Blue in Chicago

by Bette Howland

1978 stated first edition. hardcover.

Genres: Short Stories, Nonfiction

183 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1978

About the author

Writer, critic, and MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient Bette Howland died last week at the age of 80. “No matter what her subject is, Mrs. Howland is always looking for the bone and marrow of Chicago,” Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote in a 1978 review of Blue in Chicago. “And always the prose with which she searches is arrhythmical, nervous, self-questioning, passionate. You can’t fall into step with her, because the moment you do she shifts her cadence and takes off for another part of town, another time, another thing about Chicago.” However, though much awarded and clearly brilliant, she has in recent years been more-or-less forgotten by the literary establishment. “What happened to a career that held such talent and promise?” A.N. Devers asked in a 2015 piece about Howland and her rediscovery by Brigid Hughes, Howland was nomadic and often lived in isolation. Why did she retreat from what she had earned for herself? What role has the literary community played in allowing her work to fall from memory? Her son Jacob thinks the MacArthur is part of the answer.” Indeed, she didn’t publish anything else after winning the award.

Reviews

[Tom Buchanan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This really needs to be republished, it's so good. An anti-macho redemption for Chicago lit, a little bit of Didion mixed with Elizabeth Hardwick...I'm not describing this right. But suffice to say there’s no “ hog butcher to the world” bs to be found.

[Carla · Rating 3 out of 5]

As with W-3 Bette Howland's voice is clear, present, wry in Blue in Chicago. The essays in her book are filled with the Jewish residents of Chicago during the 1960s and 1970s. Howland's special attention is given to her maternal grandmother and the extended family. The better essays of the collection are the last two, one on her grandmother's neighborhood, Uptown. "Uptown is the home of the displaced, disinherited and uprooted." And the second is on her grandmother's funeral. Howland shares her insights tersely and there is much to appreciate here:

Rudy was standing stock still, staring straight ahead with his unfocused, unflinching expression. As if he could feel their eyes on him. His hands were behind his back. His lips were not moving. So my father was right after all. This was it. The end of the line. It was all over. The old woman's sons were not going to say Kaddish for her. They didn't know how.

The book also includes an essay on one of the more obscure branches of the Chicago public library, the people who work there and the regulars and one on a Chicago criminal courtroom ands its cast of characters. Although Fred Weisman did not comment on the institutions he featured in his documentaries as Howland does in her essays, they share an aesthetic - episodic, dark, and filled with the levity of everyday life as it bumps up against the strictures of special environments.

If I knew Chicago of the 1960's and 1970's better or more about Jewish culture I might have picked up on nuances that I missed and maybe could have followed the narrative better at points - I find Howland's prose a bit difficult to follow, jumps around and too elliptic at points.

[John Rossington · Rating 5 out of 5]

This woman is extraordinary. Her writing is so considered and intelligent. She published so little. She was plagued by ill health and poverty. One suspects/hopes that in this day and age she would have more self confidence to have published more. Her portraits of Chicago in the 1970s (and ellsewhere) are insightful portraits of a lost age. People worry as to what is fact and fiction. Worry you not. She was not bothered. Simply enjoy the beauty of the writing.