This is Davis Moore's story.
Cast of Shadows takes place somewhere slightly in the future when cloning has become an acceptable practice for couples who can't conceive naturally or don't wish to pass on their genes. Although the practice is still a bit questionable to most of the public, it's become something of a savior to those couples in need. As one of the nation's leading doctors and proponents of the practice, Davis Moore finds himself in a sticky situation when the authorities bungle the evidence from AK's crime scene and accidentally leave him with a vial of semen and a lock of hair from the man who took AK from his life. Davis wants nothing more than to look into the eyes of his daughter's killer and with these genetic tools literally at hand the temptation is too great to resist. Davis follows his callous desires and the result is Justin Finn, a physical testament to AK's meaningless death who, under the guise of scientific study, Davis can follow throughout his life.
The story follows its characters all over the city, from north side neighborhoods to the suburbs to the University of Chicago to even the intensely fictional "Shadow World," a Sims-like computer game where players are encouraged to create double lives for themselves. With the very real "Wicker Man" taking lives in Wicker Park, Justin and a Tribune reporter embark on their own murder hunt, following the killer's online avatar throughout "Shadow Chicago" to discover clues to his identity. The game gives Justin a chance to create some purpose for his life, to do something more than serve as the flesh and blood that will give Davis peace. As Justin grows up and grows into the man he's destined to become, it's unclear how his life will proceed. Although genetic cloning is less a product of science fiction and more of a reality in Davis Moore's world, the nature/nurture debate is alive and well and no one knows when or if Justin will become the cold-hearted killer determined by his genetic predecessor.
Cast of Shadows raises many questions about scientific integrity and the meaning of personal justice, but more than anything it's a well-crafted story with full-bodied characters whose intentions, however despicable they may be to the reader, are completely understandable. If the idea of genre fiction –- whether it be science fiction, mysteries, or crime noir –- isn't instantly appealing, take note that Cast of Shadows is more about these characters' lives and the consequences they must pay for their decisions than it is about fitting into any one literary subset. If anything, it's an incredibly gripping read that leaves the reader questioning the degrees of right and wrong and wondering how far they would go for something in which they believed.
~*~
For more information on Kevin Guilfoile and Cast of Shadows, visit the official website at www.castofshawdows.net. You can also read my original Detour review here.
— Veronica Bond
A mere one hundred and ten pages is the totality of this book. Comprised of short vignettes, this is a year in the life of Esperanza Cordero, a young girl coming of age in the Mexican neighborhood of Pilsen. Narrated by Esperanza, The House on Mango Street follows her mother, father, brother and two sisters as they restart their lives in a new house with new hopes and new experiences awaiting them. Though the book may be short in length, the strength and meaning gleaned from these snippets of Esperanza's life are never compromised for their brevity.
The Cordero family is after little more than the American Dream: to do well by their family and to have a house of their own. In Esperanza this dream becomes something more; it's a belief in a story repeated time and again and a disappointment when each new house falls short of her built-up expectations. "They always told us that one day we would move into a house," Esperanza says, "a real house that would be ours for always so we wouldn't have to move each year. And our house would have running water and pipes that worked. And inside it would have real stairs, not hallway stairs, but stairs inside like the houses on T.V. And we'd have a basement and at least three washrooms so when we took a bath we wouldn't have to tell everybody. Our house would be white with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing without a fence." It's a simple dream, nothing elaborate or beyond middle class means, but within the course of this narrative it's a dream that Esperanza does not get to experience.
