THE CHICAGO LITERARY RENAISSANCE BOOKSHELF CONTINUES TO GROW
The bookshelf for glossy tomes about the Chicago School of Literature or its putative renaissance well nigh a century past just keeps growing. The latest offering from the Illuminati is A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls about Margaret C. Anderson, a minor participant in the literary movement whose celebrity abides not from what she did but what was done to her. Anderson published a small literary review read by few except Government censurers. She faced judicial trials more than once for promoting obscene materials. Margaret C. Anderson was more of a pioneer in a social movement from repressive Victorian virtue to vulgar modernism than participant in a literary movement. And since these events occurred eleven to twelve decades in the past, these books offer nothing new. There was no renaissance of literature in Chicago, just one genre of literature; the one least read by the public but most appreciated by the academic Illuminati.
The first book from the academic publishing world about a small group of Midwestern authors who wrote in a similar style was Dale Kramer’s Chicago Renaissance issued in 1966. Interest in the movement waned in the late twentieth century but as the centennial approached in the new century, more books started flowing from the academic presses: there was Chicago Renaissance by Liesl Olsen in 2018 and Chicago, A Literary History by Kohlert in 2022. There was even an Encyclopedia of the Chicago Literary Renaissance issued, which held something of an irony.
The editor/author of the Encyclopedia of all things literary in Chicago except popular fiction that actually sold was named Jan Pinkerton. It was another Pinkerton, Allan, that started the true detective genre of fiction and spawned a small publishing industry in Chicago in the late nineteenth century. While literature is a matter of personal preference, one fact is undeniable, none of the Renaissance writers ever had a book on the bestsellers’ list while the true detective novels sold in the millions.
You can learn more about the history of the true detective novel and Chicago’s contribution to it on this site under the Literary Publishing header and even read one of the earliest novels. Other true detective novels from this era are on Amazon in digital form. In addition, you can learn more about Chicago’s literary publishing history by reading Chicago’s Literary Publishing History available in print on Amazon and in digital form at most digital bookstores.
It may be hard to believe now but a century ago many Americans who lived between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains obtained their news and much of their printed entertainment from Chicago-based companies. Several Chicago-based magazines were among the largest circulated magazines in the nation. In recent days with the news that Tronc (the silly name for the old Chicago Tribune company) had sold the Los Angeles Times to a West Coast investor and may itself be up for sale, Chicago will be completely void of any locally owned media companies with even a regional, much less national, import. The ever shrinking Sun-Times is going through its third ownership group in recent years and has just sold the weekly Reader to a small publication based in Gary, Indiana.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment was the demise of Chicagoly Magazine that was only launched a couple of years ago. It was the offshoot of Twentieth-Second Century Media which publishes a group of micro papers in the suburbs. The executive editor, Joe Coughlin, promised a hard-hitting journal with “powerful, indepth stories.” The magazine never lived up to the promise although it did win some awards. Chicagoly was yet another lifestyle magazine targeted to a market already served by Chicago Magazine owned by Tronc (Chicago Tribune) and Time Out Chicago.
The decline of Chicago’s media publishing industry is more than the loss of community pride. It has a deleterious effect on the arts community both the fine arts and the popular arts. The Reader in its heyday was instrumental in the development of Chicago’s neighborhood theater industry. The reviews and the commentary, even the controversy, brought attention to the theaters and increased their patronage. The media companies were once big employers of visual artists. Chicagoly was something of a throwback by using commissioned art on its covers instead of celebrity photographs. The diminution of magazines and newspapers has had a corresponding diminution in Chicago’s literary and art communities.
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