In her last year of college, Lorraine Boissoneault, an avowed Francophile and writer who lives in Chicago, became interested in the French history of North America and the journey undertaken by René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the first European to travel from Montreal to the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Her fascination with the great explorer led to a conversation with an underwater diver and thus to the story of La Salle’s Le Griffon (The Griffin), the first full-sized sailing ship on the upper Great Lakes which disappeared in 1679 with six crew members and a load of furs—also making it the first shipwreck in the Great Lakes. Luckily La Salle had disembarked before the ship made its final voyage. She also learned about a Reid Lewis, a French teacher who decided to re-enact La Salle’s trip, an eight-month, 3,300-mile expedition he undertook with 16 students and six teachers dressed in the period clothing from that time to celebrate the country’s Bicentennial.
“It’s
amazing when you think of how much they could withstand,” she says, meaning
both La Salle and Lewis’ crews.
Indeed,
Lewis and his group of students and educators had to trudge over 500 miles of
Midwestern landscape during one of the coldest winters on record in the 20th
century, paddle in Voyageur canoes across the storm tossed and freezing Great
Lakes and, in keeping with their pledge to emulate La Salle, start their campfires
with flint and wood.
Of all
the thousands of miles they retraced, Lewis’ voyageurs felt that Canada’s
Georgian Bay on Lake Huron was most unchanged and therefore the closest they
came to what La Salle would have experienced in terms of the water and
landscape.
“We’re
fascinated by history but you can’t go back no matter how hard you want to,”
says Boissoneault noting she can’t imagine seeing Chicago without civilization
as La Salle would have done. “The past is unobtainable. Most poignant for me is
their walk across the Midwest. They were doing the same thing La Salle did and
wearing the same clothes but nothing was like how it would have been in La Salle’s day.”
Everything is Just Fine, a social satire about families on a Beverly Hills soccer team for 10-year-old boys told partially in e-mails, explores the secrets and failings of the parents as they connect with each other throughout the season’s wins and losses.
Written by Brett Paesel, who also authored the bestselling Mommies Who Drink: Sex, Drugs, and Other Distant Memories of an Ordinary Mom, the book could have been full of stock characters. We have the divorcee who drinks too much and spends way too much time flirting with other women’s husbands, the vaguely zoned-out housewife who keeps telling herself she is really, really grateful for what she has until she lands in bed with the sexy Latin soccer star who is helping coach the team and Coach Randy, who after losing his job, hides out at the library so his wife doesn’t know he’s unemployed.
But Paesel goes beyond the stereotypes and we come to know and care about these people as we follow what they’re dealing with in their lives.
“Because of an over-parenting snafu–I wanted to get my son on his
friend’s team–I ended up in the Beverly Hills soccer league,” says Paesel
about what inspired her to write her book. “My neighborhood league would have
been much more modest. Suddenly, I was in a world that was rarified. The fields
are lovely and have shade, parents lived in McMansions and some of them even
owned restaurants. My son’s team played Beckham’s kid’s team. Paparazzi
regularly staked out the games. Will Farrell was a coach at one point. My son
wasn’t a gifted player and he landed on a team that really didn’t have a
super-strong athlete, but the coach was hugely enthusiastic, and they became
the little team that could. The coach sent long e-mails giving shout-outs to
each player. I remember he called my son a Lion which he wasn’t – he was
deathly afraid of the ball. I started out wondering what was going on with the
coach because he was so zealous and seemed to have lots of time to craft these
e-mails.”
At first Paesel thought she was writing a short story parody of the email
chain she was reading but soon started feeling compassion for her characters.
“I wanted to know them better,” says Paesel who is also an actress and
producer. “They are all very flawed people, but I was moved by their intense
desire to connect – even when they fell disastrously short.”
Though she initially based most of her characters on people she knew,
Paesel says they quickly became their own people and so now, when she sees them
in her mind, she no longer sees the real people they were based on.
Does she worry that someone will know themselves when reading her book?
“People never recognize themselves in my writing for some reason,” says
Paesel. “I found this to be true in my memoir writing as well.”
Besides a good read and a lot of
laughs, Paesel hopes that people put her book down feeling a sense of belonging
to this great human drama we get to live through.
“The characters in my book get too caught up in things that are simply
unimportant and won’t get them the happiness that they are desperately seeking,”
she says. “At the heart of my book is an exhortation to keep paying attention
to what’s really important. Which is always – very simply – love.”
Ifyougo:
What: Brett Paesel has several book
events in Chicago.
