“Chicago was very much a writer’s town in 1951, even if no one obvious giant walked the Loop, and remains a writer’s town to this day, though the one indisputable giant of the last five decades, Saul Bellow, died earlier this month. Dozens of writers in Chicago — or from Chicago — continue to produce critically acclaimed novels and stories, occasionally inspired but seldom intimidated by the Ghosts of Chicago Writers Past. What may be on its last legs, however, is the idea of the quintessential Chicago writer, neck-deep in despairing urban realism, following in the bottom-dog literary tradition of Dreiser, James T. Farrell, Richard Wright and Algren. You just don’t hear that voice much anymore.”