Althouse: "Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968."

July 6, 2016

"Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968."

A great read — and a great way to get a little perspective on the upcoming conventions.

The audio version of this 1968 book just came out yesterday. Having preordered, I got started yesterday. If Trump and Hillary are overpresent in your head, stop up your ears with some earbuds and take a nice long walk or crank up the car speakers and go for a good long drive. Spend 9+ hours in another time and place. You know you need it. Read along with me and let's talk about 1968 and get some historical contrast to the present day.

And, wow, the writing is so different from what's around today. Inspiring on an artistic level. I shouldn't admit I'm reading this and inspired because if I can figure out how to infuse my writing with some of the grand style of Norman Mailer, I will, and I don't want you to laugh at me.

76 comments:

Brando said...: The more you look at today's choices, the better Nixon looks in hindsight.

Also, Miami Beach seems a better bet to keep secure than Chicago--rabble can be blocked off on the causeways, and who wants to protest when there are nice beaches nearby?; 7/6/16, 10:28 AM
Jaq said...: Good luck on the writing thing! But you know we are going to laugh at you irregardless.; 7/6/16, 10:37 AM
YoungHegelian said...: @Brando,

Miami Beach seems a better bet to keep secure than Chicago

No worries, bud. The Daley Machine has got da situation under control!

Seriously, at the time, who could have been trusted to keep a town in control than Chicago under Daley, especially for the Democrats? The Democrats were just blind-sided by just how much of a ruckus the New Left, who hated the Democrats because of Johnson & the Vietnam war, wanted to make.

It's just hard for folks nowadays to understand that the New Left hated the Democrats of Johnson, the war, racist Dixiecrats, etc much more than the Republicans. In theory, they loathed them both. In practice, the Democrats caught most of the grief.; 7/6/16, 10:39 AM
John Christopher said...: I plan to listen to this. I've noticed in the past that Normal Mailer has very few books available through Audible, so glad to see this addition.; 7/6/16, 10:40 AM
rhhardin said...: I remember the mess, but was spending weekends working on the numerical solution of Navier Stokes equations.

TV didn't make it, even then.; 7/6/16, 10:47 AM
mccullough said...: More Boomer nostalgia; 7/6/16, 10:52 AM
Bill Peschel said...: I always read with an eye towards copping stylistic ideas. It was from reading Terry Pratchett that I saw how little description you needed, but the few sentences that are left have to be pretty pungent.

I'm also reading Twain as part of a series of Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Written in his voice. Talk about climbing mountains.

If you're interested in historical precedents for today's situation, check out Dan Carlin's Hardcore History series "Death Throes of the Republic." Elites, reformers, assassinations, and a spiral down from republic to dictatorship. His series on World War I is free, but I paid $60 for the first 39 episodes. That's how good it is.

http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/; 7/6/16, 10:54 AM
Clayton Hennesey said...: More Boomer nostalgia...ripped from today's headlines.; 7/6/16, 10:57 AM
Jaq said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/6/16, 11:01 AM
Jaq said...: I have a new regime of swapping off light fiction with the more heaving going, but I read the light fiction in French. I am reading a translation of Paper Money by Ken Follet now. Thrillers keep me doing the work of reading a language I haven't quite mastered yet.; 7/6/16, 11:03 AM
geoffb said...: Less literary but the aftermath of the 1968 Democratic convention is also interesting and timely.; 7/6/16, 11:05 AM
Anonymous said...: Was Bernie Sanders part of the mob in Chicago, 1968 ?; 7/6/16, 11:05 AM
Jaq said...: I am all but retired, so I have to do something now that the republic has been murdered.; 7/6/16, 11:05 AM
Roughcoat said...: I won't laugh at you. Be assured of that.; 7/6/16, 11:07 AM
Jaq said...: I might laugh, but I will try not to mock.; 7/6/16, 11:08 AM
Roughcoat said...: What's to laugh at?; 7/6/16, 11:12 AM
damikesc said...: It's just hard for folks nowadays to understand that the New Left hated the Democrats of Johnson, the war, racist Dixiecrats, etc much more than the Republicans. In theory, they loathed them both. In practice, the Democrats caught most of the grief.