Abby Wambach, the two-time Olympic gold medalist, FIFA World Cup champion and international soccer’s all-time leading scorer, is taking on a new game, that of empowering women—asking them not only to be thankful for what they have but also to demand what they deserve. And that’s the premise of her new book, Wolfpack: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game (Celadon 2019; $15.82 Amazon price).
To create a winning championship team, Wambach, who was co-captain,
helped forage the 2015 Women’s World Cup Champion Team into a wolfpack of
winners. Now she’d like women to ignore the old rules that help keep them down
and instead change the game.
Believing that there has never been a more important moment for women,
she talks about the “Power of the Wolf” and the “Strength of the Pack,” and her
book is rousing call to women outside of the sports world but employing the
techniques she used to create a championship team.
“We are the wolf,” she said in her keynote address to the Class of 2018
at Barnard’s 126th Commencement on Wednesday, May 16, 2018 at Radio City Music
Hall and her book reflects that stirring speech. Her concepts of “Power of
their Wolf” and the “Strength of their Pack” is her way to be a catalyst for
overcoming the obstacles that women face. As an example, she talks about the
pay gap where women in the U.S. still earn only 80 cents on the dollar compared
to men and black women make only 63 cents, while Latinas make 54 cents.
“What we need to talk about more is the aggregate and compounding effects
of the pay gap on women’s lives,” she says.
“Over time, the pay gap means women are able to invest less and save
less so they have to work longer. When we talk about what the pay gap costs us,
let’s be clear. It costs us our very lives. That’s why if we keep playing by
the old rules, we will never change game.”
Wambach offers some rules to overcome being Little Red Riding Hood and
instead become “the wolf.”
· Make failure your fuel: Transform failure to wisdom and
power.
· Lead from the bench: Lead from wherever you are.
· Champion each other: Claim each woman’s victory as your
own.
· Demand the effing ball: Don’t ask permission: take what
you’ve earned.
Ifyougo:
What: Celebrate the release of Abby Wambach’s book Wolfpack
When:
Thursday, April 11 at 7 pm
Where:
Community Christian Church, 1635 Emerson Lane, Naperville
Cost: Tickets cost $29.97 (with service fee) and include a pre-signed copy of the new book and admission for one person. You will receive your book when you arrive at the event. wolfpackandersons.brownpapertickets.com
FYI: For
more information, call Anderson’s Bookshops, 630-355-2665
Jacqueline Winspear, author of The American Agent, the 15th book in her Maisie Dobbs’ series, transports us to early September 1940, as Adolf Hitler unleashed his Blitzkrieg or lighting attack on London and other United Kingdom cities, an intensive attack already used successfully in Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and France to enable an invasion to take place. Day after day, night after night for months on end, hundreds of German bombers would fly across the Channel to wreak havoc. Maisie and her friend, Priscilla are volunteer ambulance drivers, and on one run they are accompanied by an American war correspondent, Catherine Saxon.
Following her late-night broadcast to the US, where she describes
her experience of seeing the death and destruction that the bombings have
wrought on the city, Saxon is found dead in her rooms. Maisie Dobbs is brought
in to conduct an undercover investigation – her presence requested by a man
from the US Department of Justice, Mark Scott, who had previously saved her life
in Munich, in 1938. The story is
peppered with excerpts from real broadcasts and reporting at the time.
On a multi-city tour, Winspear will be in Chicago for a book signing on April 4. Speaking to Jane Ammeson, she talks about An American Agent and how her own past was an impetus for her series.
For
readers who have never met Maisie, can you give us a brief summary?
Readers first met Maisie Dobbs in the first
novel in the series – entitled Maisie
Dobbs. From a working class
background, Maisie is a young woman of intellect and a keen intuitive ability,
which is recognized by a friend of her employer. Dr. Maurice Blanche – a
psychologist and Doctor of Forensic Medicine who consults with the police –oversees
her education and entry to university, which is sponsored by her employer – but
WW1 intervenes, and Maisie volunteers for nursing service, and is later wounded
at a Casualty Clearing Station in France – an experience that defines her. Later, having recovered, she becomes Blanche’s
assistant, and in the first novel in the series we see her striking out on her
own upon his retirement – she is a “psychologist and investigator.” Maisie is
very much a woman of her day – so many young women had to be incredibly
self-sufficient as the men they might have married had been lost to war. I have
written extensively on this subject as it’s always interested me.
