Forces That Shaped the City’s Culture: A Conversation with Chicago Literature Expert Jesse Raber

by Reese Plagenz

There is a dedication in documentation that comes not with rigor, but with care and attention. As a native of Connecticut, there was no specific relation that brought Jesse Raber to Chicago, but as with most people that spend time here, it drew him in, asking him to unravel its history through the niche angle of literature. It is an underappreciated undertaking, researching a city, taking note of its centuries long metamorphosis, as Jesse does for Chicago. He’s doing this work through his current project A New Literary History of Chicago, but also in the past through his being a research consultant for the American Writers Museum’s Chicago Gallery—it is work that requires grit not universally possessed, even by literary scholars.

In his time spent researching for his dissertation turned book, Progressivism’s Aesthetic Education: The Bildungsroman and the American School, 1890-1920, he stumbled across Willa Cather’s compelling works, noting her interest in the educational writing of Maria Montessori as well as her unique approach to writing the novel. Although Cather is a Chicago outsider, coming from Nebraska, the imprint the city left on her mirrors the one it left on Jesse in ways. Leaving the city after a brief stint here, Chicago continued to show its influence on Cather through its brief presentation in her literature, although it never became her permanent place of residence, unlike Jesse.

While most people go into the research process motivated by an outcome being in near reach, Jesse is unafraid to take on a decade sprawling project because of his enjoyment in the process, not only the product. Chicago’s literary history is an integral part of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s project, therefore, there is no better match than for Jesse to be there to enlighten us on a literary figure such as Cather as he will be doing Saturday, February 28th at the annual cocktail party—The Song of the Lush.

RP: Could you tell me about your relationship to Chicago?

JR: I like to say I grew up in a Calvin and Hobbes strip. I grew up in a woodsy part of Connecticut. It was peaceful. Nothing ever happened. When I would learn about things going on in the news or even things about American history, it all seemed like things in books, things that were unreal. So coming from sleepy Connecticut to the south side of Chicago, I quickly fell in love with the place. The feeling I had was captured well by Max Weber, the German sociologist who had visited here, who said Chicago is like “a human being with his skin removed.” You can see all the internal organs working. You can see the intestines operating. You can see all these things in American society, issues of class and race, segregation and business, things that were unreal in my earlier life, now concrete and tangible—Chicago is unique in that way.

RP: Why do you think it’s important to document literary history?

JR: I’ve always noticed that Chicago has a unique cultural flavor, many cities do. I’ve been intrigued for years now about what makes Chicago culturally what it is. You can’t understand that without this deeper history. For example, the way the city relates to high cultures and the way that the city, despite being relatively young, was determined to acquire a cultural cachet. These forces that shaped the city’s culture are present in this literature, and the literature is a site of struggle and discourse around questions that shape our identity.

RP: Would you say that you’ve always been drawn to literature?

JR: From when I was a little kid, I would say that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. I quickly abandoned the idea that I wanted to be a fiction writer, but I’ve always had a strong attraction to the written word.

RP: Could you tell me a little bit about your relationship to Willa Cather’s work?

JR: A chapter of my dissertation turned book was about Cather, so that got me reading her deeply. There are a couple reasons I find her work compelling. She was interested in the immigrant tapestry of America, especially the Midwest and the Southwest. I find the subject matter of migration assimilation and culture clash to be fascinating. Then, the other part is her unique literary form; there’s a stripped down grandeur to them. Cather is looking for a purity of composition. Nothing unnecessary, everything in its place, an almost sort of poetic level of attention to form in the novel. She combines the panoramic tapestry of American Westward expansion and ethnic change into this compressed, elegant form.

RP: What do you think Cather’s role is in Chicago’s literary history?

JR: She writes about Chicago in several of her books, but it’s never the central topic. It’s not the central topic in the Song of the Lark; it features in Lucy Gayheart, but it’s not the central topic; it features in the Professor’s House in a small way. Cather herself was born in Virginia, but grew up in Nebraska, eventually spending most of her time in New York. Growing up in Nebraska, she was part of the catchment basin of Chicago, especially around the 1890s, 1900s, and 1910s. There were all these writers who were from that railroad catchment basin. Places where if you were an aspiring young person that wanted to go to the big city, Chicago is where you would go. If you look at the Chicago literature of that period as being concerned not so much with the city itself, but with what it means to grow up in the wider railroad basin that the city controls, she is part of that. Chicago literature can be thought of as a kind of western genre, at least during the 19th century.

RP: What do you think the Song of the Lark’s protagonist, Thea Kronberg, would have been like at a party like this?

JR: The Chicago section of the novel is about the challenges that a rural girl faces in the big city. Thea is talented, far more talented than most of the fancy city people she meets, but she is also unpolished, ignorant of city manners and the dirty realities of the music world. At parties, she acts shy and self-conscious but secretly thinks she's better than most people there. When she gets a chance to sing or play the piano to prove her worth, she always takes it.

RP: The Song of the Lush will be a cocktail party built, at least in part, on the themes of the novel.What would a party look like in the time and place in which the novel is set?

JR: Since the novel predates the Jazz Age, there weren’t "cocktail parties" as we normally think of them. The novel depicts a few different social scenes in Chicago. Sometimes Thea Kronborg, the main character, gets invited to rich people's homes and is overwhelmed by luxury. But she spends more of her time among middle-class musicians, drinking wine and trading opinions about the latest performances. Society was still pretty moralistic about drinking in those days, and the novel rejects both wild boozing and total abstinence. A glass or two of wine or beer is sociable, but that should be enough.

RP: Maybe, for readers to truly find out, it will take attending the event!

Reese Plagenz is an undergraduate at DePaul University pursuing a BA in Psychology and English Literature. Reese is currently interning with the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.