You have to remove your disliked compatriots before targeting the real enemy. When the Tea Party finally manages to fully take over the GOP (they've been grinding thru state parties), the Dems will not enjoy it.; 7/6/16, 11:26 AM
Rob said...: Even better: The Armies of the Night. Mailer hits it out of the park.; 7/6/16, 11:27 AM
Darrell said...: The Democratic Party’s plan to crash this month’s Republican National Convention is heavy on gimmicks and stunts meant to highlight a possible “Trumpocalypse,” as well as to ridicule the presumptive GOP candidate’s purported spray tan, tiny fingers, and dog whistle proclivities.

DNC officials also plan to “infiltrate friendly union hotels and properties around the convention that Republicans will be patronizing to distribute ‘care’ packages” to those who will be sickened by Trump’s nomination.

The plan also envisions a citywide strike by fast food workers, presumably over the fight for a $15-an-hour minimum wage. In the alternative, the strike could occur at “franchises around convention,” which will be held at the Quicken Loans Arena in downtown Cleveland.

On the morning the convention opens, the plan notes, Democrats will host a “Cereal & Bailey’s Breakfast,” a reference to RNC chair Reince Priebus’s claim that GOP party strife had not driven him to douse his Cheerios with Irish cream liqueur.

The DNC plan lists other hokey proposed stunts, like:

* A “Trumpocalypse Survival kit” tote bag with a barf bag, Tylenol, Alka Seltzer, and a clothespin “to hold nose while voting for Trump.”

* The production of an eight-page “Trump Tabloid” designed to look like the New York Post. The paper--“ideal for dumping oppo” research on the developer--would include a Trump-penned advice column entitled “How to Talk to Women.”

* Volunteers dressed as limousine drivers would go to the airport and meet arriving RNC members with “signs with messaging about Trump.”

* The distribution of a “Go Trump Yourself” kit that includes spray tan, hair dye, a dog whistle, and “Tiny foam fingers/hand clappers.”

* Attendees at a media lunch would be served food “from countries Trump has offended.” The menu would offer tacos and hummus and pita.

* A Trump “Successful Businessman Starter Kit” would include a $40 million check from “your Dad” and a diploma from Trump University.

* Producing milk cartons with the photos of the many GOP leaders who are skipping the convention.

The plan’s “other ideas” section notes that volunteers and interns could get dressed as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee and perform “Trump things.” Another idea is described as a “WH/Administration ask” for the provision of “topline surrogates/cabinet secretaries?” (16 pages)

http://thesmokinggun.com/documents/stupid/dnc-rnc-plan-645391; 7/6/16, 11:27 AM
Brando said...: "Seriously, at the time, who could have been trusted to keep a town in control than Chicago under Daley, especially for the Democrats? The Democrats were just blind-sided by just how much of a ruckus the New Left, who hated the Democrats because of Johnson & the Vietnam war, wanted to make."

It helped Nixon's narrative that year. When everything seems to be going nuts, the vast middle wants the return to normalcy, and Nixon by '68 seemed like a throwback to a simpler time, before all the '60s chaos. Wallace was the "primal scream" candidate that year, for voters who just wanted to stick it to the hippies, but Nixon was all about "getting back to normal" with "honorable peace" in Vietnam (not the victory most people felt was unattainable, nor the immediate pullout that would look too much like a loss, but a comfortable middle ground) and "law and order" in the streets (not running over hippies, but getting after lawbreakers while not rolling back civil rights gains either).

