'My Apartment In Chicago' Stretches The Limits of Hybrid-genre

By Staff in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 21, 2014 4:00PM

My Apartment in Chicago, written by Chicago resident and teacher Jack Murphy is a fresh, innovative and eclectic self-published chapbook that stretches the limits of even the “hybrid-genre.” Given the opportunity to talk with Murphy in-depth about his creative work and his inspirations for My Apartment, we were able to break some ground around a very cryptic text.

A book dedicated to Chance the Rapper and riddled with references to Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, Bob Dylan and David Bowie, My Apartment is not a book about any one thing. Rather, one of its main takeaways is that life is the culmination of your experiences, interactions and relationships, and that it’s never quite what you expect.

My Apartment in Chicago is a collection of poetry and short narratives told from multiple perspectives including an unnamed “I,” a priest, and Mayor Daley to name a few. This, coupled with the fact that the setting, though transient, is never actually an apartment, might make the reader wonder why the collection is entitled My Apartment in Chicago. When asked about the title of his work, Murphy explained that it relates mostly to the setting in which he wrote the collection. On a deeper level, My Apartment represents the metaphoric home of Murphy’s own collected experiences, which congregate on the pages of the text.

Intimately connected to the allegorical sense of place is Murphy’s fluctuating point of view and perspective. This shifting sense of cosmic and physical space relates to the people and experiences that come and go throughout life. Murphy has a unique way of accessing the inner workings of his characters’ minds and revealing often the least pleasant aspects of their humanity, which in a strange way makes his characters endearing and relatable.

With his raw tone, colloquial verbiage and proclivity for provoking thought, Murphy encapsulates avant-garde literature in all of its aspects.

Murphy will be performing a selection from My Apartment in Chicago at Uncommon Ground on Clark Sunday, July 6.

By: Jaclyn Bauer