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The path to riches is not often associated with journalism, but in the case of George Ade, writing for Chicago newspapers was his road to wealth and fame. Ade, (1866-1944) who was born and raised in Kentland, Indiana, attended Purdue University and then came to Chicago to work as a reporter in the heydays of newspapers. Today George Ade is rarely remembered, with his books out of print, and decades since his musical comedies were performed. But from the 1890s to the early 20th century, he was compared to Mark Twain, a friend of his, and had not just one, but two hit plays on Broadway at the same time. Ade earned so much money from his successful books, plays and syndicated newspaper columns, he built an English Tutor on a 400-acre estate in Indiana, named Hazelden. There Ade threw big parties and was visited there by U.S. Presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Calvin Coolidge. In fact, Taft began his Presidential campaign of 1908 from Hazelden. Ade's name lives on through his philanthropy, like the donation of 65 acres, with fellow alum David E. Ross, to Purdue University, for a football stadium in 1924, which is now known as Ross-Ade Stadium. What was true then about Ade's writing is also true now, and that is Ade's stories are hilarious. His final book “The Old Time Saloon” (1931) is laugh-out-loud funny and a recent edition from the University of Chicago Press is annotated by Bill Savage. Bill Savage, Ph.D. is a professor of English at Northwestern University and our guide through not only the work “The Old-Time Saloon: Not Wet - Not Dry, Just History” and this podcast. Dr. Savage paints a picture of the Chicago Ade knew from the high-class Saloons downtown to the more seedy establishments frequented by his friend, Finely Peter Dunne, whose literary bartender, Martin T. Dooley, delighted a nation with his quips. Writers like Ade and Dunne started out as journalists, and along the way captured the rhythms of speech and the vernacular of the working man, and in doing so gave birth to a new type of literature. A style practiced later by authors such as James Farrell, Nelson Algren, Mike Royko and Stuart Dybek. We hope you will enjoy this dive into Chicago's literary and drinking past. Links to Research and Historic Sources: The book, The Old-Time Saloon by George Ade Chicago writer and author George Ade (1866-1944)Ross-Ade Stadium at Purdue UniversityNorthwestern Professor of English Bill Savage, Ph.D.Hazelden (George Ade House) in Brook, IndianaChicago writer and author Peter Finley Dunne (1867-1937)Mr.Dooley on the Immigration Problem (1898) adapted from the writings of Finley Peter Dunne, performed by Alexander Kulcsar.“Who's Your Chinaman?”: The Origins Of An Offensive Piece Of Chicago Political Slang By Monica EngEra of "Hinky Dink" Kenna and "Bathhouse John” Coughlin from the Encyclopedia of Chicago"Mickey Finn: The Chicago Bartender Who Infamously Drugged And Robbed Patrons With Laced Drinks," By Natasha Ishak Published September 24, 2019The Everleigh Club from WikipediaChicago Daley News Building (Riverside Plaza) from WikipediaDouglas Copeland's novel “Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture”Straw Hat Ettiquette from the Vintage Dancer websiteLiz Garibay's website: History on Tap"The Dry Season" by Steve Rhodes, published June 22, 2007 in Chicago MagazineThe book, The World Is Always Coming to an End: Pulling Together and Apart in a Chicago Neighborhood (Chicago Visions and Revisions) by Carlo Rotella (2019)Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap from the Chicago Bar Project websiteAmerican novelist and journalist, Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) in WikipediaWriter, poet, and author, Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)The book Native Son by Richard Wright (1908-1960)Studs Lonigan: A Trilogy by James T. Farrell (1904-1979)American novelist and short story writer Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) in WikipediaAmerican writer Nelson Algren (1909-1981) in WikipediaChicago: City on the ...
Return of the Great White Hope In the 1980s, many white Americans invested their emotions in a handful of white athletes—athletes both real and fictional. In the last episode of Season One, we explore the popularity of Larry Bird, Gerry Cooney, and Rocky Balboa in the 1980s—three “Great White Hopes” competing in professional sports that were dominated by black Americans. Bibliography: Todd Boyd, Young, Black, Rich, and Famous: The Rise of the NBA, the Hip Hop Invasion, and the Transformation of American Culture (New York: Doubleday, 2003). J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (New York: Vintage, 1985). Carlo Rotella, “The Stepping Stone: Larry Holmes, Gerry Cooney, and Rocky,” in Amy Bass, ed., In the Game: Race, Identity, and Sports in the Twentieth Century (New York:” Palgrave, 2005).