This year, if we see riots or unrest at the conventions (or campuses) the points will go to whichever candidate represents "bringing things back to normal". Let's see how Trump and Hillary handle that.; 7/6/16, 11:36 AM
Heartless Aztec said...: 1968 was a horrible year. I can't think of many worse a far as American politics go. I wouldn't wish a replay of that year on anyone or any political party. Let's read about it and discuss it but at the same time keep it at a nice and safe 48 year remove.; 7/6/16, 11:37 AM
Robert Cook said...: "The more you look at today's choices, the better Nixon looks in hindsight."

Today's choices have all of the sleaze and none of the competence.; 7/6/16, 11:39 AM
narciso said...: Ian Pears has a similar sprawling text regarding 19th century finance, don't know if it's available in French,; 7/6/16, 11:42 AM
Robert Cook said...: "Was Bernie Sanders part of the mob in Chicago, 1968?"

I don't believe Sanders was ever a member of the Chicago P.D.; 7/6/16, 11:42 AM
narciso said...: actually it is,

https://www.amazon.fr/chute-John-Stone-Iain-PEARS/dp/2266203681?ie=UTF8&qid=1467823396&ref_=la_B000ARBIFE_1_7&s=books&sr=1-7; 7/6/16, 11:44 AM
narciso said...: I started the trollope series, backwards with the Prime Minister and moved on to Phineas Redux,; 7/6/16, 11:50 AM
Mike Sylwester said...: I'm reading this and inspired because if I can figure out how to infuse my writing with some of the grand style of Norman Mailer, I will,

Resist the temptation.

I read this work when Harper's magazine published it in 1968, when I was 16 years old. I spent the rest of my high-school years trying to write in Mailer's "grand style".

Eventually, however, I realized that I should try to write simply.; 7/6/16, 11:51 AM
narciso said...: yes it was much harder to avoid actual evidence back then, although the narrative 'the whole world is watching' did take hold, there was a similar pattern in france, with degaulle, where there was no war to concern themselves,, a very risque navelgazing take of the period was offered in dreamers,; 7/6/16, 12:03 PM
narciso said...: the same with the baader meinhof in germany, brigatte rossi in italy and actione directe in france, the underlying cause of the unrest was beside the point,; 7/6/16, 12:10 PM
wild chicken said...: Ehh, he writes about himself in the third person...makes me miss Hunter Thompson. Fear and Loathing 1972 was a good read too.; 7/6/16, 12:10 PM
narciso said...: take this counterpart to the sds/weatherman, who got their training in cuba,

While the Trento group around Curcio had its main roots in the Sociology Department of the Catholic University, the Reggio Emilia group (around Franceschini) included mostly former members of the F G C I (the Communist youth movement) expelled from the parent party for extremist views.[7] In the beginning the Red Brigades were mainly active in Reggio Emilia, and in large factories in Milan, (such as Sit-Siemens, Pirelli and Magneti Marelli) and in Turin (Fiat). Members sabotaged factory equipment and broke into factory offices and trade union headquarters. In 1972, they carried out their first kidnapping: a factory foreman for Sit Siemens was held for around 20 minutes whilst pictures were taken of him wearing a placard declaring him to be a fascist.[8] The foreman was then released unharmed.[9]; 7/6/16, 12:16 PM
William said...: I read "Armies of the Night" and "Chicago and The Siege of Chicago". As I remember they were fun to read. He had a sense of humor and was surprisingly self deferential when writing about himself. It wasn't exactly humility, but he was aware of his grandiosity and mocked it. He didn't so much report on events as on his reactions to those events. Neither those events nor he himself were quit so momentous as his readers are led to believe......Those two books seem to be his enduring works. Has anyone ever read his later doorstopper novels? I understand they feature a lot of sex, but nowadays who reads novels for the sexual content?......Mailer could project the image of the Great Serious Novelist when such an image was still marketable. Nowadays we look to rock stars and move directors to explain the times in which we live.; 7/6/16, 12:18 PM
narciso said...: Mailer fancied himself the Dos Passos of the movement, even though he was a generation older than most of the lead participants, he led this country on a seriously wrong path,; 7/6/16, 12:24 PM
narciso said...: he along with mcgovern, were part of the previous childrens crusade of category error, the henry wallace effort,; 7/6/16, 12:26 PM
David said...: Mailer had the advantage of not having a legal education. (He studied engineering (!) at Harvard.) Being #1 at NYU etc etc etc requires a certain prose style. There are bad and excellent versions of this style, and your version had to be in the excellent range to achieve what you have achieved. Your blog writing isn't archetypical legal prose but your passion for clarity is an artifact of that style. Miami and the Siege is some of the best writing Mailer ever did. One of its virtues is clarity rather than quasi artistic obfuscation. One of the luxuries Mailer had was time to rewrite, edit and reflect. It will be difficult to incorporate Mailer without writing slowly and rewriting obsessively. But good luck.

