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The Chicago lit community at TOC

Like Work + Play, the TimeOut Chicago blog has about twenty categories. The most consistently interesting to me is the Books category, which gives readers updates on publishing and literary news in Chicago. The usual post to the Books-category page gets a comment or two. But a recent post about National Small Press Month elicited 73 comments, many of great length.

The post was written in response to a mass e-mail sent by CJ Laity, the proprietor of ChicagoPoetry.org. In his comments, Laity decries National Small Press Month as a corporate co-opting of independent publishing by the very corporate interests to which independent presses present an alternative. In his response to the e-mail on the TimeOut Chicago Books blog, Jonathan Messinger, who goes on the record as co-founder of indie publisher featherproof books, suggests that Laity is making too much of Small Press Month’s corporate sponsorship and New York origins.

There are many reasons why this post—and the e-mail to which it was a response—struck such a chord with Chicago writers, small publishers, and readers. At issue are the proper definition of “independent,” access to readers, and the position of Chicago vis a vis New York in the publishing world. And, as you can see in the comments, some comments were fueled by the charged tenor and personal nature of others.

One of the issues raised (but unsettled) in the debate was of greater interest to me than the others—what is the nature of Chicago’s literary community? Answers in the comments vary from something splintered to something loose to something false (read inherently selfish) to something non-existent. I think writer (and TimeOut Chicago freelance critic) Pete Coco has it right: “But if we’re being honest, and not just talking, I think it goes like this: wherever you are a writer, it is most likely going to be a frustrating and unprofitable existence. The only consistent and meaningful way location factors in is whether or not you face that existence alone. In Chicago, thankfully, you don’t.”

If anyone had asked those who left comments where the Chicago literary community lives online, my guess is that their answers would be about as disparate as their work and opinions. But for a few days in late February and early March, that community, however splintered, however weak, gathered at the TimeOut Chicago Books blog. It will be interesting to see if, in the wake of the National Small Press Month dirt devil, the community continues to make the TOC Books blog a daily or weekly destination.