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“Had a date yet?” Lincoln calls through the door.
“Working up to it,” says Flam, without irony. “So far, I’ve bought three ties and a Calvin Klein dress shirt.”
When the conversation turns to news of the Tribune, Flam reveals that starting in the spring the vastly reduced weekly book section plans to devote a page a month to online and digital publishing. “Oh, Christ,” Lincoln groans.
“It’s all going electronic eventually, anyway,” Flam presses. “Already there are plenty of these online packagers who can help you get your book published on whatever platform you want.”
“Without editing,” Lincoln says, talking to his reflection in the mirror as he shaves. “The stuff they publish is junk, worse than a vanity press.”
“Some of the books have become hits,” Flam points out. “They find their audience. The Internet is direct, writer to reader. No intermediation. Why should smug assholes like you and me decide what the world wants to read?”
It’s still early in the morning, and Lincoln is out of training for Flam’s provocative arrogance. He says nothing.
“These days, everybody is a writer,” Flam pronounces to the door. “It’s easy.”
When Lincoln finally emerges from the bathroom, Flam asks, “By the way, how’s the sex novel coming?”
“Still coming,” Lincoln dodges as he throws on his clothes and hurries to get away.
Duddleston often takes manuscripts home to read over the weekend, but after a second Monday passes without word from the boss, Lincoln begins to despair. Late that afternoon, Tony Buford calls. “I’m on the lineup for the poetry slam at the Funk Hole in Wicker Park tonight,” he says. “I can bring one guest who gets a free pitcher of beer. Want to come?”
“Are they still holding those things?” Lincoln asks.
The question annoys Buford. “The famous one is every Sunday night at the Green Mill. This slam isn’t at that level, but it’s a good program. How about it?”
“Ahh.” Lincoln attended a few poetry slams in college, when the events were relatively fresh on the scene. By some accounts, the slam is one of Chicago’s worthier recent inventions: Poets declaim their work in a bar, and the audience shouts its
assessment. “I think of slam poems as, say, angrier than yours,” Lincoln says, reasonably.
“They invited me,” Buford snaps.
Lincoln needs a diversion. Why not? “OK, I’ll meet you there.”
The Funk Hole is a dim, almost windowless bar that decades ago served as the ersatz living room for punch-press operators, steelworkers, truck drivers, and the like back when Chicago was a manufacturing town and this neighborhood was a working-class enclave. Since the artists, the kids, and then the money started moving into Wicker Park, the crowd in the bar has changed, though the proprietors wisely retained the authentic grunge, and even Lincoln shudders to imagine what a harsh, bright light would reveal.
Standing inside the doorway, peering through the gloom, Lincoln sees scattered tables that, surprisingly, are mostly filled. A line of customers stands at the bar. After a moment, Buford spots him and beckons from deep in the room. “Already ordered your pitcher,” the poet says, when Lincoln joins him at a small table up front. “Old Style. Sorry. That’s the deal.”
“No problem,” Lincoln tells him, pouring himself a glass of the watery brew.
Buford looks impossibly scrubbed and tended for the venue—hair trimmed close to the scalp, shirt collared and starched. He’s eschewed a tie, but he’s wearing what’s probably the only tweed jacket in the place, perhaps the only tweed jacket in all of Wicker Park. Talk about undaunted courage. “Have you been to a slam before?” asks Lincoln, who himself has dressed down in old jeans and a plaid flannel L.L.Bean shirt.
Buford puts on a peeved frown. “Of course. Performed a few times, too.” Softening, he says, “Never here, though.”
“I haven’t been to one in years,” Lincoln admits. “I guess I thought they had fallen out of fashion.”
“I know, I know. Harold Bloom said slams would be the end of art.” Buford shakes his head. “More death cries from the ancien régime.” Quickly, he brightens. “Hey, brought a fan club,” he says, and he gestures toward several tables of bright faces situated toward the back. A handful of the kids see him and wave. “Some of my students—the ones old enough to drink. I’ll introduce you later.”
The program starts twenty minutes late. A skinny young man wearing a wool knit cap and with his sleeves rolled up to expose the tattoos on his forearms welcomes the audience from a microphone just a few feet from Lincoln’s chair. The host explains the Funk Hole protocol: Eight poets get three minutes each in each round. Over three rounds, judges randomly selected from the audience will whittle down the contenders to reach a winner. “Everybody get it?” he asks.
A chorus of affirmation.
“Before we get started,” the man under the wool cap continues, “I’d like to acknowledge a special guest with us here tonight, someone who works tirelessly to keep Chicago’s literary lights burning.”
Dear God, thinks Lincoln, his heart leaping. Did Buford tell them I was coming?
“Marissa Morgan!” cries the host, and he points to a table on the side, where Lincoln can see the blogger’s huge, purple-rimmed glasses and overeager smile. “I’m sure everyone in this room reads her blog, Big Shoulders Books. Keep up the good work, Marissa.” Wool Cap leads the audience in rousing applause.
Lincoln’s shame—entirely private—at his momentary hubris immediately gives way to a more practical emotion: terror that Marissa Morgan may actually write about this event. Will Lincoln’s poet come under public scrutiny? Worse, will Buford’s connection to Pistakee (and Lincoln!) be exposed? And all this time Lincoln had been hoping that Still Life would pass silently to remainder bins.