Soft and sweet, sentimental but not without purpose, this is the story of a girl growing up, and it's not without some sadness that she enters adulthood. Esperanza is incredibly precocious and articulate in her thought, moving easily from the joy of high-heeled shoes to trepidation about what awaits her as a woman. Several women act as cautionary tales for Esperanza, serving as markers of what she is certain she does not want to become. When describing her great-grandmother, her namesake and a once wild woman who entered a depression in her marriage, Esperanza expounds that though she's inherited the woman's name, she does not want to inherit her place by the window, staring out at the world as it passes her by. Sally, a boisterous friend, runs off and gets married in effort to escape her abusive father. Unfortunately, her husband is not much better and in restricting contact with her friends and leaving physical destruction in the wake of his anger, Sally is no less afraid in this new life. Alicia, a neighbor, takes care of her family after her mother dies and divides her time desperately trying to educate herself because she is "afraid of nothing except four-legged fur. And fathers." Marin, another neighbor, exemplifies the stagnancy of existence, always dreaming of joining her boyfriend in Puerto Rico. After Marin is gone, Esperanza is sure that she's just somewhere else, "waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her life."
This story is full of these snapshots of characters, capturing the people who play some role in Esperanza's life. They are as clear and as quick as a Polaroid, but with within these pages they are preserved in this girl's memory. Cisneros is very apt at describing the human consciousness, in one moment portraying the feeling when one realizes their father is not as strong as he used to be and in another accurately depicting the internal struggle with class and race when one "drive[s] into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and our eyes look straight…that is how it goes and goes." The simplicity of The House on Mango Street is both startling and emotional, as it deftly encapsulating the surprise of growing up, the longing to know more and to be more, and the realization that one day all things could be taken away and lost. For Esperanza this is a dream of growing up strong and powerful, not passive like the other women she encounters, but "beautiful and cruel." This is a dream every bit as American as a home to call one's own and every bit as worthwhile an endeavor.
Sandra Cisneros was born and raised in Chicago, studying English first at Loyola University and earning her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa. She has published poetry, short stories and a children's book. Both The House on Mango Street and Caramelo, her second novel, have been chosen by various cities for their "One Book" programs. To learn more about the author, visit her website at www.sandracisneros.com.
— Veronica Bond
"Its official name was the World's Columbian Exposition, its official purpose to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America, but under Burnham, its chief builder, it had become something enchanting, known throughout the world as the White City."
--Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City
This month the Gapers Block Book Club is reading The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson, the best-selling book about the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 and America's first urban serial killer, H.H. Holmes. And, as Larson is quick to point out in the beginning of the book, "However strange and macabre some of the following incidents may seem, this is not a work of fiction."
Although the gruesome facts of H.H. Holmes’s story may be what readers remember, The Devil in the White City is a book about two men: Holmes and Daniel Hudson Burnham, the architect of the world's fair. In fact, Larson dedicates most of the book to the planning, construction and impact of the fair under Burnham's leadership.
But, if the White City represented Chicago at its best, the horrific killing spree of H.H. Holmes surely characterized the city's darkest side. His mansion at 63rd and Wallace, which Holmes operated as a hotel during the fair, was a real-life house of horrors. Young women, attracted to Chicago by the fair and the prospect of jobs, came to stay at his hotel, and were never seen again. Larson identifies at least nine victims, but Holmes boasted he had murdered at least 27 people in his lifetime.
Throughout the book, chapters alternate between the two stories. One could conceivably read only every other chapter and believe The Devil in the White City is only about the world's fair or only about H.H. Holmes. Together, however, these two separate stories reveal Chicago as a city of contrasts, filled with both darkness and light. One might easily argue the city has not changed in that respect.
But The Devil in the White City is ultimately about more than just a brief moment in the history of Chicago. The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 was the focus of national and international attention. Many products and innovations we have long taken for granted were introduced at the fair. From Cracker Jack to electric lighting, and from the Ferris wheel to Juicy Fruit gum, Larson reveals, in his story of the fair, a broad portrait of America on the verge of the 20th century. And, reading the book now, one might even see some parallels between the proposal and construction of the 1893 fair and Chicago's current bid for the Olympics. Will the city become the focus of international attention again in 2016?
Larson performed thorough research for The Devil in the White City, and it shows. But, he does take a number of liberties with his sources, and some may object to the way he sometimes gets inside the heads of his "characters." For example, when Larson seems to ask the reader to believe he can know what a victim was thinking when she was cornered by Holmes, he stretches his credibility. Yet, despite these occasional lapses into fictionalization, The Devil in the White City is an engaging account of a sensational period in our city's history.
