A. J. Liebling - Chicago: The Second City

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Text originally published in 1952 under the same title.

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CHICAGO: THE SECOND CITY

BY

A. J. LIEBLING

DRAWINGS BY STEINBERG

Contents

To R. R. McC.

The day after the first of my series of three pieces on Chicago appeared in The New Yorker I began getting letters from Chicagoans and people who had merely been there. The letters from the visitors, and from expatriates, were almost all favorablethose from people who were still there werent. The most catamountainous of all came from the suburbs; the people who wouldnt live in the city if you gave them the place rose to its defense like fighters off peripheral air-fields in the Ruhr in 1944.

There was for example the woman from Oak Park, Illinois, who wrote:

If my old sainted grandmother, in her eighties, who having borne eleven children, reared them successfully to maturity, now spends her life in prayer and uncomplaining illness, had been brought upon a dias [ sic ] and examined dispassionately by a jury of casting directors I could not have been more dismayed or indignant.

All the letter-writers together found just two, or perhaps three, small factual errors, which I have signalized in the present book by footnotes in the appropriate places. The most considerable was that I had placed the Bahai temple in Evanston, the suburb just north of Chicago, when it was really in Wilmette, a mile farther on. But most of the objections were directed against the spirit of the reporting, which the objectors found too objective: De mortuis nihil nisi bonum , and Dont cheer, men, the poor devils are dying, were the two main lines of rebuke. Both are too pessimistic, for Chicago is neither dead nor dying; it is, as the sideshow men say, Alive, Alivedid you ever see a two-headed baby?

(The gaff in that line, a sideshow man once told mehe happened to be a Chicagoanis that you dont say you got a live two-headed baby. You just ask them have they seen one. But this is a digression.)

Another kind of unobserved fire, thrown in my general direction, was the charge that I was a flitting viewer, writing about the place after a visit of a few weeks, days, or hours (according to the degree of indignation of the writer). The extreme example of this form of criticism I have preserved in a postcard from a lady named Swift. It bears the simple legend: You were never in Chicago.

But the fact is that I lived in Chicago for nearly a year in 1949-50 and went back to check up in May, 1951. So this isnt a between-trains job. I gathered a lot of material which I discarded; the report is packed down rather than built up, and I think it is exact, in the same sense as El Grecos picture of Toledo, not the one in Ohio. The suppressed detail would, if retained, merely have messed things up. I dont say it is as good as the El Greco, but Saul Steinberg has tried to bridge the gap with his illustrations.

The least easily answerable comment came via postcard from a man in Bergenfield, New Jersey, who had read the first section to appear in The New Yorker .

Re Chicago: the message read, Okay, we give up...who asked you?

To which I can but rejoin, Who asked Lemuel Gulliver or Marco Polo or Tocqueville or Sir John Mandeville or Abyssinian Bruce? Who asked Dam Trollope or Son Trollope, Birkbeck (who got to Illinois in 1817) or Mungo Park or William Dampier? In fact, what travel writer ever waited to be asked?

Lest these precedents be thought insufficient, I invoke that of Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick. Annually, or almost, the Colonel quits his atomic-bombproof eyrie in his Symphony in Stone, the Tribune Tower, to soar off into the Wild Blue Yonder on a mission of aerial reportage. From the places where he alights, the Colonel tells Tribune readers what the world outside looks like to him, generally pretty awful. The average time it takes him to cover a country is twenty-four hours. And if the Colonel can tell Chicago about the outside world, why cant a fellow from the latter tell the outside world about Chicago? To borrow a line from Judy Holliday, its a free country.

Some of the letters I got, even from Chicago, took a more sympathetic turn. As one of these put it:

It is, and most apparently so, that Chicago is not what it should or could be. It is not, however, in need of more bitter criticicizing, rather in need of intelligent and honest aid at the front.

I should like to know Mr. Lieblings true humanitarian capacityif any!! It is hardly likely that he throws automobile tires at his wife, beats same, plus children,nor would he, upon encountering a person of lowest circumstances,a beggar on the street (New York version)a bum (Chicago version, and quite the more vivid and descriptive term)probably be captured with the near obsession of just how he could further lead this be-beggared one into still further depths of any worse condition which might be possible to bring about.It is entirely enough that there are now, so many others, worldwide, who are only too willing to trample any of the falling, hesitant, or be-cloudedwithout dwelling so long, hard and sarcasticly upon such an accumulance of dowdy and brutal remarks, which in the end, are certainly not much of a shock to anyone,

Is Mr. Liebling forming a Be Nasty to Chicago Club??? Is he perhaps trying to gain followersthose who are also inclined towards sarcasium, slicing throats,Or is he by some maddening themeperhaps without knowing, himself endeavoring to inspire helpful people to action at the Chicago front!! If this is so and I almost entirely doubt such a pleasant ulterior motive, then I should adore to board the next plane possible and be first in line to tenderly and encouragingly grasp the hand of Mr. Liebling as he staggers (I hope) backward from reading such reactionaries as this one of many of which he must be in recipience daily!

Leave us not without exception, stamp on the discarded cigaretteif it is out, its quite ridiculous.

Sincerely,

A first emotional letter to the editors writer.

First-Emotional-Letter-To-The-Editors-Writer has divined, although with pardonable incredulity, the true intent of this report, which is kind. I stagger forward (I hope) to tenderly and encouragingly grasp his or her hand. His or her reactionary is most perceptive.

Even kinder was a man who might have claimed a just grievance, since he had to carry pounds of my prose on his daily rounds, as well as pay for his own copy.