I am
impressed by your vast knowledge and ability to bring us into this time period.
I know your grandfather was severely injured in the Battle of the Somme and
your family talked about the war. How did those experiences translate into you
writing books and immersing yourself in this time period?
Family stories always have an immediacy that
reading books and immersing oneself in research sometimes lacks. My grandfather
was very much of his generation of men who saw the most terrible death in the
trenches of WW1 France and Belgium – he never talked about it, with the
exception of a couple of stories shared with my father. But I could see the
wounds – his poor shrapnel-filled legs (he was still removing shrapnel
splinters when he died at age77), and I could hear the wheezing of his
gas-damaged lungs. And I knew he had suffered shell-shock. Added to this were my mother’s stories of the
Second World War – her experiences of being evacuated, of having to return to
London, then of being bombed out time and again. And yes, of seeing death on
the streets following a bombing. The
experience of listening to family stories – even from a very young age –
inspired my curiosity, which later became an adult inquiry, so you could say
I’ve been researching my subject since childhood.
This
is your 15th book in the series. How do you go about developing your stories?
Are they mapped out or do you take an incident and place Maisie in there and
let it all happen?
I think creating a story is like lighting fire.
First of all, you lay down the paper and kindling, then you need a match for
the flame, and you follow that with your fuel.
Often the kindling for a story is laid down years before I begin to
write – because I have been waiting for the spark to light the fire and then
the fuel to build the flame. For
example, I had known the true story that inspired “Elegy for Eddie” since I was
a teen – of a young girl not 16 years old, a cleaner in the local brewery
stables who had given birth to a baby boy while at work, and while stopping him
from crying had starved his brain of oxygen. That young boy – thereafter
considered “slow” – was born and grew up around horses and had a gift. As he grew up, he could settle the most
uppity horse, simply by laying a hand upon the animal – that’s how he earned a
living at a time when horses were vital for commerce and transportation. As a boy, my father knew this young man, and
he told me of his later “suspicious” demise.
After I began writing the series, I knew “Eddie” would form the basis of
a story – the kindling, if you will. Then
I learned more about the pre-war machinations of various powerful men close to
Churchill, and the secrecy surrounding their work, whether it was in creating
soft propaganda or developing fighter aircraft.
That’s when I asked the question – what if an innocent, a young man of
limited intellectual ability but deep empathy stumbled across crucial
classified information? Then what might happen? The flame caught and I had a
fire. But when I begin writing any
story, I only know the main landing points along the way, I do not know all the
details – they come as the story is written. I like to have the basic map, but
I also like to “dance with the moment” and be able to respond to new ideas or
information as they emerge.
Are
there times you’re back in the England between the wars versus 2019?
To some extent I have to be in the years I’m writing about – I cannot be distracted by today while I’m writing. When I’m at work, I am completely with my characters – I walk their streets, I can see what they are wearing, what they buy, what they eat, and I can hear their use of language, which is different from today.
Jim Laughren wants to keep it real when talking about wine. No pretentions, no superciliousness.
It’s about what you like, not what the big time wine critics say you should like says Laughren, author of 50 Ways to Love Wine More: Adventures in Wine Appreciation! (Crosstown Publishing 2018; $26.95), an NYC Big Book Award winner and finalist in the American Book Fest Best Book Awards.
“I wrote the book with the intention of starting a conversation about wine,” says Laughren, a Certified Wine Educator and former president of a wine import and distribution company. ““I wanted my book to be for people who really like wine but are put off by wine snobs. All of my writing and teaching is about letting people know that what other people think doesn’t matter, that there are no secrets to wine though many wine critics would have you believe otherwise and that only they hold the secrets. Historically, there’s never been a wine or gate keeper.”
Indeed, says Laughren, wine was, for centuries both seasonal and also for everyone.
“In Rome, they even gave their slaves wine though it was the dregs, of course,” he says. “Wine’s greatest gift is to give pleasure and we’re all entitled to that.”
Determining your own palate means trusting your own preferences. And though wine can be complex, it becomes easier to appreciate when a person understands how memory and emotion are inextricably tied to taste and are determining factors in all of our personal wine journeys.
“At the top of the nasal passage is the olfactory epithelium that connects directly to the area of the brain where memories are stored,” explains Laughren. “You know how some wines have tastes of tobacco. If as a child you had a kindly grandfather who smoked a pipe, contrasted with a child whose parents chain smokers and a house that reeked of cigarettes, those memories would impact how the two would feel about the taste or aromas of tobacco in wine.”
