Cliff Dwellers Book Club: Christine Sneed on April 26

There were just three of us: me, Christine Sneed and Melissa Fraterrigo. We’d meet up at a coffee or sandwich shop, usually on State Street off the Congress. We’d share our stories or hunks of novels. We’d offer advice. I don’t think any of us much cared for the idea of a critique group—we’d all been through that, in fact were teaching it to others. But we liked and trusted each other and felt, I think, we could benefit from advice and structure, and so we went on like this for a while.

Christine showed us these wonderfully smart and riveting stories, many of which she’d submitted, without success, to literary journals far and wide. She was still making them better, though largely they were already polished. There was no doubt in my mind, or Melissa’s, that these were top-notch stories, certainly worthy of publication. I felt that the best of the stories compared favorably with the best contemporary stories, period.

Christine did manage to place many of her stories, though typically she collected dozens of rejection slips prior to hearing good news.

A few years later, Christine won a prize. Her first book, Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry, won AWP's Grace Paley Prize for short fiction. She hired Sheryl Johnston—one of the best, hardest working publicists in Chicago—to give her collection a push.  She received really positive reviews. Started getting asked to appear at the most prestigious literary events and reading venues. More acclaim came tumbling her way: Ploughshares' first book award, the Zacharis Prize. Christine landed a top-flight agent, who in turn secured her a Bloomsbury publishing contract. She was awarded the Chicago Tribune’s 21^st Century Award at last fall’s Sandburg Literary Awards dinner.

Nothing changed about Christine or her work. She’d always been a hard worker, a grinder, a humble yet confident artist consistently producing distinguished literature. But the luster in those manuscripts piling up in her desk drawer suddenly became apparent to more and more people.

Christine followed up her story collection with a novel, Little Known Facts.

We’ll discuss that book at the Cliff Dwellers Book Club (200 S. Michigan Ave., 22^nd floor) this Saturday morning, April 26, starting at 11 a.m. I’ll be on hand to ask Christine a few questions and generally lead a discussion of this wonderful novel.

Little Known Facts is the story of celebrity and the opposite. It is the story of all the orbits surrounding fame, the American (or perhaps world-wide) penchant for idolization, and the reality, for the rest of us, that we are not them.

Renn Ivins is a mega-Hollywood celebrity—rich, talented and handsome beyond the reach of nearly all mortals. He is the planet around which everybody else evolves, including his adult son and daughter, his ex-wives, his girlfriends, and basically anybody who has even a minor association with anybody in his life.   

Christine has family members and friends who live in Los Angeles and work in the film industry. She has visited L.A. many times, been a lifelong film lover, and done some work as a movie reviewer. She no doubt drew upon all this in creating the fictional world of Little Known Facts.

But her experience as an author must also have given her insight into this dichotomy between the famous and the rest. Sometimes during those State Street workshop sessions, we’d gossip about the insanity of an undeserving writer’s success or the stupidity of a deserving writer’s failure. None of us are petty people—Christine and Melissa are just the opposite—but it’s just natural to look at your own life through the prism of other lives. What do they have that we don’t? Why?

Though the fame of a writer pales in comparison to the fame of an actor, there is some of that in the literary world.  All worlds, I suppose. Christine, to some extent, has lived through obscurity and fame, or at least a semblance of it.

I’m interested to hear Christine’s thoughts on her own literary career, as well as her inspiration for telling this story. I’ll get her to talk about what it means that Renn is not satisfied—despite all he has, he still wants his son’s girlfriend, for example. I’ll ask her whether Danielle’s secret preference for Renn over Will is  commentary on settling. I’ll see what the whole group has to say about idea of fame.

This is a really fun book for discussion. We live in a society that delivers constant updates on celebrity minutia, to the point that without trying we can recite a fair biography of, oh, Oprah or George Clooney or Lady Gaga. So this novel, with its multiple points of view, is an exploration of something fundamental to our lives. Even—especially--if we don’t want it to be.

Little Known Facts won the Society of Midland Authors 2013 prize for adult fiction.  Chicago Magazine also named it in 2013 the Best New Book by a Local Author.  

The CD Book Club is open to the public.

If you plan on staying for lunch afterward, please call 312.922.8080 to make a reservation.

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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