Illinois Press Book Blog

The Chicago Tribune reports that getting into the state’s flagship university can be made easier depending upon whom one knows.

Patronage has become such an entrenched part of the admissions process that there’s even a name for the applicants with heavy-hitting sponsors: “Category I.”

…the “Let It Snow” mug sits. And the staff wonders why it never gets washed.

There’s a street sign at 43rd St. and 8th Ave. that says “Don’t Honk.” Five blocks north I didn’t hear any honking at 7:00 a.m., but I did hear occasional siren bursts from police cars as they passed through intersections or something. Let me sleep.

(Anyone have a better onomatopoeia for siren burst than “byup?”)

A while back I whined about a Harper’s piece in which the writer described people attending a publishing trade show in devastating detail. Our forthcoming book Oscar Wilde in America: The Interviews suggests that there is a precedent for this writing style.

From New York World, January 3, 1882:

“Mr. Wilde is fully six feet three inches in height, straight as an arrow, and with broad shoulders and long arms, indicating considerable strength. His outer garment was a long ulster trimmed with two kinds of fur, which reached almost to his feet. He wore patent-leather shoes, a smoking-cap or turban, and his shirt might be termed ultra-Byronic, or perhaps—décolleté. A sky-blue cravat of the sailor style hung well down upon the chest. His hair flowed over his shoulders in dark-brown waves, curling slightly upwards at the ends. His eyes were of a deep blue, but without that faraway expression that is popularly attributed to poets. In fact they seemed rather everyday and commonplace eyes. His teeth were large and regular, disproving a pleasing story which has gone the rounds of the English press that he has three tusks or protuberants far from agreeable to look at. He is beardless, and his complexion is almost colorless.”

I’m about halfway through Jon Hartley Fox’s forthcoming book on the King record label titled King of the Queen City. In one of the chapters on King’s country artists there’s a great anecdote that illustrates the mistrust that some artists had for label head Syd Nathan.

King recording artist and “piano-pounding wild man” Moon Mullican co-wrote a song with Grand Ole Opry buddy Hank Williams titled “Jambalaya (on the Bayou),” which was a top ten hit for Williams in 1952.

“The song was published with Williams listed as the sole writer because Mullican reportedly didn’t trust King to pay royalties fairly and preferred to receive his share of the money under the table from Williams in a gentlemen’s agreement.*  That worked until Williams’s death on January 1, 1953; after that, it probably cost Mullican at least a million dollars in lost income.”

*Escott, Hank Williams, 196

The Chicago Sun-Times suggests that you attend the launch party for Joe McFarland and Gregory Mueller’s new book Edible Wild Mushrooms of Illinois and Surrounding States at the Chicago Botanic Garden on May 23.

Those of you traveling to New York next week for BEA may want to wait until after the expo to read William Langewieche’s new Vanity Fair column on bird strikes near La Guardia.

On the afternoon of last January 15, a flock of Canada geese flew about 3,000 feet above the Bronx in a loose echelon formation, tending to their own business as usual, with nothing special in mind. . . . Their speed was maybe 50 miles an hour. At 3,000 feet, they were above the altitude at which bird strikes most frequently occur, but at a level where in their position, about five miles north of the airport, their flight path happened to intersect with the climb slope of jets on standard departures from La Guardia.

In These Times just launched a web only feature on Steven Ashby and C. J. Hawking’s new book Staley: The Fight for a New American Labor Movement.

On December 22, 1995, a slim majority of workers locked-out out of the A.E. Staley Co. plant in Decatur, Ill. voted to accept a company proposal that spelled their own defeat. So ended what was perhaps the longest and most high-profile conflict between a corporation and organized labor to occur during the 1990s.