📚 When's the last time you stayed up all night reading?

Ben Joravsky on a lost-to-him Sherman Alexie classic. [View this email in your browser]( [READER Logo]( Daily Reader | May 7, 2024 One day not long ago, I stopped by the book box on Wolcott, near my home, and spotted [War Dances]( a collection of poems and stories by Sherman Alexie, the great Native American writer. I’d thought I’d read everything by Alexie but I’d somehow missed this book. So I took it home and plucked it on the pile of books I intended to read. It stayed there until last Saturday, when I picked it up. And once I picked it up—man, I couldn’t put it down. Classic Alexie. Ironical, often sad, but never too far from a joke. Made me smile at the arbitrary senselessness of life. I read deep into the night. I might have continued to read until sunrise, but I thought to myself, “This is crazy . . . you gotta get some sleep.” So I closed the book to go to bed. And then, out of curiosity, I reopened the book and scanned the reviewers’ blurbs at the front, hoping to see a line or two that might give me insight into what I’d just read. And that’s when I discovered a blurb by . . . Mick Dumke! Yes, my friend and former Reader colleague, had not only read War Dances, but written a review about it. And here’s what he said: “May be his best work yet . . . an odd grab bag of images, insights and loose ends . . . yet each piece asks a similar set of questions: what's the point of all this? If there is a point, what’s the point of that? And isn’t life really goddamn funny?” And I was like yes, yes, yes! The pointlessness of it all is exactly the point! I got so excited, I started to dash upstairs to tell my wife, who’d been sleeping for hours. “You won’t believe this! But Mick Dumke’s blurb was printed in Sherman Alexie’s book!” Then I thought: maybe it’s not such a great idea to wake my wife at four in the morning to tell her about Mick’s blurb in Alexie’s book. As exciting as that is. One other thing . . . In the blurb, they identified him as Mike Dumke, which made me laugh because all the time Mick and I were writing together it was sort of a joke about how readers routinely butchered my name. I thought about calling Mick and saying, “You won’t believe this, but they got your name wrong.” And then I thought: maybe not. Again, because of that whole four in the morning thing. I did eventually tell Mick about it. The blurb, he explained, came from a brief review he wrote in 2009. I looked for that review in the Reader’s digital archives, but, alas, it’s not there. Not sure why. And anybody who might know has long since moved on from the Reader. So it remains a mystery. *Note from Ben’s editor: we still have the review but there was a web glitch when we updated our website in 2019 and we’re still in the process of rebuilding our digital archives. Sorry Mick! To his credit, Mick took the high road, texting me, “I try to be Buddhist about it: everything in the world passes away and it’s best to accept it.” On a somewhat related note . . . According to Alexie, the stories in War Dances are inspired by the works of Franz Kafka, the brilliant novelist who died of tuberculosis at the age of 40 in 1924. Kafka never published when he was alive. And he instructed Max Brod, his friend and literary executor, to burn his writings after he died. I’m not saying Mick is Kafka or I’m Brod, but . . . Thank goodness Brod ignored Kafka’s request. And thank goodness I found that blurb in the middle of the night. [Logo with text: The Ben Joravsky Show. Features man wearing a cap and headphones, and Chicago flag stars.]( 🎙 [Listen to The Ben Joravsky Show]( 🎙 ◈ [Trust]( by Hernan Diaz: a novel about the lives of wealthy investors who don’t deserve the fortunes they made ◈ [Mike Sula]( on Logan Oyster Socials ◈ [Ben Joravsky]( (from 1989): Paint Man ◈ Writers and comedians [Rachel Joravsky and Cody Wilkins]( on Drake v. 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Reporters Trina Reynolds-Tyler of Invisible Institute and Sarah Conway of City Bureau, who penned the story “[What happens when your loved one goes missing?]( were awarded with the [2024 Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting](. The story is part of the [Chicago Missing Persons]( project by City Bureau and Invisible Institute, two nonprofit journalism organizations based in Chicago. The Reader ran it in its November 16, 2023 print edition. Reynolds-Tyler and Conway were also featured on an episode of The Sit Down hosted by Shawnee Dez, which was published in March 2024.  Many congratulations to Trina Reynolds-Tyler and Sarah Conway, as well as their respective newsrooms, on this incredible honor! [READ THE STORY HERE]( Get the latest issue of the Chicago Reader Thursday, May 2, 2024 [READ ONLINE: VOL. 53, NO. 15]( [VIEW/DOWNLOAD ISSUE (PDF)]( [Become a member of the Chicago Reader.]( [Facebook icon]( [Instagram icon]( [Twitter icon]( [LinkedIn icon]( [YouTube icon]( [Website icon]( [Logo] You received this email because you signed up for newsletters from the Chicago Reader. Want fewer emails from us? [Click here to choose what you want us to send you](. Or, [unsubscribe from all Reader emails](. We’ll miss you! [Sign up for emails from the Chicago Reader]( | [Forward this e-mail to a friend]( © 2024 Chicago Reader. All rights reserved. Chicago Reader, 2930 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 102, Chicago, IL 60616