Thomas DyjaReseñas

Started the audiobook but disc 2 was defective and wouldn't play. Seems to be the sort of book that would be better for me to read than listen to anyway. Also, the narrator, David Drummond, annoyed me. I've heard him read at least one other audiobook (Talent is Overrated) and don't recall him bothering me that much, but in this reading he sounds like a cross between an authoritarian 1940s/50s documentary voice and a computer generated voice. It made it hard to hang ideas and facts in my mind--every sentence seemed to have the same pattern, the same rhythm, the same weight.

Not enough deep analysis; more a laundry list of events½

"The Third Coast" should have a certain appeal to Chicago "baby-boomers", but the book never seemed to pull all the elements together into a cohesive story. While the book contained a ton of factoids about a wide range of Chicagoans, especially in the 1940's and 1950's, many people included were individuals I'd never heard of before, and am quite sure I'll never hear of again. I thought Dyja spend an inordinate amount of time discussing the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and its school of architecture, including what seemed to be a discussion about every faculty member and department head over the years. In addition to the information about the architectural school of Chicago, there are smatterings of discussions about the music scene, political bosses, the music scene, development of public housing and racial segregation, Chicago theater, etc., but the story ended up disjointed and never quite seemed to find its focus.

Author Thomas Dyja contends that Chicago was a center of American culture – “a third coast” – during the first part of the 20th century (up until 1960). He cites the Chicago architectural tradition, headed by Louis Sullivan and Mies van der Rowe; the flourishing of early television, that produced Dave Garroway and Kukla, Fran and Ollie; writers Gwendolyn Brooks and Nelson Algren; and the city as the headquarters of blues, with Chess Records, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf, and Sun Ra. He also cites two unknowns that flourished during the time, photographer Vivian Maier and collage artist/novelist Henry Darger. He’s somewhat more dubious about the city as the birthplace of Playboy and McDonald’s.

Dyja’s narrative focuses on biographies of his protagonists interspersed with regional, national and international events. I was surprised there was little mention of organized crime – something Chicago’s always been famous for (unless you count the political machine, which gets extensive coverage). Mayor Daley is credited/blamed for much of the demise of Chicago as a cultural center for allowing demolition of many of the city’s architectural landmarks and for using public housing to cement the city’s racial divide (despite being immensely popular with black voters. Well, he always got a lot of votes from black neighborhoods, anyway.) A second factor was the advent of extensive air transportation; you no longer had to change trains in Chicago and it became “flyover country”.

A pleasant read, and instructive; I’d never heard of Henry Darger. If anything, I think Dyja is a little too easy on the Democratic political machine; I lived in Chicago (although after the time period he covers) and I saw it in action. A plate section with appropriate photographs; maps, endnotes, bibliography and good index.

Watching television and the movies, one could be fooled into thinking that everyone in the U.S.A. lives in either Southern California or a very large apartment in Manhattan. When I was a kid, some of the more "ordinary" people I saw in tv and movies were instead from Chicago, ranging from the working class family on Good Times, to the professional couple on The Bob Newhart Show, to the suburban teenagers of John Hughes movies.

In this sprawling work of cultural history, Thomas Dyja explores how mid-century Chicago became the template for a lot of what was considered the typical American experience for "regular" people. Freed from the restraints of New York and Los Angeles to be extraordinary, Chicagoans could excel at being ordinary in architecture, books, music, arts, and television. At the same time, though, racist white communities rose up in violence against the increasing number of Black families moving into the city (or they fled the city entirely) and the Richard Daley political machine rose up by exploiting the city's divisions.

• Nelson Algren becomes Chicago's leading writer through his gritty novels and also has an on-again/off-again affair with Simone de Beauvoir.


• Gwendolyn Brooks wins the Pulitzer Prize for her poetry informed by the experience of growing up on the South Side.


• Chess Records unleashes electric blues music and early Rock & Roll with artists like Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon, Howlin Wolf, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, and Chuck Berry.


• Hugh Hefner commodifies sexual liberation (for men).


• Mahalia Jackson sings songs of praise and fights for civil rights.


• Ray Kroc introduces order and consistency to dining through the McDonald's franchise.


• "Kukla, Fran and Ollie," "Stud's Place," and other innovative and influential early television programs of the "Chicago School of Television" before New York and Los Angeles completely took over television production.


• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe heads the architecture school at Illinois Institute of Technology and inspires the adoption of the International Style of architecture in Chicago and then throughout the U.S.


• Elaine May and Mike Nichols improvise a new form of comic theater.


• Sun Ra creates jazz for the space age.

For a book that is all over the place in the topic it covers, Dyja is good at focusing in on the details of the characters' stories and connecting them to the theme of the mid-century Chicago aesthetic. He also has a lively writing style that incorporates quotations in their unvarnished vulgarity. This is an interesting book for understanding a city at certain time, and an entertaining read.

Favorite Passages:

"Daley's retail politics was to democratic government what McDonald's was to food and Playboy to sex: a processed and mass-marketed simulation."

"Before they were even completed, the Near South Side projects - which had started the city toward its Daley-era regeneration, and whose strategies, laws, and designs had created the template for much of the nation's urban renewal - were quietly deemed not worth repeating. In the end, the planners had loved their theories more than they loved Chicago."

An excellent overview of the many developments which took place in and around Chicago. Reasonably pointed on some of the icons such as the architect, Mies Van Der Rohe, and the head of the Great Books program, Robert Hutchins.

I got this book because I enjoy reading historical fiction, particularly about the Civil War; and I also wanted to read it because of the tie-in to baseball. My father pitched in church league softball for years, and both my brothers played little league. One of my brothers played baseball in both high school and college and then continued on to Twilight league. I spent most of my childhood and much of my adult life following baseball games at one level or another of play. So, the idea of Confederates and Yankees meeting on a make-shift baseball field was interesting to me. This is not to imply, though, that any special knowledge of baseball or the Civil War is necessary to enjoying this book. It is riveting all on its own. Dyja has quite a story to tell, and he does it by taking a group of men of various backgrounds and merging them into a story about evaluating their own lives as well as what each of them comes to believe is his purpose as a soldier. The key moment for me was when one of the men, with more insight than is the norm, realizes that he is not in the war situation to win anything. He is there either to kill or be killed and that is all. For me, Dyja brilliantly makes the point that whether it's the war in Afghanistan or Iraq or the Civil War, war is war whatever century it takes place and no matter what men are forced to fight it. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys excellent writing and storytelling as well as what humanity is really all about.

Very original story of a mid-level excecutive, living in Connecticutt, and going through a major 40s crisis. He joins a group of civil war "recreators" and finds himself totally losing his old identity--odd, fascinating and totally readable.

18th Century historical fiction is becoming a popular genre, but this one breaks the mold. Hard to describe, but it interweaves the Civil War, espionage, and baseball. A great story!

How can I not love this novel? I'm the one who supplied Tom Dyja with the Latin dialogue for the crucial exchanges between the two main characters...