Return of the Great White Hope In the 1980s, many white Americans invested their emotions in a handful of white athletes—athletes both real and fictional. In the last episode of Season One, we explore the popularity of Larry Bird, Gerry Cooney, and Rocky Balboa in the 1980s—three “Great White Hopes” competing in professional sports that were dominated by black Americans. Bibliography: Todd Boyd, Young, Black, Rich, and Famous: The Rise of the NBA, the Hip Hop Invasion, and the Transformation of American Culture (New York: Doubleday, 2003). J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (New York: Vintage, 1985). Carlo Rotella, “The Stepping Stone: Larry Holmes, Gerry Cooney, and Rocky,” in Amy Bass, ed., In the Game: Race, Identity, and Sports in the Twentieth Century (New York:” Palgrave, 2005).
How do you do organizational leadership when the world keeps on coming to an end? I stole that phrase about the world and its endings from Carlo Rotella, this week's guest on the pod. But I'm hoping that my theft pulls you into a conversation about how race and class complicate our organizational projects--in companies, churches, and nonprofits--to engage our neighborhoods with political wisdom.
Marc Sims talks with Professor Carlo Rotella about Chicago's South Shore neighborhood and public education. The World Is Always Coming to an End: Pulling Together and Apart in a Chicago Neighborhood https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo37806017.html
Carlo Rotella of Boston College is author of six books, among them the amazing Good With Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other Characters from the Rust Belt (University of California Press, 2002) and most recently The World Is Always Coming to an End: Pulling Together and Apart in a Chicago Neighborhood (University of Chicago Press, 2019). … Continue reading "39 RTB Books in Dark Times 12: Carlo Rotella (JP)"
A writer of uncommon range, Carlo Rotella has examined writers from pulp to sci-fi, boxers gifted at foiling the advances of both opponents and interviewers, musicians who ring new changes on the blues, and a child psychiatrist with an extraordinary ability to reach the most “difficult” children. In this conversation, Rotella delves into how he approaches the craft of writing about the craft of others. Carlo Rotella has been a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine since 2007, and he has also been an op-ed columnist for the Boston Globe and commentator for WGBH FM. He is professor of American Studies, English, and journalism at Boston College. He talks with Scott Saul (English Department, UC Berkeley), author of Becoming Richard Pryor (2014). This event is sponsored by Art of Writing at UC Berkeley.
Our Democratic POTUS candidates are talking gun control. Mayor Lightfoot is in California, but the affordable housing talk continues. It's another Rummana Rundown with Sun-Times Editor Rummana Hussain. Professor and Author of "The World is Always Coming to an End" Carlo Rotella talks the South Shore neighborhood and it's ALL things "Medicare for All" with Activist Sameena Mustafa.
