Chicago Noir reviews
Chicago Noir is now available from Amazon.com and other places. Check your local, indie bookshop.
I read my story "All Happy Families" at two events in the Urbana-Champaign area, along with Amy Sayre-Roberts. Sat. 9/17 @ 2 p.m. at Borders in Champaign and On Thurs. 9/22 @ 4 p.m. at the Illini Student Union Book Store in Urbana.
There was a feature about the book in the Sun-Times (8/14/05).
And a review in the Illinois Times (8/14/05).
And a cover story in New City Chicago (8/16/05).
And a short review in the Chicago Tribune (9/4/05).
And a short review in the New York Times Book Review (9/11/05).
And here's what Jerry Saperstein of Evanston, IL had to say in his reasoned, carefully considered Amazon.com customer review:
...the other 17 stories range from merely boring to truly awful. One of the worst is "All Happy Families" by Andrew Ervin. This is a sophmoric attempt to mix Joycean stream of conciousness, bank robbery, failed romance and baseball into something or other. A young bank robber is riding the train (as in AMTRAK) back from a college town where he has just robbed a bank to Chicago's Union Station. The attempt to mix these themes results in a display of pretentiously "intellectual" nonsense. One of those things that no one understands, but people will claim to find meaning in so they don't appear embarassed to their equally clueless friends who also extract deep, hidden meaning from utter nonsense. Thus are "artists" born in our culure.
Anyone familiar with the short story from its golden age in America, the 1930s - 1950s will recognize that the authors here are, for the most part, pretenders. Contrary to the back cover blurb that "It's the Chicago that the Department of Tourism doesn't want you to see . . . ", none of the stories are uniquely Chicagoan. They could take place in any large city and in most smaller cities as well. Most of the stories are self-concious in their styles: the writers are preening, showing off.
Much of this may have to do with the editor, Neal Pollock, who claims to have been a "reporter" with the Chicago Weekly Reader for several years. The Reader is a so-called alternative newsweekly. This means its editorial content of anti-American, anti-capitalist, ant-establishment, anti-everything is sandwiched inside a wrapper of advertising. The Reader, by my estimation, carries about 12 pages of advertising for each page of editorial, a ratio most legitimate, traditional newspapers wouldn't dare. But the Reader caters to an audience that pretends to be something other than what they are: urban up and comers going through their "independent adult" period before they marry and head off to the suburbs.
I read my story "All Happy Families" at two events in the Urbana-Champaign area, along with Amy Sayre-Roberts. Sat. 9/17 @ 2 p.m. at Borders in Champaign and On Thurs. 9/22 @ 4 p.m. at the Illini Student Union Book Store in Urbana.
There was a feature about the book in the Sun-Times (8/14/05).
And a review in the Illinois Times (8/14/05).
And a cover story in New City Chicago (8/16/05).
And a short review in the Chicago Tribune (9/4/05).
And a short review in the New York Times Book Review (9/11/05).
And here's what Jerry Saperstein of Evanston, IL had to say in his reasoned, carefully considered Amazon.com customer review:
...the other 17 stories range from merely boring to truly awful. One of the worst is "All Happy Families" by Andrew Ervin. This is a sophmoric attempt to mix Joycean stream of conciousness, bank robbery, failed romance and baseball into something or other. A young bank robber is riding the train (as in AMTRAK) back from a college town where he has just robbed a bank to Chicago's Union Station. The attempt to mix these themes results in a display of pretentiously "intellectual" nonsense. One of those things that no one understands, but people will claim to find meaning in so they don't appear embarassed to their equally clueless friends who also extract deep, hidden meaning from utter nonsense. Thus are "artists" born in our culure.
Anyone familiar with the short story from its golden age in America, the 1930s - 1950s will recognize that the authors here are, for the most part, pretenders. Contrary to the back cover blurb that "It's the Chicago that the Department of Tourism doesn't want you to see . . . ", none of the stories are uniquely Chicagoan. They could take place in any large city and in most smaller cities as well. Most of the stories are self-concious in their styles: the writers are preening, showing off.
Much of this may have to do with the editor, Neal Pollock, who claims to have been a "reporter" with the Chicago Weekly Reader for several years. The Reader is a so-called alternative newsweekly. This means its editorial content of anti-American, anti-capitalist, ant-establishment, anti-everything is sandwiched inside a wrapper of advertising. The Reader, by my estimation, carries about 12 pages of advertising for each page of editorial, a ratio most legitimate, traditional newspapers wouldn't dare. But the Reader caters to an audience that pretends to be something other than what they are: urban up and comers going through their "independent adult" period before they marry and head off to the suburbs.
posted by Andrew Ervin at
8/14/2005
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