I generally mark everything I “consume” as being worth it, because if it wasn’t I wouldn’t finish it. That said, this was a tough one to swallow. Algren was clearly angry and bitter and seemed to have pretty much given up on Chicago by the time he wrote this. He spends most of the book detailing how clout, corruption, and greed have shaped the city from day one, but I couldn’t even understand a lot of it because at least every other sentence refers to some person, event, or scandal that might have been familiar to people in his time, or historians, but means nothing to me. Having the annotated version helped with this, but it was still slow reading.

On the other hand, Algren obviously loved the people of the city, although he might not have had much faith in their ability to ever make good. This is the essay where he gave us this immortal and beautiful line:

“Once you’ve come to be a part of this particular patch, you’ll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.”

(This is the inspiration for the title of Never a City So Real.)

I enjoyed the stories of the wacky Chicago characters the best. Many of these are referred to only in passing by Algren, but are fully explained in the annotations. Just one tidbit: Streeterville is named after “Cap” Streeter, who parked his boat offshore and claimed a sort of island, which had been created by landfilling in the lake, as an independent province. He refused to pay taxes, and the city took him to court. There were also gun battles in the area as he held off law enforcement. Eventually, Chicago won, but a neighborhood near all these shenanigans still has Cap Streeter’s name.

Reading this has definitely led me to look at my new home differently. This city has a hell of a lot of heart . . . but how about a soul?