Laughren, founder of WineHead Consulting, encourages people to explore new wines while still enjoying your favorites.
“There are 10,000
different grape varietals,” he says. “Look at Italy, there are probably 800
varieties in that country alone.”
Like most of us, Laughren
drank some funky wines in college.
“Most wines made in the
1970s were very sweet,” he says. “Group think changes. Now those in the know
pooh-pooh sweet table wines as the drinks of the unwashed masses. But if that’s
what you like, don’t spend too much time thinking about it, just enjoy them. Instead
think about exposing yourself to other wines and widening your experience.”
Ifyougo:
What: Reading, signing, and wine
tasting with renowned wine expert Jim Laughren who be discussing his new book, 50 Ways to Love Wine More.
Where: The Book Cellar, 4736-38 N
Lincoln Ave., Chicago, IL
It’s personal for Katie Parla, award winning cookbook author, travel guide and food blogger who now has turned her passion for all things Italian to the off-the-beaten paths of Southern Italy, with its small villages, endless coastline, vast pastures and rolling hills. “Three of my grandmother’s four grandparents are from Spinoso, deep in a remote center of Basilicata,” says Parla, the author of the just releasedFood of the Italian South: Recipes for Classic, Disappearing Lost Dishes (Clarkson Potter 2019; $30).
Katie Parla in Southern Italy. Photo credit Ed Anderson.
Parla is a journalist but she’s also a culinary sleuth, eager to learn all about foodways as well as to chronicle and save dishes that are quickly disappearing from modern Italian tables. She’s lived in Rome since graduating with a degree from Yale in art history and her first cookbook was the IACP award winning Tasting Rome. She’s also so immersed herself in Italian cuisine that after moving to Rome, she earned a master’s degree in Italian Gastronomic Culture from the Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”, a sommelier certificate from the Federazione Italiana Sommelier Albergatori Ristoratori, and an archeological speleology certification from the city of Rome.
Matera. Photo credit Ed Anderson.
In tiny Spinoso, Parla and her mother checked into one of the few available rooms for rent and went to office of vital statistics to find out more about family history. “We made the mistake of getting there before lunch,” she says. “You could tell they really want to go home and eat. They told us there were only four or five last names in the village and since ours wasn’t one of them, then we couldn’t be there.”
Caiazzo. Photo credit Ed Anderson.
But Parla found that sharing wine with the officers soon produced friendlier results (“wine and food always does that in Italy,” she says) and after leafing through dusty, oversized ledgers written in fading, neat cursive they were able to locate the tiny house where her grandfather had lived as well as other extensive family history. “Thank goodness for Napoleon, who was really into record keeping, no matter his other faults” says Parla.
Katie Parla. Photo credit Ed Anderson.
Many of her ancestors were sheepherders, tending sheep, staying with a flock for a week in exchange for a loaf of bread. This poverty was one reason so many Southern Italians left for America. But it also is the basis for their pasta and bread heavy cuisine says Parla. To capture the flavors of this pastoral area, Parla visited restaurants and kitchens, asking questions and writing down recipes which had evolved over the centuries from oral traditions. Describing Rome, Venice and Florence as “insanely packed,” Parla believes that those looking for a less traveled road will love Southern Italy, an ultra-authentic region to the extent that in Cilento, for example, there are more cars than people on the road.
Spezzatino all Uva . Photo credit Ed Anderson.
“There’s all this amazing food,” she says. “But also, there’s all this unspoiled beauty such as the interior of Basilicata. And the emptiness, because so many people are gone, creates this sense of haunted mystery. It’s so special, I want people to understand the food and to visit if they can.” For more information, visit katieparla.com
’U Pan’ Cuott’ Baked Bread and Provolone Casserole
Serves 4 to 6
1 pound day-old durum wheat bread (I like Matera-style; see page 198), torn into bite-size pieces
3 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
7 ounces provolone cheese, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 teaspoon peperoni cruschi powder or sweet paprika
2 garlic cloves, smashed
1 teaspoon dried oregano
½ teaspoon peperoncino or red pepper flakes
¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Sea salt
Overview:
In Bernalda, a town in Basilicata best known as the ancestral village of Francis Ford Coppola, there are many ancient bread traditions. The town isn’t far from the durum wheat fields of the Murgia plateau and the famous bread towns Matera and Altamura. One of the town’s classic dishes is ’u pan’ cuott’ (Bernaldese dialect for pane cotto, “cooked bread”). Families would bake stale slices of Bernalda’s enormous 3-kilogram loaves with whatever food scraps they could find, resulting in a savory, delicious bread casserole bound by gooey bits of melted provolone. Use the crustiest durum bread you can find or bake.