Mailer Paris Review Interview 1964: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4503/the-art-of-fiction-no-32-norman-mailer; 7/6/16, 12:37 PM
Jaq said...: What's to laugh at?

I said "might" and we don't know yet.; 7/6/16, 12:41 PM
John henry said...: Let me second bill peschel on dan carlin.

Best way to describe it is a series of 3 hour riffs on historical subjects. Ww1 Russia in wwii and ghengis khan are particularly good.

Actually more than 3 hours since most are 3 to 5 episodes.

John henry; 7/6/16, 12:58 PM
Brando said...: The radical protesters never understood the optics, and figured footage of helmeted cops beating on them in the streets would get them sympathy. Turns out most people watching it on TV sympathized with the cops, figuring the yippies were bums causing havoc attacking cops. Not only did that have the opposite effect of ending the war earlier, it sparked a much longer-lasting pro-"law and order" sentiment in the country that lasted decades.

What will this year's protesters accomplish?; 7/6/16, 1:05 PM
narciso said...: well it's possible they are counting on 40 years walking through the institution have softened up the populace, conceivable, they might need to deputize some blackwater folks, because I don't think cleveland pd has either the resources or the will to deal with what's coming,; 7/6/16, 1:08 PM
rhhardin said...: Althouse and Althouse blog get a shout-out in today's Andrew Klavan Show 16 minutes in.; 7/6/16, 1:13 PM
mccullough said...: All political conventions should be held in Detroit.; 7/6/16, 1:13 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: Burn this bitch down.; 7/6/16, 1:34 PM
Sebastian said...: Telling line: "You could not dominate a thing." Quite the patriarchal model, that old Norm.

Hope the Cleveland mayor is studying Daley. For as we all know, Trump is responsible for a lot of leftist violence.; 7/6/16, 2:05 PM
Roughcoat said...: I was living in Chicago area ("Chicagoland," as the locals call it) in the summer of '68; I had lived there my entire life up til then and would continue living there through 69 and into 70. I loved it. The convention riots and all the brouhaha associated with them were, I have to admit, very exiting, very stimulating ... very enjoyable.

The action, as they say, is the juice. Lot of juice in Chicago in those days.

Chicago back then was still the "Old Chicago," the city of ethnic neighborhoods, very Catholic, very Irish, with a lot of Polish and other Slavic elements and influences, a comparatively (relative to today)small black population, and comparatively low crime. The economy was booming, it was affordable to live in, it was reasonably safe (especially in the white ethnic neighborhoods), and if you wanted to work you could always find a job somewhere, doing something, and making decent money. It was, literally and figuratively, "the city that works." Even the black neighborhoods were vastly less violent than they are today and there was a thriving black middle class.

I miss that city, especially the Irish-Cathlic aspect of it all. It was like living in a 1930s movie with a happy ending where people said "swell" and "say, you" and "she's a swell dame" and all that. The tough guys were good guys and the girls were pretty and down to earth and also tough but in a good way. I spent a lot of time in Old Town and in the bar on Lincoln Avenue (especially Wise Fools) because I was a Northsider but I also hung out with pals on the South Side, in Beverly and Mt. Greenwood and Canaryville and Bridgeprot, e.g. doing the "Death March" tour of the pubs on Western Avenue; and, on weekends, renting party cottages on the so-called "Irish Riviera" in Michigan City, Indiana and its environs.

