While “city of the big shoulders” has long served as a sobriquet for Chicago, Brian Doyle may have found its successor: “that middle knuckle in our national fist.” The phrase pops up in the first sentence of Chicago, Doyle’s charming tale of a young man’s brief residency in this “rough and burly city in the middle of America.” It will be especially charming to north-siders who know the area bounded by the lake, Broadway, Belmont, and Addison, where the narrator shows up to rent an apartment, arriving with not much more than a job offer, some clothes, and a well-worn basketball.
Early on the narrator thinks, “It wasn’t all beaches and dream, of course. . . . I paid attention, in my ambling and wandering and jaunting, and I saw a lot of broken and sad and ragged and dark.” The book is, to be sure, mostly beaches and dream. But come visit again soon, Brian Doyle. Chicago has changed some since the early 80s, but someone like Edward will still know of a nice gyro joint on the corner. v
By Brian Doyle (Thomas Dunne Books)