Method:
Preheat the oven to 475°F with a rack in the center position.
Place the bread in a colander, rinse with warm water, and set aside to soften. The bread should be moistened but not sopping wet.
In a large bowl, combine the tomatoes, provolone, peperoni cruschi, garlic, oregano, peperoncino, and ¼ cup of the olive oil. Season with salt.
When the bread crusts have softened, squeeze out any excess liquid and add the bread to the bowl with the tomato mixture. Stir to combine.
Grease a baking dish with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, pour in the tomato mixture, and drizzle the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil on top. Bake until the top is heavily browned, and the provolone has melted, about 20 minutes. Serve warm.
Spezzatino all’Uva
Pork Cooked with Grapes
Serves 6 to 8
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 pounds boneless pork shoulder, salted and cut into 2-inch cubes
1 garlic clove, smashed
1 cup dry red wine (I like Aglianico del Vulture)
2 bay leaves
4 cups pork stock or water
1 bunch of red grapes (I like Tintilia grapes), halved and seeded
Overview:
The foothills east of the Apennines in Molise grow Tintilia, an indigenous red grape known for its low yield and pleasant notes of red fruit and spices. Each year, the majority of the harvested grapes are pressed to make wine, with the remainder reserved for jams and even savory dishes like this pork and grape stew, which is only made at harvest time. The slight sweetness of the grapes mingles beautifully with the savory pork and herbaceous notes of the bay leaves. Salt the pork 24 hours in advance.
Method:
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When the oil begins to shimmer, add the pork, working in batches as needed, and cook, turning, until it is browned on all sides, 7 to 8 minutes. Remove the pork and set aside on a plate.
Reduce the heat to low. Add the garlic and cook until just golden, about 5 minutes. Add the wine, increase the heat to medium, and scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. When the alcohol aroma dissipates and the liquid has nearly evaporated, about 2 minutes, add the bay leaves.
Return the pork to the pan. Add enough stock so the meat is mostly submerged and season with salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 1½ hours more, until the pork is fork-tender. Add the grapes at the 1 ¼ hour mark and continue cooking until they are tender. If the sauce becomes too dry, add a bit more stock (you may not need all the stock). Serve immediately.
Ifyougo:
What: Katie Parla has three events in Chicago
When & Where: March 19 from 6:30 to 9pm. Katie will be celebrating the release of her cookbook with her friends at Monteverde, 1020 West Madison Street, Chicago, IL. The cost of the dinner is $150 including food, wine pairings, tax, gratuity and copy of the book. (312) 888-3041.
When & Where: March 20 from 6 to 9pm. Katie will be hosting an aperitivo and signing at Lost Lake’s Stranger in Paradise, 3154 W Diversey Ave., Chicago, IL. No booking necessary, just come on down. Books will be sold on site by Book Cellar. (773) 293-6048.
Menu of five cocktails from the book, $12.
Three small plates (two pastas from Pastificio di Martino and olive oil poached tuna, endive and olives) from Chef Fred Noinaj, $12-15.
When & Where: March 21 from 6 to 7:30pm. Katie will host an aperitivo and sign books, which will be available for purchase at Bonci Wicker Park, 1566 N Damen Ave., Chicago, IL. (872) 829-3144.
Bruce Iglauer, president and founder of Alligator Records, describes himself as an actively bad musician who can’t read music, and can only sometimes sing on pitch. Yet he was able to turn a $2500 inheritance into the largest independent record label in the world. Bitten by the Blues: The Alligator Records Story (University of Chicago Press 2018; $30), co-authored with Patrick Roberts, an associate professor in the College of Education at Northern Illinois University, is Iglauer’s memoir encompassing more than a half century of the blues, not only in Chicago but throughout the globe.
Iglauer and Roberts
chatted with Shelf Life blogger Jane Simon Ammeson about their book as well as
their working relationship.
Jane: Bruce, you started
off in the mailroom and worked your way up to owning your own independent blues
record label. Give us a little background on how that happened and how you took
some of your inheritance to start Alligator Records. Would it be possible to do
something like this today?