Yeah, I'm sentimentalizing it. But it really was wonderful. Magical, even. Adding to the wonder of it all: in 1968 I fell deeply love for the first time and got laid for the first time.

Mailer captures something of the essence of the city in that time. But he doesn't know the breadth and depth of it: he's all on the surface, because he didn't grow up in it.

Now it's mostly gone, gone--gone with the wind. Many of the neighborhoods went to hell and have become inner city shooting galleries ruled by black gangs. Now I live in a southwestern suburb of the city that's populated to a large degree by ex-South Side Irish and their children and grand-children: where the South Irish diaspora came to live.; 7/6/16, 2:24 PM
Roughcoat said...: Correction, above: "where the South Side Irish diaspora came to live."; 7/6/16, 2:28 PM
Anonymous said...: You have to remove your disliked compatriots before targeting the real enemy.

The Judean People's Front!?; 7/6/16, 2:38 PM
Roughcoat said...: The radical protesters never understood the optics, and figured footage of helmeted cops beating on them in the streets would get them sympathy.

Well, that's true to a degree, but it's a bit more complicated than that, especially if you were a Chicago kid, a white kid, an average Joe. You were pulled, sort of, in two directions. On the one hand you knew the hippie in front of the Conrad Hilton on Balbo and Michigan were scuzzballs who wanted nothing more than to provoke the cops into going wild, and so you were sympathetic to the cops and wanted see Chicago's finest perform an epic beat-down on the demonstrators. On the other hand, and you heard it here, I admit it: the brawling and fighting and rioting and anarchy was exciting and fun and there was something in every red-blooded Chicago boy that wanted to take part in it, to get in on the action, to defy authority and duke it out with the cops and all that. At some point in your life growing up in Chicagoland you had to have it out with the cops, it was a rite of passage.; 7/6/16, 2:38 PM
Laslo Spatula said...: Renfro Jeffries. Nazi And Proud Of It!

Almost Fifty Years and you've learned Nothing.

The Same Anarchy from the Same Suspects. The Government-Media Complex and the Cosmopolitans (you know what I mean by that) will gently call them 'Protesters" but they have other, Truer, Names (you know what I mean by that, too).

The Government-Media Complex and the Cosmopolitans will dissemble and tell you what the 'Protesters' Are Actually Saying, because you cannot be allowed to trust your own Ears and Eyes in this Regard. Maybe you'll write something Angry on the Internet in response, and inevitably Go No Further.

You will accept the Mexican flags. You will accept the Fires.

Because you fear a couple of twisted sticks.

When the Time Comes are you Inside or Outside of the Cattle Car...?

I'm Renfro Jeffries, Nazi And Proud Of It!

I am Laslo.; 7/6/16, 2:41 PM
Michael said...: Roughcoat

Nice Chicago posts. Very well done. Thanks; 7/6/16, 2:51 PM
Roughcoat said...: Michael:

Thanks!; 7/6/16, 3:18 PM
Rusty said...: Roughcoat said...
My brother and his friends went downtown for the festivities. He was 16 and a fighter. Anybody, anytime. So it wasn't the cops they were after(you can beat the crap out of a cop and still lose.). He says he had a good time.; 7/6/16, 3:18 PM
Roughcoat said...: Rusty:

I submit a good time was had by all, even (perhaps especially) by the cops. I knew guys in the CPD (who didn't?!) and they admitted this to me. But I knew it without them telling me. That's the way it was. Brawling was fun, it was part of growing up in that time and place, especially if you were Irish or Polish which most of us (in my circle) were. I didn't go down to Lincoln Park (the night before) or to Michigan and Balbo (the next night) because, remember what I said about falling deeply in love?--I was with her. But at the time I sort of wished I had gone. Lots of action down there on Boul Mich, lots of juice.; 7/6/16, 3:30 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: Lazlo, not getting the renfro Nazi shtick. ?; 7/6/16, 3:43 PM
viator said...: Ann Althouse, riding in the curl of the zeitgeist.; 7/6/16, 4:12 PM
Jupiter said...: Unknown said...
"Lazlo, not getting the renfro Nazi shtick?"

