Never a City So Real : A Walk in Chicago

Rating:
Summary: A New Classic
Review: I have spent the better part of two decades in Chicago. I love this city and have explored its neighborhoods and history. When I moved here from Indiana as I boy, my world opened up and the city appeared to offer almost unlimited possibilities. Now I have lived in and visited other cities and can compare Chicago to NYC, Paris, London, Copenhagen, Prague, Seoul, SF, LA, Singapore, etc. Yet I've never been able to give visitors from other places a complete and accurate picture of what makes this city so special and unique.

This book perfectly captures the essence of Chicago without clichés, generalizations or sentimentality. It captures the entrepreneurial spirit that led to reversing the flow of a major river, the creation of retail giants and the establishment of one of the greatest civic projects of recent times (Millennium Park). It explores the triumphs of one of the most vibrant and varied immigrant communities in the world without ignoring brutal patterns of discrimination and inequality.

It does all of this in a relatively small number of pages with what seems like an effortless ability to swing from laugh-out-loud humor to deep sadness and back again. The only regret that I have about this book is that I finished it in one sitting and wanted it to keep going.

The author attempted to create a portrait of Chicago in the year 2004 and achieved something of even broader and more significant meaning. The people are so vivid and wonderful that the book transcends the categories of biography, travel, anthropology, etc and should be read by because it is simply a timeless and extremely entertaining story.


Rating:
Summary: Chicago's vitality made very real by Kotlowitz' characters
Review: In Alex Kotlowitz' capable hands, Chicago, the city with the big shoulders, emerges as a metropolis with an enormous heart. Written as part of the Crown Journeys series, his "Never a City So Real" celebrates the vitality, integrity and diversity of the city through discreet narratives of its people. Kotlowitz avoids both the familiar and the cliché about Chicago, instead focusing on a set of characters who capture the "flesh and bone...the lifeblood" of the city. Possessing "passion and hustle," the relatively unheralded Chicagoans whom Kotlowitz focuses attention personify the city with their grit, honesty and succinct energy.

It is unsurprising, therefore, that the fist person the author uses to symbolize Chicago is his father-in-law, Jack Woltjen, whose talents, vision and intensity emerge as larger-than-life. Part huckster, part social egalitarian, Woltjen has the "passion and hustle" Chicago extols as virtues. Kotlowitz understands why Woltjen was "celebrated" in Chicago; his "entrepreneurial spirit and his unwavering belief in himself" not only persuades others of his worth but transforms the very city that provides him the opportunity to live. Iconoclastic (he doctors paintings of the masters), indignant (he exposes police brutality against the Black Panthers) and idealistic (he serves as an agent for the integration of segregated neighborhoods), Woltjen embodies Chicago's penchant for contradictions. Even a sculpture in his backyard captures a "beautiful juxtaposition of power and fragility."

Mocked by a "New Yorker" columnist as "the Second City," Chicago unabashedly refused offense. Eventually, the city's fabled comedy troupe adopts the name. Its geographic location resulted in Chicago's emergence as a center of commerce and a magnet for the "cascade of immigrant groups" which now call it home. Its physical insularity, separated from self-aggrandizing New York and the glitz of Los Angeles by half a continent, gives Chicago its own opportunity for self-definition, creation and perpetuation.

Kotlowitz consciously selects artists who are either underappreciated or invisible; he portrays men and women who open not only businesses but their hearts to those who are barely getting by. Even his constant reference to Nelson Algren, "himself a bar of discordant notes," reminds us that Chicago often does not recognize its own greatness. It is "an imperfect place," but "Chicago is America's city; it dreams America's dream." We learn of "Oil Can" Eddie Sadlowski, union man who still inspires with his own life's history. We dine with Millie Wortham and Brenda Stephenson, upbeat and optimistic despite working with the most desperate and destitute of Chicago's poor. We learn to bow our own heads down in the presence of the irascible but compassionate Ramazan Celikoski, who runs a hole-in-the-wall diner where "the world intersects...on the city's northwest side."

Visitors to Chicago will still clutch their maps and travelogues. Those who want to understand the city will cherish Alex Kotlowitz' "Never a City So Real." This slim, beautifully written description of Chicago permits its readers not only to understand the city but to love it as well.