Last night I picked up a useful piece of information from my across-the-hall neighbor, a 20-year building resident who’s proven to be a boundless source of neighborhood gossip and history.  The landmark Goldblatt building, located at the southwest corner of Chicago & Ashland, is most likely going to house a new Chicago Public Library branch serving Ukrainian Village & East Village.  If it does indeed come to pass, the new library will replace the existing smaller Eckhart Park & Midwest branches. I love the idea of a library in this good-looking former department store building, which I learned from my landlord was slated for demolition in the 1990s but saved at the insistence of neighborhood residents.  Hooray for adaptive reuse! I’m willing to take Burl’s word for it, since she seems to know what’s what, but there has been some official publicity.

Date: Friday, May 23rd

Time: 7:00 pm, $1

Location: The Hideout

Participants: Kevin Sampsell, Diana Slickman

I was fairly ambivalent about posting a listing for this event, not because I don’t love the Dollar Store, but because any advertising could cause it to sell out even quicker now.  From the email:

The Dollar Store comes back for a onetime show as part of the Pilcrow Literary Festival, and a sort of big Chicago hello to friend Kevin Sampsell, author of the new Creamy Bullets, who’ll read a story inspired by a piece of Portland dollar store junk, making it the first piece of DS junk that’s been on a commercial airliner (The Show has sprung for an extra biz-class seat for it, if you must know).

And joining him is Diana Slickman, a Dollar Store favorite who was gracious enough not to say no when we asked her to do something again.

The event is a must-see for the same reason it’s bittersweet: another Dollar Store won’t come around for a long while.

This morning, the Tribune reports that while other big-name institutions like Harvard and Yale are storing their books off-campus, the U of C plans to build an underground library capped by a glorious glass dome. I kind of like the article’s opener in spite of myself:

At the University of Chicago, where the student hangout is the library and a prize is awarded annually for undergraduate book collecting, officials are expected to announce Monday plans to build another tribute to the university’s bookish character.

Almost as cool as the future existence of an underground library made of glass is that its major donor is the CEO of Morningstar, Inc., maker of the world’s greatest veggie corn dog.

Photo of E. Hand courtesy of Locus; M. Sharpe courtesy of Small Spiral Notebook

Date: Monday, May 12, 2008

Time: 7:30 p.m.

Location: The Book Cellar

Generation Loss and Jamestown were not only two of the most engaging American novels published last year, but also two of the more entertaining literary meditations on violence released in recent memory. 

Loss bears the distinction of being the only postpunk hardboiled mystery in existence (please correct me if there’s one I don’t know about). I would have loved it only for the way Hand seamlessly name-drops John Holstrom, but her queasy-making depictions of blood, guts, violence and decay send her off into Blood Meridian Land, and to really good effect. I’ve never read George Pelicanos, but I would think this is George Pelicanos for music geeks.

And Jamestown is just flat-out hilarious. I remember being really afraid to start it, since I lurved Sharpe’s first book, The Sleeping Father, and I feared a sophomore slump.  But it was not to be! It was great!

Don’t miss it, kids.  Super awesome double-headers like this don’t come along that frequently.

Photo courtesy of Alan Del Rio Ortiz

I have finally finished The Lazarus Project, Aleksander Hemon’s new novel. All those comparisons to Nabokov? Accurate. No, really.  I’ve read all his books, and although The Question of Bruno will always be my favorite, this came very close. 

Last week, I had the privilege to attend his event at the Stop Smiling storefront, and it was really charming. After thirty minutes’ worth of reading, Hemon talked about Europe and how old isn’t necessarily good, since old grudges sometimes lead to acts of genocide. The evening ended with a slide show by Velibor Bozovik, Hemon’s best friend and the photographer responsible for many of the images in the novel.  (There’s a really good interview with Bozovik here.)

Hemon himself is very tall, and there were several other very tall Eastern Europeans in attendance who did not get misty-eyed when confronted with the projected images of their homeland. Additionally, there were somewhere around 50 (?) others who gathered for the event, someone from WBEZ recorded it, and this guy was there.  If you missed it, there should be photos and audio available that we’ll link to once they’re up.

I’ll be there, although now when I think of American Apparel, I think of this video on Jezebel.com