Ben Hecht Chicago Stories: Art & Architecture on 1001 Afternoons in Chicago

Description: Art & Architecture on 1001 Afternoons in ChicagoEssays and tall tales of artists and the cityscape of the 1920s Stories by Ben Hecht, taken from his Chicago literary journalism in the Chicago Daily NewsResearch, selection, commentary and book design by Florice Whyte Kovan. Cover Artist Sheila CriderSnickersnee Press, Washington, DC 20002Limited Edition Paperback 2022 of the hardcover. ISBN 978-0-9667709-7-1. Copyright 2002, 2003 "I created and published this book after reading the forgotten newspaper columns Ben Hecht wrote when he was a journalist in Chicago -- over 400 of them I found on microfilm. The stories bring to life Chicago's architecture and arts scene of the early 1920s, published in his renowned 1001 Afternoons in Chicago column in the Chicago Daily News and his Chicago Literary Times. These were not anthologized in the oft-reprinted 1922 Covici book of just 80 stories. My research was supported by the Library of Congress, which generously gave me a study desk, enabling my additional work at contextualizing the stories with other readings. I obtained reference images about the art and artists Hecht wrote about from the great art libraries coast to coast and from his own arts newspaper. As in my previous book of Hecht's stories about the silent film business in Chicago, I hand set the columns, varying the column heights to evoke the cityscape of Chicago. I chose an oblong format to express not just the height of Chicago's skyscrapers, but their expanse across the Chicago lakefront. Publishing in 2002 I used black and white reference pictures to keep the focus on Hecht's text. Each story contains further commentary within the body of the book or in my end notes. I sometimes relate the stories to the subsequent film work of these artists or to Hecht's association with them himself, as when he watched what would become the Temple Building day by day under construction. The book is indexed to names and subject matter. If you are Hecht fan or researcher, you will find some things you may not know about him in these stories and commentary: His relationship with Da Da artists Georg Grosz and Von Baader; with Stanislaw Szukalski, and with artist friends who succeeded as art directors in Hollywood and on Broadway, e.g., Herman Rosse and Herman Sachs. Hecht could write comedy or expound seriously on the Chicago art scene, dipping into his vast reading. The Frank Lloyd Wright roman a clef and Georg Grosz Americana images are special treats. The resplendent cover of the book is a print of the painted paper by Washington DC paper artist Sheila Crider. This is Volume II of my two-volume series, Rediscovering Ben Hecht, a new limited edition of 200 paperbacks of my long out of print hardcover based on my artist book which is curated at the Getty, Newberry, NGA, MoMA libraries, the Da Da collection at the University of Iowa and other arts libraries in the USA and Europe. Volume I in my Rediscovering Ben Hecht series is Selling the Celluloid Serpent, about the silent film industry in Chicago. We offer that in paperback on eBay also." Florice Whyte Kovan was the keynote speaker at University of Chicago Doc Films series of Hecht films, the first to honor a writer, Ben Hecht, instead of a director. As an adviser to Moonlights and Magnolias, the Broadway production about Hecht's madcap stint in the writing of Gone with the Wind, she consulted on the Hecht wardrobe and character. Kovan wrote and published The Ben Hecht Story & News monthly and constructed the Bibliocityscape, a vertical bibliography of his 425 Chicago stories she found. As a nominator for the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame she spoke at the Newberry Library on behalf of Hecht's collaborator on plays, Kenneth Sawyer Goodman. A resident of Washington DC where she was a manuscript research consultant to major publishers (Holt, Viking Penguin, New Yorker), she became interested in Hecht because of the circus connection between his boyhood home and her own childhood home located on the same block in Racine, Wisconsin.

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End Time: 2024-01-26T12:29:33.000Z

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