Bruce: My inheritance was a ridiculously small amount of money to
start a record label. I spent every penny recording that first Hound Dog Taylor
album and pressing a thousand copies. With the help of a well-established
distributors, I was able to get my record into a lot of stores, and with the
help of a format of radio called “progressive rock”, I was able to score a lot
of radio play. Now almost all those distributors are gone, along with all but a
handful of record stores. “Progressive rock” radio disappeared decades ago. So,
the path I took is no longer viable. But at the same time, these days, with
digital recording, it’s possible to record an album for a few thousand dollars
or maybe even less. And using services like CD Baby or The Orchard, it’s
possible for that album to be available online without ever being in the form
of a CD or an LP. However, without the know-how and connections that an
established label has, it’s almost impossible for self-produced artist or a
startup label to get the media attention that his or her music may deserve.
So—can you make a record on a tiny budget like I did with Hound Dog Taylor?
Yes. Can you make the world know that your music exists? These days, that’s
very, very difficult. And the streaming services that are taking over as the
way people listen to music pay so little that making enough money to continue
to make commercial recordings is almost impossible.
Jane: Did you have an
abundance of confidence or was that a scary time for you?
Bruce: I was scared, and I only had enough money to make one
record. I knew that if I ever wanted to make a second one, I’d have to sell
enough of the first. So, I knew that any mistake could be the end of my brand
new label. But I was determined and believed in the music I was recording. I
figured if I loved the blues so much, other people would too—if they only heard
it.
Jane: Do you find it
amazing that you’re not a musician but have been so successful in the music
world?
Bruce: I’ve learned a lot about the blues from spending hundreds of hours with blues musicians, and I can speak their language. I’ve produced or co-produced over 130 albums, and my combination of some musical knowledge and unlimited enthusiasm seems to inspire blues musicians to great performances. I often tell musicians—If you record for Alligator, your goal should be to make records where you can say “this is my best music, the music I want my children and grandchildren to listen to.” If musicians don’t want to make their career best records, we don’t want them on Alligator.
Jane: Patrick, what was it
like working with Bruce on the book? Did you have a background in the music
industry at all? Or did you learn as you went along?
Patrick: I joke that when I
initially sat down with Bruce to begin the project, I worried he wouldn’t have
much to say. Nothing could have been further from the truth. We recorded over 100
hours of audio—Bruce talking while I occasionally prompted him with questions
or requests for clarification. I don’t have a background in the music industry,
and I think this fact helped us write for readers like me who may not have
extensive knowledge of blues music or the record business. It’s a very
accessible book, and even readers without much blues history under their belts
will enjoy learning about some truly remarkable personalities, the great Hound
Dog Taylor being one notable example.
Jane: What was the
inspiration for writing Bitten by the
Blues? Are there take-aways you’d like people to get besides just a good
read?
Bruce: The book is not intended to be about me. I see myself as a
camera and hope that the readers will be able to see the wonderful, exciting
world of the Chicago blues clubs in the 1970s and 80s, when most of the music
was in the black community and shared by people who had a vibrant culture and
heritage. I also want to give the readers an idea of how blues recordings are
created, and to tell them something about the musical giants I’ve been able to
work with, tour with, and who became my friends. And I want to give them a look
at what it means to be a specialized independent record label, and how the
recording business used to work, and how it works now. Mostly, I hope that this
memoir will inspire people to listen to some of the charismatic blues artists
who have created this timeless, exhilarating music.
Ifyougo
What: Bruce Iglauer and Patrick Roberts share stories, answer questions
and sign copies of their books
When: Friday, February 22; 7 to 8 p.m.
Where: Rosa’s Lounge, 3420 W. Armitage Ave., Chicago, IL
Cost: Free
FYI: Contact City Lit Books at 773-235-2523; citylitbooks.com
When we
think of Ben Hecht—and really, how many of us do? it’s because the college
drop-out, turned Chicago Daily News reporter and then screenwriter personifies
the early part of the 19th century. He was a war and crime journalist
who went beyond writing and instead helped solve murder cases, along with the
help of fellow newsman, Charlie MacArthur of the Chicago Examiner.
Adina Hoffman
Indeed
many people, including author Adina Hoffman know and love Hecht’s movies including
such classics as Scarface, Twentieth
Century, The Front Page and Notorious
without even knowing his name.
“I worked as a film critic throughout the 90s, and it was only when I started to really involve myself in film history that I read Hecht’s memoir, A Child of the Century,” says Hoffman, author of the just releasedBen Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures (Yale University Press 2018; Amazon price $17.61), noting there is so much of Hecht’s DNA in the movies made during the Golden Age of Hollywood.
