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The Rise and Fall of the Dil Pickle
Cultural Writing. Founded in 1914 by former Wobbly Jack Jones, Irish revolutionist Jim Larkin, and a group of IWW-oriented Bughouse Square hobos and soapboxers, the Dil Pickle in just a few years was widely recognized as the wildest, most playful, most creative, and most radical nightspot in the known universe--especially after Dr. Ben Reitman (Emma Goldman's former lover and press agent) joined the club in 1917. In this book--the first ever devoted to one of this country's most colorful and best-loved counter-institutions--Franklin Rosemont has collected forty-one reminiscences of the Dil Pickle by poets, artists, journalists, novelists, hobos, scholars, anarchists, wobblies, and other assorted radicals and oddballs.
- GenresHistory
186 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
About the author
Franklin Rosemont
44 books20 followers Franklin Rosemont was co-founder of the Chicago Surrealist Group. He was born in Chicago, Illinois. His father, Henry, was a labor activist. His mother, Sally, was a jazz musician.
He edited & wrote an introduction for What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings of Andre Breton, & edited Rebel Worker, Arsenal/Surrealist Subversion, The Rise & Fall of the DIL Pickle: Jazz-Age Chicago's Wildest & Most Outrageously Creative Hobohemian Nightspot & Juice is Stranger than Friction: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim. With his wife, Penelope Rosemont, & Paul Garon he edited The Forecast is Hot!. His work has been deeply concerned with both the history of surrealism (writing a forward for Max Ernst & Alchemy: A Magician in Search of Myth) & of the radical labor movement in America, for instance, writing a biogaphy of Joe Hill.
He is the author of the poetry collections The Morning of a Machine Gun: Twenty Poems & Documents. Profusely Illustrated By the Author, The Apple of the Automatic Zebra's Eye, & Penelope: A Poem, as well as An Open Entrance to the Shut Palace of Wrong Numbers, a book that explores the phenomenon of "wrong numbers" from a surrealist perspective, published by Black Swan Press in Chicago in 2003.
Rosemont and his wife urrently live in the East Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, managing the Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, the world's oldest, continuously existing socialist publishing house.
He edited & wrote an introduction for What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings of Andre Breton, & edited Rebel Worker, Arsenal/Surrealist Subversion, The Rise & Fall of the DIL Pickle: Jazz-Age Chicago's Wildest & Most Outrageously Creative Hobohemian Nightspot & Juice is Stranger than Friction: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim. With his wife, Penelope Rosemont, & Paul Garon he edited The Forecast is Hot!. His work has been deeply concerned with both the history of surrealism (writing a forward for Max Ernst & Alchemy: A Magician in Search of Myth) & of the radical labor movement in America, for instance, writing a biogaphy of Joe Hill.
He is the author of the poetry collections The Morning of a Machine Gun: Twenty Poems & Documents. Profusely Illustrated By the Author, The Apple of the Automatic Zebra's Eye, & Penelope: A Poem, as well as An Open Entrance to the Shut Palace of Wrong Numbers, a book that explores the phenomenon of "wrong numbers" from a surrealist perspective, published by Black Swan Press in Chicago in 2003.
Rosemont and his wife urrently live in the East Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, managing the Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, the world's oldest, continuously existing socialist publishing house.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 21, 2023
Awesome
January 22, 2014
Such interesting and exciting subversive Chicago history in here! A whole list of books to read based on what I learned here and became fascinated by....
January 4, 2017
This is pretty much an anthology of writings about the Dil Pickle Club which was a legendary part of Chicago bohemianism, a mad circus of radicalism run by Elizbeth Gurly Flynn's ex-husband, Jack Jones. Featuring pieces by Sherwood Anderson and Ben Hecht, who were loyalists along with writing from folks like Ben Reitman, it's an important document about a certain era in American history.
Rosemont's introduction here does a good job summarizing what the Pickle was, a gathering place for people to air their ideas no matter how radical or crazy, a place to talk and be heckled, to defend your point of view, to spout and to be drowned. He laments the lack of scholarship about the Pickle, such a legendary place should be better documented. Thus he offers this thin volume as a starting point.
It is thin. Some of the pieces only mention the Pickle in passing, placing it alongside other Chicago landmarks of the left: Bughouse Square, where soapboxers would preach everything from anarchism to free love; the Radical Bookstore where you could buy copies of "The Masses" or Margaret Anderson's "Little Review" & Chicago's own Newberry Library, an independent research institution open to everybody who cared to read deeply. There needs to be more here, deeper writings. Rosemont is right. The Pickle begs for a historian to pick up the gauntlet.
Rosemont's introduction here does a good job summarizing what the Pickle was, a gathering place for people to air their ideas no matter how radical or crazy, a place to talk and be heckled, to defend your point of view, to spout and to be drowned. He laments the lack of scholarship about the Pickle, such a legendary place should be better documented. Thus he offers this thin volume as a starting point.
It is thin. Some of the pieces only mention the Pickle in passing, placing it alongside other Chicago landmarks of the left: Bughouse Square, where soapboxers would preach everything from anarchism to free love; the Radical Bookstore where you could buy copies of "The Masses" or Margaret Anderson's "Little Review" & Chicago's own Newberry Library, an independent research institution open to everybody who cared to read deeply. There needs to be more here, deeper writings. Rosemont is right. The Pickle begs for a historian to pick up the gauntlet.
July 26, 2008
The gauntlet has been thrown down!: "Streeter’s saga would make a great movie –- but who makes anti-capitalist movies?"
A good assemblage of primary source documents recounting the habits, happenings, philosophies, ideals, and shortcomings of a mysterious, rambunctious, inimitable society of oddballs.
A good assemblage of primary source documents recounting the habits, happenings, philosophies, ideals, and shortcomings of a mysterious, rambunctious, inimitable society of oddballs.
Want to Read
July 27, 2008Sounds totally weird and cool, and just one more of those things I had no idea I didn't know about. Also, primarily due to certain bookfriends, I have been rather curious and intrigued by Chicago lately....
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews