Letter

I’d never heard of Bronislaw Bak before looking up the description for the Block Museum’s cityscape show. I pitched a review to the Reader as extra motivation to pedal up to Evanston and it was accepted.

There’s a wall of eighteen woodblock prints from series called One-Hundred Views of Chicago, made in 1967. It’s the main reason to see the show. There are other prints and some photographs that are worthwhile but the Bak wall is the major draw for me.

The Art Institute owns the whole set, as does the Chicago History Museum. I’ll have to make an appointment to take a look.

The fact I never heard of the guy is a large part of the attraction. As you go along, it becomes more difficult to discover anything new. You come to rely on what you know and settle into habits and patterns. Particularly when it comes to art about Chicago, I thought I had a pretty good grasp on the main characters.

There’s a website devoted to Bak, maintained by extant family. He fled the Nazis and made a career in the US, teaching and making art across several media. Stained glass was a favorite, with several large commissions including a synagogue on Lake Shore Drive here in town.

The work is pretty typical mid-century Modernist. Simplified, abstracted forms made to evoke landscapes and figures. Nothing drew my eye nearly as much as the woodblock prints by which I first learned of him.

I wish there was a book of them. It would stand along the wordless novels of Masereel, Gropper, and Ward; the work that clearly inspired his.

K and I talked about Wanda (1970), Wild River (1960), and a couple other movies.

Got a few copies of The Jungle available, in case you wanna be the first kid on the block with one.

I’ve fallen into William Gass’s fiction over the past year. I return to it whenever I’m not reading something for review or illustration. I started with his first novel, Omensetter’s Luck, then jumped to his last, Middle C, and the story collection, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, before starting on his magnum opus, The Tunnel. It’s a bear of a book. I’m about a quarter-way’s through. I’m in no hurry. There’s really no way to be with a thing like this.

I don’t think I have the words to explain what makes Gass’s work so compelling. It’s dense and sometimes confusing. But every few pages he hits a rhythm that carries me up out of his swamp and convinces me to keep going, just when I’m ready to quit and read something simpler. But after every break, when I return to him, I’m glad of it.

I like reading passages out loud to hear what they sound like, to see what the words feel like coming out of my mouth. Here’s a couple parts from The Tunnel about the narrator’s family. It’s ugly but funny. It doesn’t make the speaker, Kohler, look very good. Few of Gass’s protagonists are heroes, even in the broadest sense of the word.

I read all of “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country” into a mic. It took over an hour. I’m glad I did it because, if nothing else, it was a chance to reread one of the best short stories I know.

No matter how many hundred pages his books are, the best parts of them are like poetry. There are many actual poems throughout the books as well, many of them limericks, doggerel, and otherwise silly rhymes. The push-pull between the buoyancy of verse and the gravity of prose is one of the central tensions in all his writing that I’ve read. As if he longs for lightness but can’t help mucking about in the mire.

Sometimes I wonder what it might be like to write a doorstop like The Tunnel. I wouldn’t even know how to begin. There must be so much preparation before digging in. I always learn on the go. I don’t plan. No outlines or sketches. I need to hit it and get to the end or crash and burn. I can accrue a pile of scraps and fashion it into a whole but that’s nothing like what Gass does. He evokes inner and outer worlds, whole regions of countries. I rarely see much past the view out my window.

The good thing about The Tunnel is it’s such a sprawl that it feels like it’ll always be there waiting, no matter how long I’m away or how many other things I read in the meantime. A bottomless pit that sits there and waits for me to climb back in.

I talked to John McNaughton about his life and movies, then transcribed and edited the conversation down and added his photos.

K and I talk House of Horrors, its unnecessary prequel, Ken Russell’s The Devils, and more.

Tuesday afternoon at the bar is quiet. I know Brian will come in as soon as I hit the breaker on the neon, and he does. K comes in a few minutes later because she knows I’m covering this shift. She just finished up at the record store.

Then Skyler comes in and it feels like old home week for a while.

Because I don’t work here regularly anymore, there isn’t an expected routine or rhythm. If it’s an afternoon shift, I take the caps off the bottles, fill the ice wells, cut limes, wet bar rags, set up the glasses and spill mats. That part never changes. What’s different is I’m not the regular guy, only a sub.

Brian leaves, then Skyler, then K. It’s an ordinary, slow, weekday shift. I listen to Connolly’s Lou Reed tribute record, then switch to Boards of Canada. Two couples from out of town commandeer the photo booth. One couple from Minnesota, the other from Ohio; they’ve met in the middle in Chicago. One of the women proposes to her boyfriend while the camera flashes. They all leave happy.

Tom comes in and insists I pick a drawing from his tiny sketchbook to take for myself. I tell him that’s generous but he insists that it would be his honor and that no one’s ever accused him of generosity.

A young woman comes in and orders a cider. She looks like she’s waiting for someone. A few minutes later another joins her. She orders an amaretto sour.

I’ve been coming to this bar for over thirty years. It’s my favorite by a wide margin. But if I have one beef with the place it’s that the male-female ratio of the clientele is all out of whack. Most afternoons it’s a sausage party. Deborah used to call it a meat market. Maybe so. But only if you’re looking for a man.

Another young woman walks in and looks around. Clearly her first time. She asks about what we have, if it’s like a dive bar. I tell her it’s cash-only and she goes to the machine. Her friend comes in and they order a vodka-soda and a gin-and-tonic and take one of the booths. Then another woman comes in, orders a beer and a glass of water, then opens her Octavia Butler book. Camille comes in, orders a Tito’s-and-soda and opens her own weathered paperback in the corner. Two very young women rush in, order shots of tequila, and run back out.

For a couple of minutes, there are eight women in the bar and no men, except for me. Never seen that before. I want to tell one of them but don’t want to ruin the moment. A guy comes in a minute later, breaking the spell, complains I’m not Andy.

I tell Andy about the women when he comes in to relieve me. He jokes that it’s because he’s working. As I wheel my bike out it’s just him and six women. I tell him to have a good time.

K and I talk about the Ross brothers’ Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (2020).