“The Coast of Chicago,” a collection of stories set in ethnic working class areas of the city by Chicago native Stuart Dybek, is the latest selection for the city’s One Book, One Chicago program, Mayor Richard Daley announced Tuesday.
“Coast,” the sixth book chosen for the popular program, “contains very realistic descriptions of the city and its neighborhoods, and the characters are true to life,” Daley said.
“Some of us will recognize people who we grew up with a number of years ago. . . . I think it will result in some very interesting discussions when Chicagoans get together to share their reactions to these wonderful stories.”
The book, first published in 1990, had been discussed by members of the One Book, One Chicago selection committee in the past, but was out of print, said Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey.
“It doesn’t do us any good to pick a book that you can’t get,” she said.
But when “Coast” was reissued in advance of last November’s publication of Dybek’s newest book, “I Sailed with Magellan,” it became a viable choice and ultimately emerged the winner in the latest competition, she said.
“I hope it is entertaining,” said Dybek, who appeared with Daley and Dempsey at a news conference at the Harold Washington Library Center. “I hope the stories are good. I’d like to think the book is beautiful in a way that Chicago architecture is.”
“Coast” is set in parts of the city that tourists usually don’t see.
“If you come to the city, you might send somebody a postcard, and it will have the skyline or a picture of the lakefront,” said Dybek, who grew up in Pilsen and Little Village.
“But this is a book that gives you a different picture of the city, and one that is no less accurate and perhaps more accurate in some ways,” he said. “It looks behind the Gold Coast. I hope it shows a real vibrant community, people who can survive through imagination and humor. And it doesn’t fudge on some of the problems that confront people growing up in neighborhoods that have been immigrant-based.”
Chicago author Studs Terkel has called Dybek, “the bard of the blue collar,” whose writing “captures the city in a way that nobody else’s does.”
Dybek, who said he spent rainy afternoons in neighborhood libraries, graduated from St. Rita High School in 1959 and went on to earn degrees at Loyola University Chicago and the University of Iowa.
His father, a Polish immigrant, worked in an International Harvester foundry; his mother was employed as a truck dispatcher. Neither finished high school and both were “horrified” when he decided to drop out of premed studies to pursue a living based on language and writing, he said.
“I was the first kid in the family to go to college, and it was a very understandable idea that you went to college to get a good job so you didn’t have to work in a foundry like your father,” Dybek said.
“Because of that, I knew that behind their terror for me were these good intentions. . . . After they saw I was really serious about it, they totally supported me.”
Dybek acknowledged that he had doubts himself, at first.
“I was convinced I probably would be homeless at best,” he said. But “writing was so seductive I couldn’t help myself.”
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Young people today face similar career decisions and similar parental concerns, said Dybek, who teaches creative writing at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo.
“This dilemma has not gone away,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many Asian kids, for instance, have come up and asked me what they should do: `I want to be a photographer, but my dad wants me to be a dentist.’
“I tell them, `Don’t give up your dream. See if you can do both for a while. The answer will become clear to you.'”
“Coast” will be the subject of a number of discussions, events and lectures during National Library Week, April 18-24. Details are available on the Chicago Public Library’s Web site, chicagopubliclibrary.org.