For more information about the book, visit the official website for The Devil in the White City, which includes an excerpt from the book, an interview with the author and more.
— Alice Maggio
We asked, you answered, and now we are ready to share what books we will be reading through March 2007. Here is the complete and updated list of upcoming selections in the Gapers Block Book Club.
August 2006
Coffee Will Make You Black by April Sinclair
Don't forget our August meeting is just around the corner, and it's not too late to read this short novel about a young woman growing up in Chicago in the late 1960s. See above for complete meeting details.
September 2006
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Next month we will be meeting to talk about the best-selling true story of serial killer H.H. Holmes and the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.
October 2006
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
This modern classic novel about Esperanza Cordero, a young woman growing up in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood, has been one of the most popular suggestions from book club members. We are finally going to read it!
November 2006
Cast of Shadows by Kevin Guilfoile
Guilfoile's acclaimed debut novel is a gripping story about a Chicago doctor who clones his daughter's killer. We are also thrilled to announce that Kevin Guilfoile is scheduled to join us on November 13 for our book club discussion. Don't miss it!
December 2006
No book this month. The Gapers Block Book Club will not meet in December as most of us have more than enough to do between Thanksgiving and New Year's.
January 2007
Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago by Mike Royko
C'mon, you knew we would be reading this one sooner or later, right? Boss was suggested by a couple of people at our July meeting, and we thought it was a great idea.
February 2007
All This Heavenly Glory by Elizabeth Crane
In February we will be reading this critically acclaimed novel tracing the life of heroine Charlotte Anne Byers.
March 2007
The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea
Finally, we travel back to 19th-century Mexico for this historical novel based on the life of the author's great-aunt Teresita, the "Saint of Cabora."
So, those are the picks. Thanks again to everyone for their suggestions and recommendations.
— Alice Maggio
Did you know that the book club blog has a feed? Whether you use Bloglines or some other news aggregator, you can subscribe to the book club blog's Atom feed and know that you'll never miss a post. Yay!
— Alice Maggio
We are coming to the end of our current group of books very quickly. Right now our September book, Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, is the last book we have picked. So we need to select some new books fast! Veronica and I have lots of ideas, but we'd rather hear what you want to read. So help us out by recommending titles you think the book club might like in the book club forums.
We just have two basic guidelines for book club selections. The books should either be:
1. works of fiction by authors with some past or present connection to the Chicago area, or
2. non-fiction works that have something to do with Chicago.
Check out the complete list of past books to see what we've already read, or maybe just to see what you might have missed!
We look forward to your suggestions!
— Alice Maggio
Wed Jul 12 2006
There’s just something about a really good coming-of-age story. The good ones have the ability to talk for all others who have found themselves in a similar space in time or state of being, and April Sinclair’s Coffee Will Make You Black is a classic coming-of-age story through and through. The novel belongs to Stevie, born Jean Stevenson, who makes her way through junior high and high school in the city, finding new friends and succumbing to their influences both good and bad, experimenting with boys and her feelings toward both genders, and coming to terms with the changes in her body. What sets this apart from other stories is that, growing up in the late ‘60s, Stevie has one more demographic to factor into her journey into impending adulthood: race.
Race, much more than sexuality, is the driving force of Stevie’s growth. From childish insults – saying someone’s mother is so black that when she sweats she sweats chocolate – to memories of a grandmother who lost time with her own family to serve in a white family’s home to the riots that ran through Chicago’s streets when Martin Luther King was assassinated, Sinclair shows just how difficult finding one’s identity can be when saddled with more than the typical teenage miseries. This isn’t to say that sexuality doesn’t play a large part in Stevie’s adolescence, as it does for everyone, but all that Stevie experiences with men, money and education is foreshadowed by the color of her family’s skin.