But as Hoffman
read more and more about Hecht, she realized there was more to him than a Jazz
Age writer who overindulged in a variety of vices.
“I realized that his screenwriting
was in some ways just the start of it,” says Hoffman, whose biography of Taha Muhammad Ali, My Happiness was
named one of the best twenty books of 2009 by the Barnes & Noble Review and
won the UK’s 2010 Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize. “Maybe for him, it was the least of it. Hecht
had multiple occupations—really preoccupations—and threw himself with gusto
into being a journalist, novelist, playwright, a film director, producer, a
memoirist, and Jewish activist, someone passionately engaged with the future of
Palestine/Israel. I was fascinated by that multiplicity of his, by all the hats
he managed to wear at once and with such incredible panache—even genius.”
Hoffman
also deeply identified with Hecht’s desire to be involved in a serious if playful
way with several realms at once and his having multiple job descriptions much
as she does.
“At the same time, there are
certain things that set Hecht apart from me in a very basic way: his political
positions in terms of Israel/Palestine are approximately the opposite of my
own, and I thought it would be an interesting challenge to write about someone
with whom I strongly disagree on this front,” she says.
Though
she’s spent much of her adult life living in Jerusalem, Hoffman did the
majority of her research at The Newberry in Chicago which holds Hecht’s papers.
“He seems
to have been friend or colleague or rhetorical sparring partner to or with
almost anybody who was anybody in twentieth century culture,” says Hoffman. “I’d find myself in the course of a day
reading these incredibly lively, funny letters and telegrams to and from
everyone from David O. Selznick to Carl Sandburg, Menachem Begin, Katharine
Hepburn, George Grosz, Sherwood Anderson, the gangster Mickey Cohen, Groucho
Marx, and on and on. There are also marvelous photographs, drafts of his work,
scrapbooks, objects—passports, pipes, letter openers, and even his first Oscar.”
Hoffman
says one of the purposes of her book is for Hecht to be much better remembered
than he is today.
“He was someone who played a
central role in creating American popular culture as we know it, but he’s been
almost completely forgotten,” she says. “I think people around Chicago and in
the Midwest know more about him than most others. I got an awful lot of blank
or confused looks when people would ask me what I was working on and I’d say a
book about Ben Hecht. The full range of his accomplishment or accomplishments
is something I’d like people to realize—and also the complex way that his
Jewishness figured into the rest of it. Hecht claimed he ‘became a Jew in 1939’—which
is to say, he became a Jew because of the Holocaust—but I totally disagree.
Being Jewish was always a part of him, as was being American. And there was
absolutely no contradiction in his being both things at once and in the most
vital way.”
Ifyougo:
What: Author talk and book signing
When: Tuesday, February 19 at 6 pm
Where: Ruggles Hall, The Newberry, 60 West Walton St., Chicago, IL
Cost: Free and open to the public. Registration required.
It wasn’t easy being George. He lost his father at age 11 and then his mentor and half-brother just seven years later. He was a veteran of the French and Indian War when in his 20’s and then returned home to tend to his estates. But he was a man of duty who put honor first and when the British butchered Colonists who complained about the high tax rate, he showed up at the Continental Congress, the only man wearing his military uniform. Tall and handsome, his posture erect, it was almost immediately decided that he would lead the newly formed Continental Army.
Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation Gala Writer’s Luncheon at the home of Terri and Jon Havens
Though
army might be too kind of a word. The troops were masses of men from the
colonies—ill-fed, raggedy, without training or even much in the way of weapons
(unless you count pitchforks) and given to gambling, cussing, enjoying paid encounters
and fighting amongst each other. Not exactly an army to give the well trained, well-armed
and smartly uniformed British much pause.
Add to
that, the former Colonel Washington didn’t have the knowledge or the experience
of a general and since there was no You Tube at the time, he would have to
learn on the job and by reading the several books he bought on the subject. But
probably most problematic, several of his very own Life Guards, hand-selected
men who were to personally protect Washington were actively betraying him as
part of a conspiracy to preserve British rule.
This is the conundrum New York Times best-selling author Brad Meltzer presents us in the opening chapters of his first non-fiction book, The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot Against George Washington with Josh Mensch.
“It’s one of my favorite details,” says Meltzer, who is so enthusiastic about the story says the same phrase more than once about other incidents as well. “Washington wanted the best of the best for his personal bodyguards, called lifeguards and they turned on him. That just totally hit me, this is the best of the best and they turned on him! You can’t write a book like this if you don’t ask yourself what would have happened if they got him.”
