John McNally interview

October 6, 9:11 AMChicago Literary Scene ExaminerRobert Duffer

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Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man    Portrait of the Artist--"You lookin' at me?"

Southside-native John McNally returns home from Appalachia to promote his new collection of short stories, Ghosts of Chicago. He'll be all over Chicago in the next two weeks hustling the book, eating beef sandwiches and drinking vodka tonics. Click here for tour dates.

McNally, always affable and generous, was able to take time from his tour to answer three questions with Examiner as long as we buy him a drink. OK, that wasn't his precondition, but some things we accept as given.

1. What defines a trip back to Chicago for you? There's that polish stand, some vodka tonics, right?
First off, my good friend, it's Italian beef sandwiches at Duke's, not polish sausages.  A few vodka tonics, definitely (though not with the beef sandwich).  Absolut and tonic, if anyone's ordering.  I usually make a trip to Joe's Italian Villa on the southwest side for a pizza.  And I often -- though not always -- stop off at one of the bars in Burbank for a few cold ones.  Oh, wait.  Should I mention something literary?

2. First thing you would do as Mayor McNally of Chicago?
I'm tired of mayors always cleaning up their cities.  I miss the squalor.  I lived by Wrigley Field around '91 or '92, and there were a hell of a lot more dives around there back in those days.  And so under the guise of historic preservation, I would bring back a few of the seedier bars I used to go to that no longer exist.
 
3. In a sentence or two, why do you write?
I possess no other usable skill.  Seriously.  Not that writing is particularly usable this day and age.  Look at Sarah Palin.  When pressed, she couldn't name one magazine or newspaper she reads.  Not a one.  The only logical conclusion is that reading's overrated.   Even so, I manage.

About McNally's Ghosts of Chicago:

"John Belushi. Walter Payton. Richard J. Daley. Nelson Algren. Frazier Thomas. These dead Chicagoans are among those who hover over and haunt John McNally's Ghosts of Chicago, his first story collection since the award-winning Troublemakers. Gene Siskel, impatient with the movie he's watching, taunts Roger Ebert; Miss Betsy, the host of Romper Room, experiences her own awakening during the sexual revolution; George Pullman remembers his greatest triumph as he draws his last breath. But there are also stories here of everyday people who must confront their own private ghosts: an accountant who falls in love with a woman who's in love with a man on death row; a boy whose fascination with movie monsters grows stronger as his mother's pregnancy comes to term; a memoirist whose dark night of the soul leads him on a journey from which he may not return. Praised by writers as diverse as Richard Russo, Irvine Welsh, Elizabeth McCracken, T.C. Boyle, and Mitch Albom, John McNally confirms with Ghosts of Chicago what National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon wrote after reading America's Report Card: 'John McNally is emerging as one of the best American writers of the new century.'"