Art Institute

Chicago in Story is a history of Chicago through the lens of literary works.

"The stories presented here tell tales of a new Chicago, a Chicago that, like the Scott Mutter montage that fronts this book, is made up of diverse images that suggest new ways of seeing. They provide alternative interpretations of life in the city. What you will find in this collection is a a multi-cultural neighborhood in print, a neighborhood which has yet to surface on Chicago streets, one which is perhaps still years away in a city that touts its culturally plural make-up while still enforcing rigid boundaries between segregated neighborhoods. Murder by industrial pollution (often masked by self-abuse), racism, homophobia, the disintegration of family life, the struggle for control of one's own body and mind, the troubles facing a growing elderly population, the subjugation of minority cultures to the rich, the white, the male, are all issues confronted by the writers of these stories. They speak through a range of voices, creating a new, urgent sense of Chicago Realism. These storytellers provide testimony to a new Chicago, a Chicago that while steeped in American tradition challenges the narrow boundaries of its stereotype. They speak to a changing America, an America that has awakened from decades of a false, prosperity-driven revelry with a reality hangover. They speak of an America that must now begin to turn its attention to the social and environmental problems it has too long ignored." - From the back cover

From the foreward: "About Paul Carroll's poetry, you can never say one thing... He knows that to be modern he must also be classical: Plato, Aristotle, and the Church fathers move among modern artists and poets, American presidents and Chicago politicians, and social matrons who patronized the arts, architects who have added to or detracted from the city Carroll inhabits at the foot of Lake Michigan-- all these, and other figures, populate the dense, swirling, and always surprising democracy of his imagination."