“Boxing has always attracted writers because it issues a standing challenge to their powers of description and imagination, and also a warning–really a promise–that no matter how many layers of meaning you peel away there will always be others beneath them” (1). Over the past half-century boxing has endured a... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“Boxing has always attracted writers because it issues a standing challenge to their powers of description and imagination, and also a warning–really a promise–that no matter how many layers of meaning you peel away there will always be others beneath them” (1). Over the past half-century boxing has endured a strange fate: a fall from cultural dominance simultaneous to a rise in payouts so enormous that top fighters are the most valuable athletes on the planet. A puzzle like this attracts the fighter, the fan, and the scholar; and boxing is full of such befuddlers. Expressive of a variety of injustices and imbalances of power, boxing offers careful analysts the chance to look beyond the perfectly pebbled abs and airbrushed promotional photos to see into the lives of the people cross-pressured by vast economic and cultural forces both at their command and beyond their control. Enter The Bittersweet Science: Fifteen Writers in the Gym, in the Corner, and at Ringside (University of Chicago Press, 2017) edited by Carlo Rotella and Michael Ezra; a new collection of original essays that probes the mysteries of the sport, business, and spectacle of boxing, asking us to look again at one hundred years of history at the fights. Bringing together essays by fighters, managers, and keen observers of boxing’s past and present, this collection restores the qualitative weight of what appear to be quantitative measures–like a fighter’s win-loss record–peeling back the layers of history and culture and life experience in events and careers in the fight industry. While they engage the legacy of boxings all-time greats, the writers here also plumb the networks of amateur and Olympic fighters, trainers, managers, and administrators who make up the vast majority of those in the fight world. Often correcting for the force of the “invisible numbers” behind the record book page, this book’s perspectives from around the fight world reveal the ways in which national culture, race, gender, and social status open and close opportunities for a professional fighter, and influence current and future earning potential. Fitness, skill, speed, and style can lift a fighter to greatness, but it takes a different level of savvy to carve an opening in the industry in a fighter’s post-prime; a savvy that the sport itself may need to capture in a culture that seems to have moved on to younger, stronger attractions. For sports historians, fight fans, and observers of American writing, The Bittersweet Science provides a potent sampling of “either the glorious last stand or amazing comeback of boxing writing as a genre of literature,” and offers fans and scholars the analytical tools and historical perspective to make meaning of fighters climbing into the ring. Carl Nellis is an academic editor and writing instructor working north of Boston, where he researches contemporary American community formation around appropriations of medieval European culture. You can learn more about Carl’s work at carlnellis.wordpress.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“Boxing has always attracted writers because it issues a standing challenge to their powers of description and imagination, and also a warning–really a promise–that no matter how many layers of meaning you peel away there will always be others beneath them” (1). Over the past half-century boxing has endured a strange fate: a fall from cultural dominance simultaneous to a rise in payouts so enormous that top fighters are the most valuable athletes on the planet. A puzzle like this attracts the fighter, the fan, and the scholar; and boxing is full of such befuddlers. Expressive of a variety of injustices and imbalances of power, boxing offers careful analysts the chance to look beyond the perfectly pebbled abs and airbrushed promotional photos to see into the lives of the people cross-pressured by vast economic and cultural forces both at their command and beyond their control. Enter The Bittersweet Science: Fifteen Writers in the Gym, in the Corner, and at Ringside (University of Chicago Press, 2017) edited by Carlo Rotella and Michael Ezra; a new collection of original essays that probes the mysteries of the sport, business, and spectacle of boxing, asking us to look again at one hundred years of history at the fights. Bringing together essays by fighters, managers, and keen observers of boxing’s past and present, this collection restores the qualitative weight of what appear to be quantitative measures–like a fighter’s win-loss record–peeling back the layers of history and culture and life experience in events and careers in the fight industry. While they engage the legacy of boxings all-time greats, the writers here also plumb the networks of amateur and Olympic fighters, trainers, managers, and administrators who make up the vast majority of those in the fight world. Often correcting for the force of the “invisible numbers” behind the record book page, this book’s perspectives from around the fight world reveal the ways in which national culture, race, gender, and social status open and close opportunities for a professional fighter, and influence current and future earning potential. Fitness, skill, speed, and style can lift a fighter to greatness, but it takes a different level of savvy to carve an opening in the industry in a fighter’s post-prime; a savvy that the sport itself may need to capture in a culture that seems to have moved on to younger, stronger attractions. For sports historians, fight fans, and observers of American writing, The Bittersweet Science provides a potent sampling of “either the glorious last stand or amazing comeback of boxing writing as a genre of literature,” and offers fans and scholars the analytical tools and historical perspective to make meaning of fighters climbing into the ring. Carl Nellis is an academic editor and writing instructor working north of Boston, where he researches contemporary American community formation around appropriations of medieval European culture. You can learn more about Carl’s work at carlnellis.wordpress.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“Boxing has always attracted writers because it issues a standing challenge to their powers of description and imagination, and also a warning–really a promise–that no matter how many layers of meaning you peel away there will always be others beneath them” (1). Over the past half-century boxing has endured a strange fate: a fall from cultural dominance simultaneous to a rise in payouts so enormous that top fighters are the most valuable athletes on the planet. A puzzle like this attracts the fighter, the fan, and the scholar; and boxing is full of such befuddlers. Expressive of a variety of injustices and imbalances of power, boxing offers careful analysts the chance to look beyond the perfectly pebbled abs and airbrushed promotional photos to see into the lives of the people cross-pressured by vast economic and cultural forces both at their command and beyond their control. Enter The Bittersweet Science: Fifteen Writers in the Gym, in the Corner, and at Ringside (University of Chicago Press, 2017) edited by Carlo Rotella and Michael Ezra; a new collection of original essays that probes the mysteries of the sport, business, and spectacle of boxing, asking us to look again at one hundred years of history at the fights. Bringing together essays by fighters, managers, and keen observers of boxing’s past and present, this collection restores the qualitative weight of what appear to be quantitative measures–like a fighter’s win-loss record–peeling back the layers of history and culture and life experience in events and careers in the fight industry. While they engage the legacy of boxings all-time greats, the writers here also plumb the networks of amateur and Olympic fighters, trainers, managers, and administrators who make up the vast majority of those in the fight world. Often correcting for the force of the “invisible numbers” behind the record book page, this book’s perspectives from around the fight world reveal the ways in which national culture, race, gender, and social status open and close opportunities for a professional fighter, and influence current and future earning potential. Fitness, skill, speed, and style can lift a fighter to greatness, but it takes a different level of savvy to carve an opening in the industry in a fighter’s post-prime; a savvy that the sport itself may need to capture in a culture that seems to have moved on to younger, stronger attractions. For sports historians, fight fans, and observers of American writing, The Bittersweet Science provides a potent sampling of “either the glorious last stand or amazing comeback of boxing writing as a genre of literature,” and offers fans and scholars the analytical tools and historical perspective to make meaning of fighters climbing into the ring. Carl Nellis is an academic editor and writing instructor working north of Boston, where he researches contemporary American community formation around appropriations of medieval European culture. You can learn more about Carl’s work at carlnellis.wordpress.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“Boxing has always attracted writers because it issues a standing challenge to their powers of description and imagination, and also a warning–really a promise–that no matter how many layers of meaning you peel away there will always be others beneath them” (1). Over the past half-century boxing has endured a strange fate: a fall from cultural dominance simultaneous to a rise in payouts so enormous that top fighters are the most valuable athletes on the planet. A puzzle like this attracts the fighter, the fan, and the scholar; and boxing is full of such befuddlers. Expressive of a variety of injustices and imbalances of power, boxing offers careful analysts the chance to look beyond the perfectly pebbled abs and airbrushed promotional photos to see into the lives of the people cross-pressured by vast economic and cultural forces both at their command and beyond their control. Enter The Bittersweet Science: Fifteen Writers in the Gym, in the Corner, and at Ringside (University of Chicago Press, 2017) edited by Carlo Rotella and Michael Ezra; a new collection of original essays that probes the mysteries of the sport, business, and spectacle of boxing, asking us to look again at one hundred years of history at the fights. Bringing together essays by fighters, managers, and keen observers of boxing’s past and present, this collection restores the qualitative weight of what appear to be quantitative measures–like a fighter’s win-loss record–peeling back the layers of history and culture and life experience in events and careers in the fight industry. While they engage the legacy of boxings all-time greats, the writers here also plumb the networks of amateur and Olympic fighters, trainers, managers, and administrators who make up the vast majority of those in the fight world. Often correcting for the force of the “invisible numbers” behind the record book page, this book’s perspectives from around the fight world reveal the ways in which national culture, race, gender, and social status open and close opportunities for a professional fighter, and influence current and future earning potential. Fitness, skill, speed, and style can lift a fighter to greatness, but it takes a different level of savvy to carve an opening in the industry in a fighter’s post-prime; a savvy that the sport itself may need to capture in a culture that seems to have moved on to younger, stronger attractions. For sports historians, fight fans, and observers of American writing, The Bittersweet Science provides a potent sampling of “either the glorious last stand or amazing comeback of boxing writing as a genre of literature,” and offers fans and scholars the analytical tools and historical perspective to make meaning of fighters climbing into the ring. Carl Nellis is an academic editor and writing instructor working north of Boston, where he researches contemporary American community formation around appropriations of medieval European culture. You can learn more about Carl’s work at carlnellis.wordpress.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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