Sep 05
Writing about 9/11 once felt so much stranger. The image of the Twin Towers falling is so indelibly marked in the American consciousness that initially it may have seemed commenting on it was excessive or incompatible. Yet, with the passing of ten years, an image once unilaterally perceived in the West—“we are all Americans now,” as the French newspaper Le Monde famously printed—has become burdened with the history that sprouted from it.
Given the event’s transforming meaning, Granta’s “Ten Years Later” essentially skirts the issue of what exactly occurred ten years ago. While the New Yorker chose the bizarrely nostalgic route of scrapping together what amounts to an e-book time capsule of its coverage immediately following the attacks, per their M.O. Granta has chosen a considerably riskier approach. Out of its sixteen essays, only one addresses September 11 directly. The rest cover, according to the blurb, the “complexity and sorrow of life since 11 September 2001.” Read the rest of this entry »
Jun 08
Illustration: Pamela Wishbow
A strange and unpleasant wind blows through the literary land. Our obsession with technocultural toys, whether iPhones, iPads or Kindles, makes the foundation of thought almost since thought was recorded, that is ink on paper, seem increasingly destined to be twittered into obsolescence. And it’s not just mere media frenzy, either. Massive upheaval among major publishers these last few years has left some of Chicago’s finest writers stranded in a strange land: that is, the work is finished, but no one is around to put it out. Who knows, maybe in two years when this version of Lit 50 returns, some, if not all, of our authors will be publishing mostly, if not entirely, in the digital realm. If that’s the case, let’s enjoy an old-fashioned book or two while we can. Read the rest of this entry »
Sep 01
RECOMMENDED
Nami Mun’s bio informs us she was born in South Korea, raised in the Bronx, has been employed since junior high and has worked over time as an Avon Lady, a street vendor, a photographer, a bartender and even a criminal investigator. Add one more profession to that list—successful author. Now living in Chicago, Mun’s debut novel, “Miles from Nowhere,” tells the story of a 13-year-old Korean-American girl in 1980s New York, on the run for five years, rampaging through drugs, homelessness, AIDS, abuse and more. Mun’s prose zips unsentimentally through the years of this teenager’s growth—it’s a runaway tale, a gritty coming-of-age story, and as common as those themes are, “Miles from Nowhere” brims with confidence and intelligence. (Tom Lynch)
Nami Mun reads from “Miles from Nowhere” September 9 at Women and Children First, 5233 N. Clark, (773)769-9299, at 7:30pm. Free.
Jan 27
“It is the peculiar lowness of poverty that you discover first,” George Orwell
observed in “Down and Out in Paris and London,” the book he wrote after he
decided to see what poverty was like from the inside. “The shifts that it puts
you to, the complicated meanness, the crust-wiping.”
Orwell’s litany, however, is just the beginning of what Joon, the banged-up
teenage orphan who narrates Nami Mun’s startling debut novel, “Miles From
Nowhere,” encounters in her life on the streets.
Joon squats in burned-out buildings, sleeps on the subway, is sexually assaulted on an abandoned city block and cadges wisdom from street poets. She works door to door, fishes newspapers from the trash and sells them to commuters. She
doesn’t eat for days. Read the rest of this entry »
Writing about 9/11 once felt so much stranger. The image of the Twin Towers falling is so indelibly marked in the American consciousness that initially it may have seemed commenting on it was excessive or incompatible. Yet, with the passing of ten years, an image once unilaterally perceived in the West—“we are all Americans now,” as the French newspaper Le Monde famously printed—has become burdened with the history that sprouted from it.