The Watch

The WatchThe Chicago in which I wanted to participate was a worker's town. It was, and, in my memory, is, the various districts and the jobs that I did there: factories out in Cicero or down in Blue Island, the Inland Steel plant in East Chicago, Yellow Cab Unit 13 on Halsted.I grew up on Theodore Dreiser and Frank Norris and Sherwood Anderson, and I felt, following what I took to be their lead, that the bourgeoisie was not the fit subject of literature.So the jobs paid my rent and showed me som...