Results tagged “nelsonalgren”

A hundred years after he was born, could Nelson Algren finally be getting some of the respect he so richly deserves?

We've just learned that due to a last minute scheduling conflict, Matt Dillon has had to drop out of Nelson Algren Live: The 100th Birthday Celebration, which is Monday evening at the Steppenwolf. In his stead will be Willem Dafoe. A script written just for the occasion weaves tributes from people who knew Algren with excerpts from his writing. Dafoe will portray Frankie Machine from The Man with the Golden Arm, while author Barry Gifford will play Nelson himself. Among others performing are writers Russell Banks and Don DeLillo, and Steppenwolf ensemble member Martha Lavey. Tickets are available by calling the theater box office.

2009 marks the 100th birthday of Nelson Algren, the quintessential Chicago author. Long before the word "hipster" had even been coined, he chronicled the bleak existence of society's misfits, living on the fringe in West Town and Wicker Park. His best known books are The Man with the Golden Arm, Chicago: City on the Make and Never Come Morning, which no less than Hemingway declared "the best book to come out of Chicago." They describe a Chicago so different from our city today that they almost read like science fiction, yet when Algren lived here he often hung out at the Rainbo Club and the Gold Star.

An impressive array of Chicago heavyweights will assemble next Monday evening at 7:30 at the Steppenwolf to pay tribute to Studs Terkel. A staged reading, with music, of Derek Goldman’s adaptation of Terkel’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken makes up the bulk of the program, which will feature David Schwimmer; Steppenwolf Artistic Director Martha Lavey and ensemble members Robert Breuler, K. Todd Freeman, Tom Irwin, and Alan Wilder; director Joyce Piven (mother of Jeremy); and Trib writer Rick Kogan. Tickets will be free but reservations are required. They'll be available to the public beginning tomorrow by calling the Steppenwolf box-office at 312-335-1650.

On a related note, is free, in its entirety, online.

Last week's "Flashback" installment on Art Shay proved to be pretty popular with fans of the famed photographer. We made mention of one of our favorite Shay photos, snapping French author and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir au natural in "Nelson Algren's bathroom" from 1952.

Art Shay is without a doubt one of the greatest photographers this city ever produced. For sixty years he's captured some of the most iconic images of city life. His 1988 book Nelson Algren's Chicago (Visions of Chicago) inspired scores of photographers, both professional and amateur, to pick up their cameras and pound the pavement looking for the perfect shot.

The "vere" part is pronounced like "were." Now that you know how to pronounce "saveur," it is time to pick up a copy of the food and wine magazine by the same name. The October issue of Saveur is dedicated solely to Chicago; not too surprisingly, a piece of pizza is featured on the cover. And here we were pumped about getting a single article in Gourmet. Like Gourmet, Saveur doesn't put all of its...

Chicago History Books?

Consummate Chicagoan, supreme storyteller, raconteur, and the man who elevated the interview to high art, Studs Terkel turned 95 years old on Wednesday. Other media outlets can't seem to agree on what to call him: interviewer, author, activist, media pioneer, oral historian, blacklisted lefty. We prefer to think Studs wouldn't mind any of those labels as long as you didn't call him late for his daily scotch. During Studs' birthday celebration this week he bemoaned...

It's not so much of a stretch to say that maybe Nelson Algren defined Chicago the way that Chaucer defined the English language. Panned by many Chicago critics in his lifetime, Algren's Chicago: City on the Make was deemed "a scented object" by the Chicago Tribune at the time of its publication. They now annually grant a Nelson Algren Award with publication in the paper and $5,000. We could tell you about Algren's childhood on...

Whenever Chicago gets overcast skies, our mind drifts to highfalutin' aspirations and rainy afternoons spent cuddled in an old bookstore like After-words or a creepy museum like The International Museum of Surgical Science. Here are a couple of places we'll be shedding off our rainy day blues this weekend. Chicagoist really wants more tattoos. Even if we can't afford them right now, we can drool over Mitch O'Connell's aptly named new book Mitch O'Connell's Tattoos....

Last week ended with 144 aldermanic candidates having filed nominating petitions, among them 47 incumbents. It has been said that there may be a record number of people running for alderman this year. While we aren't certain of the factual accuracy of that statement, we are sure that there are a lot of people running this year. Several races have piqued our interest, in particular the race in the 32nd Ward. In that race, there...

This week we turn our attention — and our beer-hunting skills — to the neighborhood Nelson Algren lovingly wrote of. Well, not that particular Wicker Park. That one's been gone for years. We don't presume to know what Algren would have thought of modern-day Wicker Park, but we're sure he would have dug around to find its seedy underbelly, somewhere between the designer handbags and strollers. Would he have written of the ambivalent detente between...

Or as we like to call it, just another Saturday night at the Chicagoist offices. Head on over to Chicago Filmmakers this Saturday at 8:00 and catch Columbia College's Best of Doc, an evening of documentary short films by CC students. The school's Rabinger Center for the Documentary is an overlooked treasure among college film programs. Unlike L.A., which is centered on the manufacture of fantasies, we've always thought of Chicago as a quintessentially documentary...

We’re gearing up for the weekend and to see some of our favorite authors at the Printers Row Book Fair. We thought we’d tell you who we’re planning on seeing, but remember there are a gajillion more events; so make sure you check the schedule; there’s much too much to even fathom.

Our city has a lot of nicknames, “Second City”, “City of Big Shoulders” and “Windy City”. But perhaps none is as sacred to us, the real Chicagoans, as “City on the Make”, the title of the prose poem by Nelson Algren. We like to think we know our Chicago history pretty well, but often find it lacking when we come to look at Algren’s piece again. We realize how much there still is to learn...

Everyone knows how important it is to have a mentor. Even the most savvy and successful individuals needed a leg up at some point. This week we learned that even the mighty Queen of Everything once got some help from a guy in the balcony. Last Monday, Oprah Winfrey told her audience that none other than Roger Ebert convinced her to take her show into the lucrative world of syndication. This occurred while the two...

Did anyone else catch Dennis DeYoung and Billy Corgan singing Christmas carols on WGN this morning? Wow. It was…a little awkward. While both are talented in their own right, they’re not exactly born to duet with each other as DeYoung’s vibrato drowned out the less robust vocal stylings of Corgan. But if two of the biggest egos in Chicago rock are able to peacefully coexist in the same studio then yes, Virginia, there is a...