Last week the University announced its choice for next year’s One Book One Northwestern, Alex Kotlowitz’s book “Never A City So Real.” The book, whose title is a reimaging of a famous Nelson Algren line in which he describes Chicago as “never a lovely so real,” is equal parts exploration and celebration of our city to the south. It’s a great book, one worth reading to help paint a fuller picture of Chicago past N. Michigan Ave.
Another finalist for this year’s One Book One Northwestern, Aleksandar Hemon’s “The Lazarus Project,” explores the cityscape of Chicago and Eastern Europe over the entirety of the 20th century, investigating race relations and political tension at home and abroad. It’s a fantastic work of fiction, a finalist for both the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award in 2008, and also merits a read to further one’s understanding of Chicago’s history (particularly, say, the Ukrainian Village in West Town).
Hemon, like Kotlowitz, teaches at NU. They both live in and have written books about Chicago. They are both named Alex.
Previous One Book authors during my tenure at this university have written about Darwinism, climate change, global health and woman’s immortal body cells. They lived all over the country, they write about decidedly un-Chicago subject matter and not one of them was named Alex.
This year’s One Book choice, and list of possible choices, as evidenced by Hemon’s work, indicates a shift inward, a refocusing of the purpose and goal of the One Book One Northwestern project as a whole.
One Book One Northwestern is a great resource to stimulate discussion among scared freshman during their first few weeks on campus, or so the thinking goes. In reality, I remember receiving my copy of “The Reluctant Mr. Darwin” one week before the end of the summer, frantically looking online to find out if there was somehow going to be a quiz on it, and reluctantly packing it in my suitcase for school.
It is possible I had one or two forced discussions about “evolution” or “Beagles” during that first week with a similarly confused dorm mate, but I don’t remember, and said dorm mate and I did not forge the long-lasting friendship that such a project is designed to cultivate.
Kotlowitz’s book, in addition to Hemon’s, has the capacity and the opportunity to change everything. A thorough reading and a critical investigation of its pages should inspire up-and-coming students to venture outside of Evanston, take dorm excursions downtown in their first few weeks on campus and forge those friendships the university seems so intent on us forging. We live mere miles north of the third largest city in the country. Take a page out of Kotlowitz’s book and explore it. Celebrate it.
I read “Never a City So Real” the summer after my freshman year, after an English professor recommended it to me. When I arrived back on campus that fall, I couldn’t wait to go visit the sights I had read about. A lot of “Never a City” is focused on restaurants, well-known soul food and diners and the like. Kotlowitz writes a chapter about Manny’s, a delicatessen on South Jefferson just east of the UIC campus. To be honest, I found the place unremarkable. It’s a fine restaurant, with fun newspaper clippings and memorabilia adorning the walls, but Kotlowitz’s wonder for the place was lost on me. I had built it up in my head into something it could not possibly be, and I was disappointed.
I took my egg salad sandwich to go and nibbled it on the long train ride back north, and had a better time doing it.
Kotlowitz’s book is a great crash course on the city, as Hemon’s would have been. It will generate discussion and camaraderie among the student community.
It artfully illustrates the beautiful and gritty sides to the city, with colorful caricatures of lawyers, labor leaders and sketch artists.
The book, however, should not be confused for a travel guide, a Fodor’s guide to Chicago. Many of Kotlowitz’s environs are unremarkable; and in this sense, through repeated interaction and exploration, they become remarkable.
A word of advice to incoming freshman and underclassmen, and to my fellow seniors in our last quarter on campus: plan your own tour of Chicago, don’t merely live out Kotlowitz’s personal version.
Find your own favorite taco joint underneath the Addison red line stop or historical neighborhood in Bridgeport, and don’t just substitute my examples here as replacements for Kotlowitz’s.
Organize a Wildcat Welcome Week trip with your PA group of your dorm suite, pick a subway stop, and have at it, go nuts. Explore. Celebrate.
Dan Camponovo is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at danielcamponovo2012@u.