So, you understood the Girl With The PonyTail on the Treadmill, who wasn't too pleased that the Affirmative Action bitch was going to get her Audi? But you don't understand Renfro Jeffres, who thinks cattle-cars look better from the outside?; 7/6/16, 4:21 PM
bbkingfish said...: There were 647 homicides in Chicago in 1968, a number which increased steadily over the next several years until 1974, when the total reached 970.

This compares to 488 homicides in Chicago in 2015.; 7/6/16, 4:23 PM
Roughcoat said...: This compares to 488 homicides in Chicago in 2015.

Only 488? Obviously, we weren't trying hard enough.; 7/6/16, 5:04 PM
Carol said...: I'm reading it but his writing isn't so hot. He's always reaching for metaphors, a little too hard. He definitely brings back memories of the Nixon girls and all that boring shit. Talk about yer white bread! Yet I loathed the other side too.; 7/6/16, 5:41 PM
Roughcoat said...: Carol:

I pretty much agree re Mailer's writing. For me, the problem with Mailer's writing isn't so much one of mechanics but of sensibilities. He's an awful person and this comes through in his writing. I stopped reading him a very long time ago.; 7/6/16, 5:49 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: "And, wow, the writing is so different from what's around today. Inspiring on an artistic level."

Today our family started again on The Wind in the Willows, which we read several years ago, but the children were so young that they don't remember it. I have the same reaction to it now that I did then: parts of it break my heart. Not sad parts but parts that are so well written or so insightful into friendship that it's incredible to me that a human being wrote them.; 7/6/16, 6:04 PM
Roughcoat said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/6/16, 7:35 PM
Roughcoat said...: The Wind in the Willows is truly great. I first read it before Tolkien's books were published. It was my Tolkien before Tolkien arrived on the scene. It's magical and, yes, heartbreakingly beautiful; also, very funny.; 7/6/16, 7:37 PM
Tom said...: It doesn't matter, Althouse. Due Process and Rule of Law are over. It was a nice ride.; 7/6/16, 8:22 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: @Roughcoat,

What a wonderful, evocative riff on old-time Chicago! Thanx for sharing.

People fail to understand why Mayor Dailey fought so hard in '68 against the hippie invasion at the Dem national convention. Here's why - look at Detroit and Newark circa 2016

The combination of leftist upheaval and black urban riots in the 60s damaged several cities, which never recovered.

Mayor Dailey fought back - he didn't want to see proud Chicago go down the same destructive path as Detroit.

The Soviet Union used to say: colonialism > chaos > communism. Domestically, with respect to urban cities, the left follows an analogous path. Dailey was far from the defender of Western Civilization - but he was one of the few big time Mayors who fought back (probably the last); 7/6/16, 8:41 PM
Michael K said...: Turns out most people watching it on TV sympathized with the cops, figuring the yippies were bums causing havoc attacking cops. Not only did that have the opposite effect of ending the war earlier, it sparked a much longer-lasting pro-"law and order" sentiment in the country that lasted decades.

What will this year's protesters accomplish?

I think a lot depends on how violent it gets, especially in Cleveland. I see no chance that the Cleveland PD will keep control. I will not be surprised at deaths among the GOP attendees.

There is the possibility of a violent backlash.