In many ways, however, Stevie’s upbringing is not unlike thousands of others. She doesn’t know much about sex, even asking her mother if she’s a virgin and not receiving a clear answer. Most of what she picks up is from her friends and the boys she experiments with; it’s impressive that she doesn’t end up pregnant at her age like the two sisters of her close friend. But Sinclair is very careful to make Stevie not one of those who always follow the crowd, although she does possess a natural desire to be friends with the popular girls. Instead, Stevie is intelligent and questioning. The decisions she makes – who she becomes friends with, how far she goes with boys – are all her own and not at the goading of peers who may not have her best interests in mind. Stevie even fights her mother when she’s punished for giving her spot in the school chorus to another girl, and she wins because her impassioned plea incorporates everything she knows about freedom and fairness and reveals exactly the kind of person she’ll always be.
Coffee Will Make You Black is a quick read, taking not much time or effort to pass through the five years of Stevie’s life. This is perhaps the book’s one flaw, that there is not enough writing dedicated to chronicling Stevie’s growth. Sinclair touches on some very weighty topics that don’t get enough attention in the end. Subverting the straight-haired norm and choosing to wear one’s hair in a “natural” (an afro); fighting for the knowledgeable white school nurse who is in danger of being replaced simply because she’s white; watching one’s neighborhood being destroyed when a man who championed freedom is killed – these are all experiences that strongly shape one’s identity, yet we don’t get much more than simple exposition on these topics. One could write pages and pages on contemplating the subjects and never run out of things to say, so it’s unfortunate that Sinclair didn’t take the opportunity to delve a bit deeper into what these experiences mean to Stevie. Don’t let that stop your enjoyment of the story, though. Stevie’s story is one of strength and knowledge and, like any good coming-of-age story, makes you reflect on how these same elements came to make you who you are today.
More information:
April Sinclair grew up on the south side of Chicago, receiving her BA from Western Illinois University. The year of its publication, Coffee Will Make You Black was named Book of the Year in the Young Adult Fiction Category by the American Library Association. For more information on Sinclair and her work, visit her website at www.aprilsinclair.net.
— Veronica Bond
Here's one last Nelson Algren post before our July book club meeting to talk about The Man with the Golden Arm. The Nelson Algren Committee, a group of fans dedicated to promoting Algren's work, has a nifty map on their website that highlights dozens of places around the city that mark either fictional places in Algren's stories or real places significant during Algren's life. Many of the locations are in the Wicker Park area, so print out the map to create your own walking tour of Algren's Chicago.
— Alice Maggio
I sent this message out to the book club mailing list, but, for those who may have missed it, I wanted to let everyone know that The Book Cellar now has copies of our current book club pick, The Man with the Golden Arm, in stock. Look for them in the "Chicago" section of the store. Yay! It's not too late to start reading. At least I hope not, because otherwise I'm in trouble.
— Alice Maggio
Cinnamon has started reading The Man with the Golden Arm, and she shares some of her initial reactions on her blog. Have you started reading it yet? Share your thoughts--the good, the bad or the ugly--in the book club forums.
— Alice Maggio
Welcome to the new home of the Gapers Block Book Club! Here you can find out what we're reading now and all the latest book club news. Plus, the new book club homepage has its own weblog dedicated to news about local authors, the city's literary scene and books with a Chicago focus. So, take a look around and check back often. And, if you are not already a subscriber, sign up for the book club mailing list to receive reminders about upcoming meetings and other special announcements.
— Alice Maggio
In 1955 Nelson Algren was interviewed by Alston Anderson and Terry Southern for The Paris Review, and they asked him what has got to be the best interview question ever: "Did you ever feel that you should try heroin, in connection with writing a book about users?"
What?
Find out the answer to that question and read Algren's other thoughts about The Man with the Golden Arm by visiting The Paris Review website to download the entire interview in .pdf format.
— Alice Maggio
Those who read our June 2006 book, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, may be interested in visiting the book's official website. True to the conversational style of her memoir, Rosenthal encourages readers to become engaged with the book online. Contribute a moon description, share your "purple flower moment," or receive a personal thank you from the author for reading the book.
— Alice Maggio
In this debut novel, high school English teacher Peter Ferry witnesses a fatal car accident and becomes obsessed with learning about the life of the victim, Lisa Kim.
