Readings, Rated
Patron Saint of Literago
Thank the baby Jesus it’s 2007 and the elite no longer need to assume stewardship of Lettres, er, letters. Look at this entry we found in the irrefutable Encyclopedia of Chicago:
“…after poet Harriet Monroe pressed for and received the commission to write the dedicatory poem at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, she discovered that belles lettres ranked low on the list of artistic forms that Chicago’s elite were willing to support financially. At the high point in the city’s cultural uplift, Monroe’s “Columbian Ode” barely sold, and the poet used the unsold copies to fuel the stove in her bedroom. In a city dominated by economic interests and lacking in literary traditions, even the most genteel efforts to boost literature’s cultural importance had limited influence. Founded in the early 1890s, the Little Room brought together the artistic and professional elite …the Little Roomers gathered in the Auditorium Hotel and the Fine Arts Building for afternoon teas and midnight dramas, all the while fostering an atmosphere of aesthetic playfulness and serious intellectual engagement that lasted until the club’s demise in 1931.”
Anyone up for tea and midnight dramas can send me a text. Oh, and any genteels who stumble across our site can make checks payable to Eugenia Williamson.
Not to sound like a crank, but I miss Modernism for its earnestness. We’d get our asses kicked if we pulled anything like that.