Literary Chicago: Ploughshares Summer 2015

Ploughshares, the collection of fiction and poetry put out three times a year by Emerson College (of which Denis Leary is a council member of the non-profit publication), was capaciously endowed with scenes from a Literary Chicago. Four stories mentioned this city, and at least three of the authors in the collection have called Chicago home at one point or another (Osama Alomar, Jesse Ball, Rebecca Makkai, and Alex Shakar). One story mentioning Chicago in a collection isn't particularly noticeable, but seeing the name of this city in four out of eighteen stories called for some attention, even if just a coincidence. Here's how a few contemporary writers fictionalized Chicago:

"That fall, she was starting graduate school at the Art Institute of Chicago. "Chicago," I said later that night, after our date. We were in bed; we'd just had sex. "You know, I've been a Cubs fan since I could stand on first base.""

"Later, we joked that the only reason I came to Chicago was because she needed someone to carry her paintings."

- Kevin A Gonzalez, Palau

"My racial color code as established by the Chicago Bank of Life is white...When I am donating to the Chicago Bank of Life, I do not think of her." 

- Fiona Maazel, Dad's Just a Number

"He was only thirty years old, still in love with the girl he'd left in Chicago, still anxious to toss a ball on Saturdays with whoever was willing."

"This troubled the reverend. He bought some time by biting into his sandwich, but then it troubled him even more. Stanley had reminded him of Annette, on the day he left Chicago, fixing him with dry eyes: "I don't see how you're so sure," she'd said. And he'd said, "There's no other way to be.""

- Rebecca Makkai, The Miracle Years of Little Fork

"After some small talk about the unpredictable weather (she was new to Chicago winters), he drew her out and she told him about her life, what little there was to tell."

"When he found himself out in the brightly colored streets, fall in Chicago, it seemed as if not he but everything else had surreptitiously ended, and in its place now, cranked on a spindle, some shimmery hologram."

- Alex Shakar, In the Flesh, We Shone

I generally like to leave these quotes without context, to let them define Chicago themselves. But it's interesting to see how people use this city to build a story. It's a place that people leave loved ones behind, and where people move to start new lives. Our weather is unpredictable yet beautiful in its array of colors. We're a city of charitable people that donate blood and people that have a sense of humor about themselves. And we're a city that will linger on your mind even after you move away and have a new series of obstacles and issues to deal with.