Next Saturday (Dec. 2, 11 a.m.) I’m on a fascinating panel at the Newberry Library with two other Chicago authors who’ve written about their childhoods.

One, Billy Lombardo, a teacher at Chicago Latin School, has written a book of autobiographical short stories, The Logic of a Rose, about growing up Italian in Bridgeport, the mostly-Irish-Catholic working-class neighborhood famed as the home of the Mayors Daley. (Bridgeport also is the neighborhood adjacent to Bronzeville that blacks dared not enter, and is so mentioned in To Love Mercy, my novel).

The other, Elaine Soloway, a public relations consultant, has written a memoir, The Division Street Princess, about growing up Jewish on West Division Street.

I’m reading and enjoying both books. Both are available on Amazon and in bookstores, but I’ll bet you can get an autographed copy by ordering directly from the Newberry bookstore at www.newberry.org/general/bookstore.html.

Our books comprise a small but noteworthy genre — the Chicago book. Here are some others occupying the Fiction portion of this little shelf:

– Native Son by Richard Wright. I can’t say enough great things about Native Son. Written in 1945, it reads like today’s newspaper. Its protagonist, Bigger Thomas, is one of the most chilling, heartbreaking characters ever invented. Bigger’s descent from not-much to nothing-at-all will make you mourn. I wrote about Bronzeville and the black experience as an outsider, but Wright knows it in his soul. Everyone in America ought to read this, the greatest Chicago novel of them all.

– Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. I haven’t read it. I tried to read something by Dreiser once and found the writing wooden. But my friend David Holden, a keen student of Chicago and many other things, says this is a novel to stick with, whose flaws ought to be tolerated because of its utterly accurate portrait of a young woman in pre-feminist (pre-suffragist for that matter) times, making her way in an unfriendly city.

– It was on David’s say-so that I picked up Young Lonigan, the first book in the Lonigan trilogy by James T. Farrell (Young Lonigan, The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan and Judgment Day). When I was a kid, these novels, written in the ’20s and ’30s, were sold in lurid-covered paperbacks as dirty books. They’re not. I read Young Lonigan recently and it knocked me out. I felt like I was reading a predecessor to To Love Mercy. Studs is an aimless punk, but Farrell knows him inside-out and probes his heart with a scalpel. Although the writing is antiquated in ways, Farrell is a terrific naturalistic writer who’s painted a brilliant psychological portrait. And it’s clear why David was drawn to this book — it’s Irish Catholic Chicago, 60th and Dorchester, Mount Carmel High School, where David grew up.

– The Man with the Golden Arm, Nelson Algren. Algren is one of the great bards of rundown crappy Chicago, a kitchen-sink explorer of the dark side whose heyday was the ’40s and ’50s. He’s written other Chicago books too, but Man with the Golden Arm, about a small-time drug dealer, is the only one I’ve read. It impressed me, but I read it a LONG time ago. Given how much we’ve learned about the drug culture, and the strange and giant role narcotics now play in American life, it would be worth reading Golden Arm again to see how it holds up.

– The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow. Oh boy, what a book. Bellow’s first novel (1953), it follows a Jewish tough-guy from the West Side in his picaresque life. One of the all-time-great opening paragraphs: “I am an American, Chicago born — Chicago, that somber city — and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.” I think Bellow became a much less interesting writer as he got more famous and more literary; but you’ll never read a novel with more vigor and verve than Augie March.

– The Coast of Chicago, Stuart Dybek. I own this short-story collection but haven’t read it yet. Dybek has a great reputation as a “writer’s writer” — in other words, a lot of talent but not a lot of commercial success. Still, Coast of Chicago was a selection for “One Book One Chicago,” which must’ve sold a lot of copies for Stuart. He mines his childhood growing up Eastern-European-ethnic on the near Southwest Side. (By the way, if anyone out there would like to nominate To Love Mercy for “One Book One Chicago,” the city-wide reading club, please do so by sending an e-mail to 1book@chipublib.org.)

– Crossing California, Adam Langer. Odd, isn’t it, how all these books so far come out of the South and West Sides, the grittiest parts of town? Langer’s coming-of-age novel is an exception. He writes about growing up Jewish in West Ridge and Rogers Park, two areas that used to be heavily Jewish but now, fascinatingly enough, have turned in places into a South Asian bazaar. I started Crossing California and enjoyed it, but my copy was from the library and I didn’t read fast enough. I had to take it back without finishing it. Too bad — it’s funny, bracing and insightful. And it’s contemporary — it came out in 2004.

– Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow. This is the only one of Turow’s novels I’ve read. It was his first, came out in 1987. It is VERY good. Turow is a successful practicing lawyer in Chicago and a former prosecutor. As such, he knows a lot of inside stuff. He puts it to great use in his fiction, which is full of crime dope, but also full of wonderful characters, moving prose, and, most important, profound ethical dilemmas. Jeez, why am I writing this when I could be reading another Scott Turow novel?

– Shadow Ball: A Novel of Baseball and Chicago, by Peter M. Rutkoff. What if the White Sox had been the first major league team to field a black player? Rutkoff, a historian at Kenyon College, imagines it, populating his rich story with people both real and imagined. Among the real, an imperious, double-dealing Chuck Comiskey, owner of the White Sox. Among the imagined: The Negro League hero who makes the leap into the majors; a black blues singer from Memphis whose heartbreaking tragedy is a riveting subplot; and the Jewish fixer who finds himself in the middle. You’ve never heard of this small-press novel, and what a pity; it deserves a wide audience. Order it at http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Ball-Novel-Baseball-Chicago/dp/0786409819/sr=1-7/qid=1164381140/ref=sr_1_7/102-0702894-4718547?ie=UTF8&s=books

This is a REALLY partial list. Some of you probably want to jump me for not mentioning the V.I. Warshawski cop novels of Sara Paretsky (haven’t read them, supposed to be fun). Alex Kotlowitz (There Are no Children Here) writes brave, insightful nonfiction about (again) kids in Bronzeville. David Mamet, a Chicagoan down to his socks, doesn’t set his stuff in Chicago (or anywhere specific, just the State of Anomie), but Chicago is where he learned his tricks. Erik Larson has written a blockbuster book of Chicago history, The Devil in the White City, that  I own but (again) haven’t yet read; everyone I know says it’s great (and South Side again!). Jim Grossman’s Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration, was hugely helpful in the writing of To Love Mercy. (Jim is now director of research at the Newberry Library and my host there. He is also lead author of The Encyclopedia of Chicago, which is selling like hotcakes all around town.) Thomas Cottle’s memoir When the Music Stopped: Discovering my Mother is a wonderful portrait of a slice of the Gold Coast, focusing on a brilliant concert pianist who forsook her career. And who could forget Joseph Epstein? Anyone who could think up a title like Fabulous Small Jews deserves a special spot on anyone’s shelf. Studs Terkel. St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton. Tim Black. Carl Sandburg. Charles Bukowski. Where does one stop?

Well, where does one? What’s your nominee?

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. The Newberry gig is Saturday, Dec. 2, 11 a.m. The Newberry Library is at 60 W. Walton at State Street, on the Gold Coast. Hope to see you there.

P.P.S. Or come to one of these other big apperances next week:

– Barnes & Noble-Old Orchard, Thursday, Nov. 30, 7 p.m. Mary Anne Diehl, community relations manager, is Chi-Town’s author impresario extraordinaire. B&N-OO is the venue for authors in Chicago. This gig is a real honor. This is where Studs reads.

– Chicago Sinai Congregation, Sunday, Dec. 3, 10:30 a.m. I went to Sunday School and was confirmed at Sinai. My mom and dad were married there by Dr. Louis L. Mann, one of Sinai’s illustrious rabbis. I’ve slaved over the Sinai presentation for weeks. I think it’s going to be a good one.

– Borders, 1144 Lake St., Oak Park, Friday, Dec. 1, 7 p.m. Those who’ve been on this list a while know what troubles my publisher has had with Borders in the Chicago area. But this Borders, bless its heart, discovered To Love Mercy on its own and deemed it meritorious enough for a Friday-night appearance.

– Two Chicago Public Library branches — Edgebrook on the far Northwest Side (5331 W. Devon, Tuesday, Nov. 28, 7 p.m.) and Northtown in “Crossing California” country (6435 N. California, Wednesday, Nov. 29, 7 p.m.).

– A feisty independent bookstore, Centuries & Sleuths, in Forest Park on Saturday, Dec. 2 (2 p.m., 7419 W. Madison).