Roughcoat, I grew up in Chicago but I was in Los Angeles by 1968. My sister still lives in Chicago (in Beverly) and her husband is retired CPD.; 7/6/16, 8:42 PM
gpm said...: Looks like I'm a couple of years younger than Roughcoat, but a Southsider (go Sox!). Apart from the bar stuff (I left town for college when I was 17), a lot of what he says rings true. I commuted about eight miles to St. Ignatius, a Jesuit high school on the (then somewhat sketchy) near West Side that drew a lot of (then all male) students from all over the city and suburbs, many from the type of neighborhood he describes (mine was largely Irish, with a good admixture of Italians and Catholic Germans like my mother's family; the main Lithuanian neighborhood in Chicago was about a mile and a half away). The school also drew a healthy contingent of mostly non-Catholic black students who were escaping a public school system that was mostly a disaster.

My immediate family was pretty tame, but I think the Morrissey boys, my half-Irish cousins who lived about half a mile away (five boys in a row in a family of twelve, the youngest probably just about Roughcoat's age), were fairly well-known as a wild bunch on the Southwest Side, but guns weren't in play back then. Conversely, one of my high school friends was the youngest son in an Irish family in Beverly, not at all either a cop-type or a wild rover, in a family with a father and about four older brothers who were cops.

One thing Roughcoat didn't mention is that there was a CTA strike during the convention. I had just finished my freshman year and, the day of the Grant Park mishegas, we had to go to the school to buy books for the coming year. Traveling was a nightmare. I finally got there but just missed meeting up with some friends who headed over to Grant Park, but didn't get into any trouble. OT, but in those days we could also see the Sears building going up from the school parking lot.

The demographic changes on the South Side were in full flood by that point, as was true of the West Side (another one of my friends lived in Austin, and we used to take the Lake Street el out to Central and walk up to their house a couple of blocks north of Chicago). We lived just west of Ashland, which became the dividing line between the shrinking white neighborhoods and expanding black neighborhoods on the Southside for ten years or so. With reluctance, my parents finally moved out to one of those diaspora areas Roughcoat referred to in 1973, though we weren't Irish (my oldest sister had moved out to Tinley Park as early as 1963 and another sister moved to Orland Park around 1968, unrelated to these issues). My friend's parents stayed in Austin, where things weren't as physically threatening, though I've lost touch with him and I assume his parents are dead by now. I haven't lived there since, but still have a million relatives in various suburbs.

I don't do audio books, but Mailer's book might be interesting reading for me at this point.

--gpm

P.S. Some links to articles about a statue of Abraham Lincoln located about two blocks from my parish church/grammar school (St. Justin Martyr at 71st and Wood) and a block or two from where both a maternal aunt and uncle and a (non-Catholic!!) paternal aunt and uncle lived in *West* Englewood, not Englewood:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/gallery/2009/02/white_black_and_gangsta.html

https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20130218/west-englewood/at-nearly-90-years-old-lincoln-statue-englewood-need-of-little-tlc

http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/The-Sad-Neglected-Lincoln-Bust-of-Englewood-203026621.html; 7/6/16, 8:49 PM
cubanbob said...: bbkingfish said...
There were 647 homicides in Chicago in 1968, a number which increased steadily over the next several years until 1974, when the total reached 970.

This compares to 488 homicides in Chicago in 2015.

7/6/16, 4:23 PM
Roughcoat said...
This compares to 488 homicides in Chicago in 2015.

Only 488? Obviously, we weren't trying hard enough.

7/6/16, 5:04 PM"

I suspect two factors are involved: 1- people back then were better shots. 2- trauma care care is much better today; 7/6/16, 8:53 PM
John henry said...: Narciso is another man of excellent taste.

Trollope is always a great read, though i would recommend reading the Palliser series front to back. Excellent series in whatever order read.

Trollope's books lend themselves well to the screen in miniseries. The complete Palliser series is on youtube. All 26 episodes.

Amazon just released, free to prime users, a great adaptation of Dr Thorne in 4 1hr episodes. Ian mcshane steals the show.

Best of all is the 4 hr adaptation of The Way We Live Now.

John Henry; 7/6/16, 9:25 PM
John henry said...: And speaking of Trollope and politics, perhaps it is time for me to reread The American Senator. Bozo us senator goes to England in the 1870s and inserts himself into afox hunting dispute.

