Misunderstanding History

It’s impossible to analyze Michael Czyzniejewski’s second collection of stories, Chicago Stories, without the discussion of form. The subheading on the cover reads, “40 Dramatic Fictions,” evoking a hybrid prosodic term that lies between dramatic monologue and flash fiction, as may not be the case with your average short story collection. The difference is hardly discernible, the language and line are so steady—should you teach one of these stories as a dramatic monologue in poetry class, it’s doubtful you’d be chastised. These forty stories—each spans about a thousand words—come from the first-person perspective of a historical figure, celebrity, or public landmark associated with Chicago. Czyzniejewski, an intensely Chicago-identified writer (he apparently still toils each summer as a Wrigley Field beer vendor to this day), aims to eke out his own fantastic Lomaxian ethnography, though in re-imagined oral histories instead of real ones. It’s a marvelous idea, especially when you’re after the tales of inanimate icons like the fan-made poster called “The Shawon-O-Meter,” charged with tracking the batting record of erstwhile Cubs shortstop Shawon Dunston, or the laments of the famous Chicago Water Tower, which one can easily imagine a lonely gothic relic lingering among the slicked-up shopping paradise of Michigan Avenue.

The opening story, “Mrs. O’Leary’s Ghost Comforts Steve Bartman at the Ruins of Meigs Field,” takes on a heavily classical, funereal tone—after all, these are two of the most-reviled Chicago residents ever—but the backdrop, the site of an airport that near extinction (and before its recreation into idyllic Northerly Island), not only sets an atmosphere of foreboding but an almost post-apocalyptic reclamation of the past. It’s this speculative narration that strings these fictions together as a fantastic time capsule of Chicago; these stories aren’t odes so much as they are elegies with jokes thrown in.

Structurally, the monologues tend to contain few elements of perfect story arcs in the way that flash fiction pieces do. Instead, the stories appear as isolated moments in conversation: apostrophes, soliloquies, and, for many, moments of dramatic self-inquiry. Czyzniejewski finds a convincing way to portray the past’s understanding of the present. For instance, the monologue of Chicago’s unofficial founder, Jean Baptist Point du Sable, has him rhapsodizing at the foot of Ohio’s Cuyahoga River, thus missing his mark and presumably altering history forever, by discovering Cleveland instead:

Most of all, imagine Jordan getting that inbounds pass, changing direction, pulling the ball off the dribble and erecting his body into perfect verticality. . .his jersey white instead of red, his chest emblazoned with an orange CAVS, glowing like a miracle on an already-bright horizon.

There are also excellent moments when Czyzniejewski whimsically addresses one Chicago icon through the voice of another, as in “Jane Byrne Discusses Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks With Her New Neighbors, Cabrini-Green, 1981,” in which Mayor Byrne, having infamously installed herself in one of the most notorious urban housing projects in a bizarre (and real-life) publicity stunt, details her father’s alleged involvement in the creation of the American masterpiece, a seminal acquisition residing forever in the halls of the Art Institute.

If you’re detecting some impudence in these pieces, you wouldn’t be entirely amiss. Czyzniejewski is, above all things, a writer who is both in love with and a product of his city, but he’s not above mocking either it or its stereotypes (encased meats, serial killers, sports fanaticism, bloviating politicians) through this platform. The jokes are usually on par. Note the gem “With Nothing Left to Prove, Oprah Winfrey Joins the Cast of Second City”:

For example, in an upcoming sketch, I play a fire hydrant. While my previous roles have for the most part thrust me into the mindset of a former slave looking to overcome, this role calls for greater range. I’m red, I’m still, and I’m preyed upon by...