SLPAD 8 - literary landscape

[Michael Bailey]

Chicago School of lit-crit (thank goodness it’s not their Economics, which
leaves a bad taste to some extent) - Richard McKeon is the name I remember…

https://literariness.org/2016/03/18/chicago-school-neo-aristotelians/amp/

& wasn’t there also some magisterial & well-liked Chicago pundit who made
lists of great books?


Chicago Review - official organ of Humanities Dept at U Chic - founded 1946
& published only student & faculty work till 1953.

The big shake-up to which Mr Pynchon refers took place in 1959, around a
controversial plan for an issue to contain 30 pages from William
Burroughs’s _Naked Lunch_, as well as a Kerouac piece,

and something by William Dahlberg, 1900-1977, a rather thrillingly
accomplished face in the Lost Generation writer cohort, who lost an eye in
WWI, wrote anti-Nazi stuff for The NY Times *from Germany* in the 1930s,
taught at Boston University & Black Mountain, studied hard - which
furthered changes in his writing style - wrote from Denmark, espoused &
furthered social justice, married 3 times, spent the 60s in Dublin,
attracted a Guggenheim in 1976, & passed away in Santa Barbara. (Mental
note to respect, and maybe look for his autobiography)




The imposition of censorship inspired all but one of the editorial staff to
quit & found their own magazine, “Big Table”

Some details
https://www.chicagoreview.org/big-table-web-feature/

A little more about “Big Table”
https://fromasecretlocation.com/big-table/

Jack Kerouac told them what to name it.

It lasted 5 issues, then published books.


Then there’s adjective-free mention of Norman Mailer’s essay, “The White
Negro” in a list of “centrifugal lures” away from establishment thinking:

“… Against the undeniable power of tradition, we were attracted by such
centrifugal lures as Norman Mailer’s essay “The White Negro,”

And a succinct but rave review for Jack Kerouac’s _On the Road_