Hilarity ensues.

Lots of trollopes books are available in free audio at librivox.org; 7/6/16, 9:29 PM
Laslo Spatula said...: Renfro Jeffries. Nazi And Proud Of It!

Don't get me wrong: America will never be All-White again: our Founding Fathers fucked that up with Slavery, and we are going to have to live with the Spilled Milk (you know what I mean by that) until the End of Time.

But does that mean we throw away what the Whites of this Country built on their Best Days? Does the Declaration of Independence mean less because someone Brown didn't sign it?(you know what I mean by that).

Now Blacks (you know who I mean by that -- I don't mean those Working Colored Folk that we can deal with) burn down their own Neighborhoods, but we are supposed to see this as Part of Our New World? Fuck That. You burned your House down? Then you burned your House down: Not. My. Problem. Find a cardboard box and an alley.

But go ahead and be Precious: pretend you are threading some needle of Virtue. other People can use that same needle to actually Do Something (and you damned know what I mean by that).

The Cattle Cars are coming: it's going to be Standing Room Only, bitches...

I'm Renfro Jeffries, Nazi And Proud Of It!

I am Laslo.; 7/6/16, 9:32 PM
narciso said...: thanks, these were works I would have rarely come in contact with in college, he was a frustrated office seeker but he provides a lens into the Disraeli (Daubeny) and Gladstone
(Gresham )interlude,; 7/6/16, 9:42 PM
Brian McKim and/or Traci Skene said...: Don't think I ever read any Norman Mailer intentionally... at least not all the way through... I do recall reading one passage-- hailed as genius, of course-- that described some dude choking his wife... to death, mind you... and he included some sort of detail in there about how she pooped herself when her sphincter finally gave up the ghost... and how he had a woody the whole time and how his sexual arousal caused his throat to be clogged up a little... and how this whole episode was "great literature." (I think it was when I was working in college, at a typesetting place... and the company-- whose primary source of income was setting the type for Dell Crossword Puzzle books-- was trying to get out ahead of the new technology... When I'd get to work, I'd thread my way past Lynotype machines-- yes, Lynotype machines, with their molten lead and their crazy keyboards and cases that would hold the freshly molded type--- and get to my glass light table and be handed copy that was generated (digitally!) from a Merganthaler or some sort of (at the time) cutting-edge digital process... and one of the works that I had to dissect and paste up was some sort of ghastly William S. Burroughs essay about time spent in Morrocco or some other godforsaken hellhole and how he fondly rembembered buggering little boys in baskets that they would swing out and catch and bugger and swing out and catch and bugger a bit more. Good times. Great literature.; 7/6/16, 9:52 PM
Francisco D said...: Cookie,

You are a charming and typically dumb leftist. Do you know what the Yippie protestors were doing to provoke the CPD? I lived there and went to school less than a mile away. I was on the side of the Yippies. They were assholes and anarchists, mostly from rich families. I knew some of them, having gone to a lefty prep school.

The leftist/media narrative was (and always is) about making their enemies look bad. Facts be damned.

The original Mayor Daley was considered a conservative Democrat, although the Democratic machine manufactured his pluralities from African- American wards. His son is an idiot whom the press loved because he kissed liberal media ass. His father built Chicago. He almost destroyed it.

I was about to turn 30 when I realized how evil and destructive the leftists are. It's to bad that there are so many useful fools who still support "the cause," whatever it is today.; 7/6/16, 10:01 PM
Michael K said...: "It's to bad that there are so many useful fools who still support "the cause," whatever it is today."

Don't tell Cookie. It's all he has left.; 7/6/16, 10:13 PM
mockturtle said...: Mailer may have been a talented writer but, like all leftists, was foolish and naive.; 7/7/16, 5:55 PM
narciso said...: history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme,

http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/dallas-county/breaking-shots-fired-and-officers-down-at-downtown-dallas-protest/266881573; 7/7/16, 10:12 PM