Fortunately,
we don’t need to ask. Washington is more than the man on our dollar bills, wearer
of a white powdered wig, said to be heck on cherry trees and wore wooden teeth—the
latter turns out not to be true.
When two
of his men were fighting, Washington rode right into the fray, jumped off his
horse and seized each by the neck to break it up.
“At the Battle of Brooklyn, he gets his butt kicks, and he could have said let’s just go out in a blaze of glory, but he didn’t,” says Meltzer. “Instead, he commanders all the boats and gets his troops across the East River. The British are coming fast but, in that moment, he won’t get on a boat until all his men are onboard. He’s the last one on. He’s risked his life for them and that’s when the troops really all came together.”
He
launched this secret society of spies that led to the modern CIA.
That’s why Meltzer says some stories that are just so good they need to be told the way they are.
Anyone who has ever read one or more of Meltzer’s books (The Inner Circle, The Escape Artist) or watched his TV series Brad Meltzer’s Decoded and Brad Meltzer’s Lost History, needn’t worry that this will a long slog into boring history. The story of spy craft, war and the treachery surrounding the Washington reads as quickly as any of his novels or shows.
“It was
an untold story,” he says. “I discovered it the way you usually discover
important things, in a footnote.”
That footnote led to ten years of research which Meltzer says he couldn’t have done without the help of writer and documentary producer Josh Mensch.
Besides a great read of an almost lost part of America’s history, Meltzer says he hopes readers see this not just as a famous story but a call to the greatness Washington showed.
“We’re
all capable of humility, heroism and generosity,” he says. “We have to stop
creating this environment where everyone who disagrees with us is shallow or stupid,
we have to work together and to do that we have to start with ourselves, the only
way to change the world is to first change ourselves.”
Ifyougo
What: Brad Meltzer with Josh Mensch talk, audience Q & A and book signing
When: Saturday, January 22 at 1 p.m.
Where: Community Christian Church, 1635 Emerson Lane,
Naperville, IL
Cost: Ticket for one adult, $34.00 ($36.18 w/service fee).
This ticket admits one person and includes one copy of the book. Ticket for two
adults $44.00 ($46.53
w/service fee). This ticket package admits two people and includes one copy of
the new book. Ticket price also includes a photo with author. Kids under 13 are
free. To order: brownpapertickets.com/event/3914505
FYI: The presentation is hosted by Anderson’s Bookshops. For
more information, 630-355-2665.
Candace Chen’s life is so much about chaos and loss that she
finds solace and satisfaction in her job coordinating the sourcing of materials
and production of Bibles. It’s a job that entails such minutiae as making sure
there’s a supplier for the crushed gems which decorate a specific best-selling
Bible even though many of the Asian countries supplying the materials have had
to close because the crushed stones cause lung disease.
But
Candace, a millennial who immigrated from China when very young, works through
such hurdles with aplomb, simply moving on, over and around any impediment. That’s
one reason why she is chosen to stay at the company’s New York office as all
the other workers flee, are dying or being turned in zombies by a virulent and
unstoppable fungal infection called Shen Fever.
Candace’s
story—from her early losses to her unplanned but not unwanted pregnancy in a Manhattan
that is rapidly falling apart is told in Severance, the first novel by
Ling Ma.
Ma, who teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago, writes with a dry wit and keen sense of observation, shaping Severance into a darkly comic novel in a genre that might be best called Apocalypse Office and is unlike any other urban disaster books—or movies—I’ve ever come across. Ma, who has an MFA from Cornell University, was inspired in part by watching movies like those by George Romero, who was known for his satirical but grisly horror films such as “Night of the Living Dead” as well as TV series about Millennials like “Sex in the City.” But even more so her book was honed by working in an office and dealing with office politics which she describes as horrifying.
“The company I worked for was
downsizing, and I started writing this book in the last few months of getting
laid off—a kind of fun, apocalyptic short story,” she says about the novel’s
origination. “I wanted to be destructive in some ways, and fiction can realize
a lot of fantasies. I was kind of angry, but I also felt extremely liberated
and extremely gleeful at the same time; it was a strange combination of glee
and anger at once.”
Taking her severance and
unemployment compensation, she continued to work on the story—as a sort of
therapy. It was also an escape, just like Candace is first able to escape from
New York and then from the cultist gang of survivors, freeing herself and going
into the unknown.
Shelf Life 