After a 20-year famine, the Chicago Reader, over the New Year’s weekend, has broken with its own tradition and treated us to a feast of some 16-odd short pieces of original fiction. Without warning or so much as an editorial comment, we have been left on our own to make what we will of this compilation of work. We are given the name of the author of each piece but no hint as to the writer’s background or how it came to be that a story was selected.
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Given the prohibition on fiction in Chicago magazine, the Tribune, and the Sun-Times, the importance of this gesture toward local writers cannot be treated as anything short of a miracle. It is interesting to speculate as to where you intend to take this thing. Maybe smaller doses administered on a weekly basis admidst the usual topical features and commentary would be most effective. It takes a lot of endurance to read 16 short pieces over a weekend, and there is a real danger that one just might miss a gem if someone prematurely throws the thing in with the recycling.
There are several unremarkable pieces best described as “Coming of Age,” Sci-fi /Political, and Artze (rock ‘n’ roll as a serious art form; the sad state of contemporary poetry). There are also a few good starts that either introduce a unique character or an interesting premise but somehow just don’t pull the whole thing off, as “loops of discovery” in “Qi” and the very mysterious Ghan in “Credit and Agency.”
E. Adams
