Chicago Classics

 Randy Albers stepped to the stage first. The founder of the Story Week festival called the Chicago Classics a “jam.” We were assembled Friday night at the Chicago Cultural Center’s Preston Bradley Hall, with that majestic lid over our collective heads. Randy would soon hand over the affair to Rick Kogan, but by way of introduction first read from Everybody Pays. The passage he excerpted about a real life Chicago mob hit from more than 40 years ago clicked with language and landscape, hummed with tension, and the reading reminded us of a great book, a classic book, and also transported us to a time and place that had at least something to do with our shared lives.

Randy Albers at Chicago Classics.

It was one of those buckle-up affairs—15 or so readers, two solid hours, no intermission. After Rick, there came Dick Babcock and Joe Shanahan and Susan Hahn. I forget the order now, but they kept coming. Randy’s characterization of it as a “jam” was a bit idealized, but not too far off. Though the performance quality spiked and plummeted (there were those with stage and pulpit experience, others of us who mostly read to our kids), the sincerity remained high wire-to-wire. These people were there to appreciate some of Chicago’s most memorable and touching literature —Roger Ebert reviews, Archibald MacLeish poems, a Mike Royko column, a Frank Norris novel excerpt, a Ring Lardner story slice and so forth. 

This was the second time I'd been asked to participate, and each time the room was filled with familiar faces, the vast majority solid, smart and passionate people. Each time, as I mulled over hundreds of worthy selections to call my own, I reminded myself it was not about me. But of course that's not entirely true. Part of the fun is discovering who's on the top of Donna Seaman's  nightstand (Ward Just), or what Susan Nussbaum knows that I don't (a politcal blogger named Mike Ervin), or what's on Catholic priest John Cusick's list after the Bible (Bob Greene's Hang Time). 

For the record, I chose Willard Motley's Knock on Any Door. It's a novel I consider in the same conversation with A Native Son or The Man With the Golden Arm, but which did not, as so often happens, survive its own era. In honor of spring, I read this part:

And then it was spring. Mud that had been packed  solid loosened up. Patches of old snow turned wet brown on vacant lots and revealed ovals of last year's grass underneath. The gutters on Halsted Street gurgled. The alley smells came alive again. There were more children on the street now, more and more each day.

And to showcase the novel's most famous line, I read:

When the beer came Nick lifted and tilted the brown liquid in past the yellow foam. 'Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse!' he said with a toss of his head. That was something he had picked up somewhere and he'd say it all the time now. Always with a a cocky toss of his head.

I chose those passages because I like hearing them out loud--it's not just that I marvel at the writing, but they give me joy, make me think, inspire me to do better as a writer. It's one of those books that, when I'm reading it, urges me to assault whoever's around and say, "Listen to this!"

That's what I like best about the whole Chicago Classics concept--writers coming together to just enjoy terrific writing that doesn't really have much to do with their own egos. Randy and Rick and the rest of the producers of this show chose a really nice array of participants, ensuring that it all added up to an enlightening evening. I discovered some new writers, like Matthew Goulish, who was featured by John Rich. I gained insight into other writers, like Paul Carroll, of whom John Schultz shared his personal recollections. And I heard from and about writers I'd dismissed, like Bob Greene, making me at least consider going back to see if I missed something. 

I talked to Randy after the event, and we agreed to get together later so that I could document the history of Chicago Classics on the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame website. He said at the start that around 200 people had read at the event over the years. That number includes some of our best contemporary authors, like Christine Sneed and Achy Obejas who, in addition to names I've already mentioned, were there Friday night. That number also includes representatives of some of our finest literary organizations, i.e. Carolyn Saper from the American Writers Museum and John Rich from the Guild Complex were readers. I think it will be a nice source of information and intrigue to compile the list of all the readers for our CLHOF followers to access. 

That's how the evening ended, a bunch of people catching up, making plans, doing post mortem on all that had just transpired. That's another reason I like Chicago Classics--it's a good excuse to get out among friends like Sheryl Johnson and Michael Burke, make plans with acquaintances like Ellen Gradman and meet people whose work you admire like Dick Babcock. There should have been an open bar, but you take what you can get.

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Donald G. Evans is the founder and executive director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. He is the author of the novel Good Money After Bad and short story collectionAn Off-White Christmas, as well as the editor of the anthology Cubbie Blues: 100 Years of Waiting Till Next Year. He is the Chicago editor of the Great Lakes Cultural Review. He serves on the American Writers Museum's Chicago Literary Council and the committee that selects the Harold Washington Literary Award.

donaldgevans@hotmail.com