Posted inBook Review

Inside Ling Ma’s darkly funny fiction

I don’t usually get ensnared by a book. But Ling Ma’s short story collection, Bliss Montage, was different. I started reading it Thanksgiving morning and literally could not stop. There was something urgent in Ma’s writing, something that demanded full attention. It might be her distinctive voice—wry, witty, relatable. Or her sentences—carefully crafted, but not […]

Posted inBook Review

Modeling vulnerability

“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” —Zora Neale Hurston This quote has been on my mind recently. It is in the epigraph of a recent read: Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir In the Dream House, a title which also appeared in the acknowledgments of the book at […]

Posted inLit Feature

Living on luck

Westley Heine never dreamed of singing for change on the streets of Chicago but life sometimes offers only stark choices. Getting by as a musician, artist, or writer is uphill barefoot through snowdrifts on a good day. Add a recession, a relationship going sour, some substance abuse, and a generous helping of self-doubt and few […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Performance anxiety

“The people who pick up flyers and show up to free classes tend to be restless searchers,” John tells his students, after remarking that there must be something wrong with them if they’re here. When one student takes offense, John assures her he means this as a compliment. This scene takes place early on in […]

Posted inBook Review

The extraordinary tragedy of daily life

Wolfgang Amadeus Aleksandr “Aleks” Fa has a lot of baggage. The protagonist of Joe Meno’s new novel Book of Extraordinary Tragedies has that name, after all—which also serves as a clue about what burdens the young man.  Born into a perfectionist but impoverished Bosnian/Croat/Polish family in Evergreen Park on the border with Chicago’s south side, […]

Posted inBook Review

Mount Chicago tries hard, but fails

A novelist, writing professor, and covert comedian named Solomon Gladman wakes up one morning in Chicago, sometime in 2022. He and his French-born wife, Daphne Bourbon (would she be named Siobhan Single-Malt were she Scots-Irish?), plan to meet Gladman’s parents and sisters downtown for brunch. But Gladman begs off because of a hemorrhoid flare-up and […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Method and madness

“My dear boy, why don’t you try acting?” Laurence Olivier’s quippy response to Dustin Hoffman’s story of how he stayed up three nights to fully inhabit the sleepless state of his character in the 1976 thriller Marathon Man may be the most oft-cited example of the absurd ends Method acting came to in America. But […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Sweat equity, radical politics, and gentrification

Before Pilsen welcomed gallery spaces and Little Village became La Villita, the city’s Mexican population fought to make their voices heard and for places to live. Georgetown University historian Mike Amezcua chronicles this decades-long struggle in his compelling Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification, published in February by University of […]

Posted inArts & Culture

The business of circus

Balancing Acts: Unleashing the Power of Creativity in Your Life and Work (HarperCollins Leadership, January 2022, $28.99) by Daniel Lamarre is a book for those who need creative inspiration. Part business memoir and part self-help/motivational, the appeal of this book will land squarely on the aspiring businessman who needs an icon. It not only celebrates […]