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Ben Hecht: 1001 Afternoons in Chicago
Ben Hecht: 1001 Afternoons in Chicago is a compilation of more than 60 columns written for the Chicago Daily News that Hecht's editor called "journalism extraordinary; journalism that invaded the realm of literature." The hardboiled audacity and wit that became Ben Hecht's signature as Hollywood's most celebrated screen-writer are conspicuous in these vignettes. Most of them are comic and sardonic, some strike muted tragic or somber atmospheric notes. . . . The best are timeless character sketches that have taken on an added interest as shards of social history. Ben Hecht's collection, as presented in 1001 Afternoons in Chicago, is a timeless caricature of urban American life in the jazz age. From the glittering opulence of Michigan Avenue to the darkest ruminations of an escaped convict, from captains of industry to immigrant day laborers, Ben Hecht captures 1920s Chicago in all its furor, intensity, and absurdity. Hecht's book offers scruffy time capsules of an earlier Chicago, an era that is long gone but still recognizable to readers'' imaginations. Michigan Avenue, Lake Michigan, street names such as Dearborn and Adams and LaSalle and Wabansia, places such as the Art Institute of Chicago--they''re all here. In Ben Hecht's words, Chicago is a razzle-dazzle of dreams, tragedies, fantasies, and his tales capture gorgeous scraps of it, vivid vignettes starring businessmen and hobos and cops and socialites and janitors. . . . Thanks to 1001 Afternoons in Chicago, Chicago of 1922 and the Chicago of 2009 bump into each other, shake hands, exchange greetings. Then, this being Chicago, they go for a drink and talk about old times.
172 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1922
71 people are currently reading
531 people want to read
About the author
Ben Hecht
204 books55 followersBen Hecht, an American, wrote short stories, novels, such as
Erik Dorn
in 1921, dramas, including
The Front Page
in 1928 with Charles MacArthur, and screenplays, such as
Gunga Din
in 1938.
Ben Hecht, a journalist, directed and produced movies. A journalist in his youth, he went to 35 books and entertained most people. He received credits alone or in collaboration for seventy films.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Hecht
Ben Hecht, a journalist, directed and produced movies. A journalist in his youth, he went to 35 books and entertained most people. He received credits alone or in collaboration for seventy films.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Hecht
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
November 9, 2022
Interesting to read and not particularly dated. Hecht became famous in Chicago in his late twenties and in Chicago’s early 1920s as a columnist writing “1001 Afternoons in Chicago.” This book was culled from those columns.
The jazz age in Chicago afforded him lots of daily material. They are not strictly true stories although he sometimes includes himself and his literary friends. The stories gave me more the impression of glimpses of “characters” in Chicago and some people with landmark locations, streets, bars, etc.
One of my favorites was an “interview” with a self professed and proud-of-it “professional jurist.”
Mr. Martin feels he “wins” cases and is just as important as any attorney or judge, possibly better. His by-word is “always mistrust a lawyer who talks too fancy.” Mr. Martin never reads newspapers feeling no jurist should know anything going on and has been doing that since youth. He has no convictions and tries to keep his mind “clean.” Very dry and funny.
Hecht went on to write the play “The Front Page” and moved on to Hollywood where he was a hugely successful screenwriter.
The jazz age in Chicago afforded him lots of daily material. They are not strictly true stories although he sometimes includes himself and his literary friends. The stories gave me more the impression of glimpses of “characters” in Chicago and some people with landmark locations, streets, bars, etc.
One of my favorites was an “interview” with a self professed and proud-of-it “professional jurist.”
Mr. Martin feels he “wins” cases and is just as important as any attorney or judge, possibly better. His by-word is “always mistrust a lawyer who talks too fancy.” Mr. Martin never reads newspapers feeling no jurist should know anything going on and has been doing that since youth. He has no convictions and tries to keep his mind “clean.” Very dry and funny.
Hecht went on to write the play “The Front Page” and moved on to Hollywood where he was a hugely successful screenwriter.
February 18, 2013
I loved this book! It was probably in part because I'm from Chicago, so many of the things Hecht wrote about were familiar to me. He's a wonderful writer-when the editor says that he took journalism and made it more literary, that description was completely correct. For anyone from Chicago, some of the columns reminded me of Mike Royko who wrote for the Tribune when I was growing up (early 1980s).
He writes a lot about the faceless crowds of the city and wondering what is going on behind the faces who stare back at him. Many of his columns are the product of his wandering the streets of Chicago late at night.
While Hecht writes about the 1920s, and clearly the population was dealing with the aftermath of the first world war, what is sobering is how some things about people in cities haven't changed. The disconnect, the isolation, the search for companionship in bars (speak-easys back then), getting caught in the justice system, the cycle of poverty that is hard to break. Even the bombardment with advertising is still here, albeit on the internet.
