Chapter 30 - Afterword: What Will Become of Us? The Future of Chicago Literatures

Summary

The future of Chicago literature will emerge from the city’s “literary infrastructure.” Just as the city’s literal infrastructures channel the movement of water and waste, electricity and gas, vehicles and people, literary institutions (publishers, bookstores, libraries, schools, museums, newspapers, performance venues) enable the flow of creative energies. From the late nineteenth century onwards, Chicago, as a new sort of industrial city, challenged writers with social and physical realities that seemed beyond (or below) conventional literary expression. Writers responded by innovating in style and genre, shifting the literary standards to represent how Chicago shaped, and was shaped by, its people. Many contemporary Chicago writers work across genres and in media as diverse as sociological scholarship and comic books; others write poetry and novels, while also functioning as part of the literary infrastructure as reviewers, publishers, and professors. Future Chicago literature will be written by native Chicagoans and newcomers alike, as they encounter the city, engage with its literary traditions, and write within (and create new) literary institutions.