<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Chicago, warts and all
Review: "Chicago: City on the Make" is the work of a first-rate poet/novelist. Algren is "sui generis" -- one of a kind! His close friend, Studs Terkel (who wrote the Introduction to the book) was instrumental in getting the book back into print -- where I hope it stays for at least a thousand years. As Studs would say, "It's a peach!"
Rating:
Summary: Marvelous prose paean for the city by the lake
Review: Although I have lived in Chicago for many years now, I am not a native Chicagoan, and I have to say that the attitudes and visions of Chicago that one finds in Nelson Algren's are not held by most of the people I have gotten to know well in Chicago. But, then, most of the people I know are also not native Chicagoans. The swagger, the love-hate, the cynicism, and the love and civic pride that manage to emerge despite the cynical pessimism are very definitely found in many of those I have come to know who were born and raised in the city. Nelson Algren's Chicago was one that was more strictly American than it is today, less international, more Midwestern, more radical, less conventional. It is a Chicago that in many ways no longer exists. This can be felt in the book's narrative voice. Algren writes in a prose that sounds like Carl Sandburg drenched in Baudelaire, and the various sections of the book sound more than anything like the kind of stuff that Baudelaire would have written had he strolled the streets of Chicago rather than Paris. The prose is always unique, frequently beautiful, oftentimes stunning. There are definitely times that it will be all but impenetrable to someone not well schooled in Chicago's geography and its history. If one really wanted to get all the references and historical citations, one should consider reading Donald Miller's CITY OF THE CENTURY, which will clue one in on most of the 19th century and more obscure references. But in a sense, being able to identify all the names and places isn't all that crucial. The heart of the book is intelligible regardless. An essential literary work about one of the world's great cities, by one of its great writers.
Rating:
Summary: Algren saw it all...
Review: Nelson Algren expresses a vision of a city in Chicago: City on the Make like no other New York or Los Angeles had been envisioned. Chicago is shown as a city of two natures. Algren magnifies this duality of his town through the imagery and diction of his description of Chicago's physical appearance, historical figures and the divisions of the hustler and the square which show how this twofold nature creates Algren's ambiguous admiration for his city: Chicago.
Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous - but WARNING: Prose Poem
Review: The city of big shoulders is my home, so perhaps I am too biased to write an objective review. In my opinion, however, I think this is one of the most gorgeous pieces of literature ever written. I saw this performed live on the rooftop of a South Michigan Ave loft as the sun set over the west side and is started to rain. The little intertwined stories and metaphors and moments of beauty make the book a read that tastes tremendous on your tongue. THE WARNING: yes, here is is. This is a prose poem. It's not a collection of short stories or a novel. It reads quite easily, but if you are turned off by that sort of thing, skip this book. There are moments of slightly inaccessible, albeit wonderful, language and it helps to know your history.. That said, if you love Chicago as I do, you will love Algren's City on the Make...
Rating: 
Summary: You¿d¿ve had to been there.
Review: Well written though this is, ...City on the Make' does require a good knowledge of Chicago's history to keep going with it and to understand the connections. I gave up after chapter two because of my lack of background knowledge and because I felt that this was a piece of writing that had been worked at till it was little more than an exercise in style. It had a lot of energy but lacked the spontaneity to make it seem fresh. And it read like preaching to the converted, as opposed to being persuasive.
<< 1 >>
| 
