Publication date:
01 February 2011Length of book:
672 pagesPublisher
Scarecrow PressISBN-13: 9780810877245
In The Chicago of Fiction: A Resource Guide, James A. Kaser provides detailed synopses for more than 1,200 works of fiction significantly set in Chicago and published between 1852 and 1980. The synopses include plot summaries, names of major characters, and an indication of physical settings. An appendix provides bibliographical information for works dating from 1981 well into the 21st century, while a biographical section provides basic information about the authors, some of whom are obscure and would be difficult to find in other sources.
Written to assist researchers in locating works of fiction for analysis, the plot summaries highlight ways in which the works touch on major aspects of social history and cultural studies (i.e., class, ethnicity, gender, immigrant experience, and race). The book is also a useful reader advisory tool for librarians and readers who want to identify materials for leisure reading, particularly since genre, juvenile, and young adult fiction, as well as literary fiction, are included.
Kaser (College of Staten Island, CUNY; The Washington, D.C. of Fiction: A Research Guide, 2006), a specialist in American cultural studies, has done a masterful job of locating and arranging fictional works primarily set in Chicago. Kaser states that his task was made more difficult because catalogers did not ordinarily provide subject designations in this genre before 1980. Cataloging rules changed by 2000 to allow geographic and subject designators for fiction, permitting greater ease in finding such works through keyword-searchable Web-based tools. The bulk of this book consists of an annotated bibliography of novels and collections of short stories (but not dramatic works) published between 1852 and 1980. To offer a more comprehensive source book, Kaser supplements these one-paragraph entries with a designated appendix A, a register of unannotated works whose first editions appeared between 1980 and 2008. Appendix B groups citations for pre-1980 fiction chronologically; readers can use these to find the explanatory notes for works in similar time periods in the alphabetically arranged major portion of the anthology. A general subject index and list of brief biographies, with each entry's own sources, of all the writers on whom some information is available, makes this work easy to read and a pleasure to peruse. The Chicago of Fiction is a boon for writers on the Windy City seeking textual information to portray a mood in their own fictional works; and for the many mavens of Chicago culture, who will appreciate discovering quirky, little-known fictional accounts inspired by a city of significance with often symbolic connotations. Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers.