Yesterday at lunch, I scurried off to a reading at the Cultural Center to do some writer-stalking…er, attend a Stuart Dybek reading. In case you reside under a rock, Dybek is a Northwestern prof, MacArthur ("genius") grant winner, and masterful short-story writer, well-known for his depictions of the Pilsen/Little Village ‘hood where he was raised.

The themes of his reading for this series titled "Conversations Within Communities" were Dybek-ian in that the beauty inherent in ugliness, neighborhood life, and the remnant strains of nature are available even in the grittiest of Chicago ‘hoods. He also talked a lot about Chicago’s thriving and wonderfully experimental food and theater communities. (When asked what had changed most about Chicago between his Pilsen boyhood and present day, he said, "Well, the food’s a lot better; that’s for sure." Thank you Grant Achatz, Charlie Trotter, Hot Doug, and Michael Carlson, for keeping our writers happy.)

The slyly funny bard read some poems and an excerpt of a forthcoming Lake Michigan essay for Chicago Magazine. He talked about his extensive childhood butterfly collection, and joked about how it might’ve made the people around him question his sexuality. He relayed an anecdote from his youth, in which his parents wanted to send him to summer camp for a "natural experience," which he refused because he was already having so many natural experiences in Chicago. (Fish, beavers, butterflies, and foxes, were all among the wildlife with which he was interacting.)

Last, and most interesting to me, Dybek talked about "writers of place." In the past, I’ve heard him speak about how he never set out to be a "Chicago writer" but that his Chicago material was what he seemed to naturally produce. Yesterday he mused that writers of "place," (Farrell, Algren, Bellow), often seemed haunted by their "place," and had no choice but to get it down on paper. "I’d like to write a literary essay about the relationship between hauntedness and writers of place," he said. I hope he does; I’d read it. Then again, I’d read Dybek’s Post-it notes.

This was the last in the series of five lectures via the City of Chicago, but the Great Chicago Places and Spaces department is offering more than 200 tours on May 17-18 (that’s this Saturday and Sunday, folks). From the looks of this last reading, they’ve got their act together; might be worth a look-see.