Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis

by Liesl Olson

Overview

A fascinating history of Chicago’s innovative and invaluable contributions to American literature and art from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century

This remarkable cultural history celebrates the great Midwestern city of Chicago for its centrality to the modernist movement. Author Liesl Olson traces Chicago’s cultural development from the 1893 World’s Fair through mid-century, illuminating how Chicago writers revolutionized literary forms during the first half of the twentieth century, a period of sweeping aesthetic transformations all over the world. From Harriet Monroe, Carl Sandburg, and Ernest Hemingway to Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks, Olson’s enthralling study bridges the gap between two distinct and equally vital Chicago-based artistic “renaissance” moments: the primarily white renaissance of the early teens, and the creative ferment of Bronzeville. Stories of the famous and iconoclastic are interwoven with accounts of lesser-known yet influential figures in Chicago, many of whom were women. Olson argues for the importance of Chicago’s editors, bookstore owners, tastemakers, and ordinary citizens who helped nurture Chicago’s unique culture of artistic experimentation.

Cover art by Lincoln Schatz

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300203684
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	08/22/2017
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Liesl Olson is director of Chicago studies at the Newberry Library. She is the author of Modernism and the Ordinary and many essays about twentieth‑century writers and artists.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Preface xv

Introduction 1

Interlude: Chicago, October 21, 1892 43

Chapter 1 Porkpackers And Poetry 49

From Chicago to Chicago 49

La belle jasminatrice 55

In a Station of the Metro 65

A Brave Little Song 72

Porkpackers 79

Interlude: Ohio and Chicago, 1912 91

Chapter 2 Stink of Chicago 95

Sherwood Anderson at the Armory Show 95

French and the Arthurs 102

Bliss 114

Peoria and Paris 122

Little Children of the Arts 136

Interlude: Paris, May-June 1929 145

Chapter 3 Hemingway's Readers 149

Good Ladies 149

Naughty People 159

Chicago Style 165

The Sun Also Rises 172

Lady Midwest 178

Interlude: Chicago, November 7, 1994 189

Chapter 4 Stein Comes to Chicago 193

La Stein 193

Wives 198

Understanding and Enjoying 207

City of Words 212

Greatness 219

Mortimer and Maude 224

Interlude: Chicago, Fall 1941 229

Chapter 5 White City, Black Metropolis 235

A Voice Like Hers 235

Without Finger Bowls 241

Open and Raw 255

I Found It Fun 266

Fair Fables 280

Conclusion 285

Appendix: Makers of Modernism 293

Notes 297

Selected Bibliography 335

Acknowledgments 351

Index 353

Editorial Reviews

Olson approaches the subject with academic rigor, she writes with force, as well as originality, crafting fictionalized vignettes of her subjects’ experience of the city. A valuable, perspective-shifting work of both cultural and Midwestern history.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Vibrant, inclusive, deftly interpretative, and defining chronicle of the rise of modernism in this city of ‘intense receptiveness’ . . . .With knowledge, insight, and conviction, Olson explicates the unifying power of modernism that brought black and white writers and artists together while feeding the city’s hunger for the revelations of story, poetry, and image.”—Donna Seaman, Booklist

Chicago Renaissance was awarded the 2018 Pegasus Prize from the Poetry Foundation

"Wonderfully knowledgeable and just as wonderfully readable, Chicago Renaissance will be essential not just for anyone interested in the history of the city but for anyone interested in a brilliantly variegated history of its contribution to modernism."— Walter Benn Michaels, University of Illinois at Chicago

"Liesl Olson has written the book Chicago has been waiting for—a rich, rigorous and definitive cultural history of its turn-of-the-century heyday that’s as lively as the time."—Thomas Dyja, author of The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream

“This is modernism in all its technicolor glory, Chicago style:  the literary ladies and the porkpackers, the Bronzeville poets and the scribbling ad-men.  Dazzlingly learned, revelatory and a cracking great read.”—Deborah Cohen, Northwestern University

From the Publisher

“This is modernism in all its technicolor glory, Chicago style:  the literary ladies and the porkpackers, the Bronzeville poets and the scribbling ad-men.  Dazzlingly learned, revelatory and a cracking great read.”—Deborah Cohen, Northwestern University

Deborah Cohen

"Liesl Olson has written the book Chicago has been waiting for—a rich, rigorous and definitive cultural history of its turn-of-the-century heyday that’s as lively as the time."— Thomas Dyja, author of The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream

Thomas Dyja

"Wonderfully knowledgeable and just as wonderfully readable, Chicago Renaissance will be essential not just for anyone interested in the history of the city but for anyone interested in a brilliantly variegated history of its contribution to modernism."— Walter Benn Michaels, University of Illinois at Chicago

Walter Benn Michaels

★ 2017-06-27
A strong argument for the Midwestern city's place as a hub for modernism as vibrant as Paris, Berlin, and New York.If the modernist movement was about smashing convention in poetry, prose, and visual art, then Olson (Director, Chicago Studies/Newberry Library; Modernism and the Ordinary, 2009) finds plenty of evidence that Chicago was, if not at the forefront, then a key player in the movement. It was home to Harriet Monroe, the founder of Poetry magazine, which was a launch pad for Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, and T.S. Eliot. It hosted the 1913 Armory Show, bringing pioneering cubist works to a broad audience. Fanny Butcher, the influential book critic at the Chicago Tribune, encouraged her readers to take a chance on Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, who was a regular (if contentious) visitor to the city and stoked its small but vibrant culture of experimentalists. The city was also home to Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks, innovative writers who helped define the black American experience before World War II. "Without Chicago," writes Olson, "no consideration of the modernist movement is complete." The city's role may not be as towering as that of Bauhaus or the futurists—and the Armory Show and Stein weren't homegrown—but Olson's argument is still lively and persuasive, finding rich pockets of creativity throughout the city. Just as important, she reveals how modernism acquired a kind of populist vigor in Chicago: Monroe, for instance, was able to persuade meatpacking executives to help finance Poetry, and Butcher's bully pulpit made tricky works accessible, if not always comprehensible, to a wider audience while influencing Hemingway's career. If Chicago wasn't modernist central, it was the place where it became more than an elitist act, and though Olson approaches the subject with academic rigor, she writes with force, as well as originality, crafting fictionalized vignettes of her subjects' experience of the city. A valuable, perspective-shifting work of both cultural and Midwestern history.

Kirkus Reviews