Slog

News & Arts

Line Out

Music & the City
at Night

« Things I Learned from the Burly Ex-… | A Very Alan Thickemas! »

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Books Windy Politicians

Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 5:29 PM

Over at The Daily Beast, Scott Simon reflects on how his 2008 novel about scandalous Chicago politics, Windy City, was a prescient look at the Blagojevich scandal:

My novel Windy City (Random House: 2008) opens with the mayor of Chicago assassinated by a pizza (deep dish, artichoke, and prosciutto, to signal that this is today’s Chicago, not Al Capone’s old town). Over the course of the story, there are sting operations, sex scandals, bribes and a suicide.

I would have drawn the line at having a governor try to sell a Senate seat, as if he was hawking a stolen widescreen TV from the back of a truck. In these days of email surveillance, wiretaps, and the 24-hour news cycle, who would believe such a thing?

51ZW46DQFNL._SL500_.jpg I thought Windy City was kind of a generic political novel, but I bet, if I'd waited until the current scandals to read it, it would probably seem a lot better. But the best writer about Chicago scandals is Mike Royko. His book Boss, about the first Mayor Daley, is one of the best books ever written about political corruption. Hell, like the Breslin blurb on its cover says, it's one of the best books ever written about an American city. You should check it out if you want to learn about Chicago politics.

FacebookShare

Comments (1) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

Royko was brilliant & incredibly entertaining, not to mention amazingly prolific. He wrote 5 columns a week for something like 30 years, not always hitting the mark, but he very often did. He had a way with words and could be funny, poignant and contrarian, sometimes in the same piece.

Royko once said, almost with hometown pride, that there were more Chicago aldermen (city councilmen) in federal prison than Chicago mafiosi.

When Rupert Murdock bought the Chicago Sun-Times, Royko immediately quit, saying "No self-respecting fish would be wrapped in a Murdoch paper." From that point on, he wrote his daily column for the Tribune.

Boss is the definitive word on Chicago politics.

I cried the day he died, way too young.

Posted by blackhook on December 23, 2008 at 10:27 PM