I hope we can find a place for journalism like this in the age of the internet. Blogs aren't the same.
He writes a lot about the faceless crowds of the city and wondering what is going on behind the faces who stare back at him. Many of his columns are the product of his wandering the streets of Chicago late at night.
While Hecht writes about the 1920s, and clearly the population was dealing with the aftermath of the first world war, what is sobering is how some things about people in cities haven't changed. The disconnect, the isolation, the search for companionship in bars (speak-easys back then), getting caught in the justice system, the cycle of poverty that is hard to break. Even the bombardment with advertising is still here, albeit on the internet.
I hope we can find a place for journalism like this in the age of the internet. Blogs aren't the same.
November 16, 2022
I'm pulling the plug: this book has been on my "currently reading" shelf for almost 3 years, and I've decided I'm never going to finish it. Nevertheless, I can honestly select "I liked it" as a rating. This collection of Hecht's newspaper sketches of everyday life in interwar Chicago is highly readable and amusing in exactly the sardonic way one would expect from the (co-) author of The Front Page or Hecht's many, many Hollywood screenplays; that's why I picked it up. The problem is that in this form it's too much of a muchness; I can imagine a Chicago newspaper reader looking forward to the next Hecht piece, but read all at once like this they become monotonous. Of course, it's hard to fault Hecht for that; this was never the way he meant them to be read. I can imagine it's an invaluable resource for Hecht scholars, if there are such folks, but for everyone else a couple of selections will go a long way.
February 15, 2013
An excellent collection of Hecht's Chicago Daily News columns from 1921. His essays explore the gamut of Roaring Twenties Chicago, from flappers to financiers to broken laborers. Even the most hopeless of his characters still maintains a quiet dignity.
August 20, 2023
A day at a time in the life of an amazing city. Written 1922, something’s never change
June 16, 2010
What a great look into the past! Hecht captured feelings and experiences of the every day person in 1920's Chicago. A lot of the stories have a somber tone, but some were surprisingly funny. And a couple stories made fun of my place of employment! I especially appreciated that, and they were still funny!
September 3, 2014
I loved this book. Maybe it helps to be from Chicago.
I got it when I was working and would read it on my commute on the el. Very entertaining.
The newspaper man eyeing everybody, asking beaucoup questions.
He committed himself to writing a daily column about the people that he met in the street. Sometimes it seemed like it was a bit of a stretch.
I got it when I was working and would read it on my commute on the el. Very entertaining.
The newspaper man eyeing everybody, asking beaucoup questions.
He committed himself to writing a daily column about the people that he met in the street. Sometimes it seemed like it was a bit of a stretch.
October 29, 2008
This is a series of 1001 short works written one a day for 1001 days! They are very interesting, funny, thought provoking beautifully written short stories. Of course you do find yourself wishing that some of them would keep going!
November 16, 2007
Great little stories and essays and rants by this sometimes screenwriter, novelist, newspaper man, genius.
March 27, 2025
Definitely worth savoring
Observations both Humorous yet Poignant
Timeless
Highlights:
Confessions
Pandora's Box
The Lake
Observations both Humorous yet Poignant
Timeless
Highlights:
Confessions
Pandora's Box
The Lake
March 16, 2018
A revelation. In the early 1920s, Ben Hecht (author of "The Front Page," among other plays and novels) wrote a daily column for the Chicago Daily News about life in the city; 64 are selected here. He's a marvelous writer. The columns evoke urban (and occasionally suburban) living in a vanished time, but often are also startling contemporary. The flavor of 1920s Chicago is so rich, you feel that you're there. The book has changed the way I look at people on the train and on the street, and even the buildings: I am trying to peer beneath the surface, to see them through Hecht's curious journalist's eyes.
The vignettes range from humorous, Damon Runyonesque character sketches to modernist meditations on life, art, urban living...his range is vast. He muses on the interior lives of the people on the street; evokes the atmosphere of lonely late-night walks; spins mood pieces about rain, the lake, and reflections on wet pavement; describes music and theater; puts himself in the mind of an escaped convict in hiding; he chats with a dimestore salesgirl about the people who buy 10-cent wedding rings. In one column, he wonders irritably why he is even attending a vaudeville concert, then become enthralled by the unprepossessing but unexpectedly brilliant violinist, and vows to stay for all three shows; but then he decides to just go home. It's amazing.
An excerpt from my favorite piece, and one of the more lyrical entries, "Ornament": "Ornaments change, and perhaps not for the best.... One by one the charming blunders of the past have been set to rights. Highways are no longer the casual folderols of adventure, but the reposeful and efficient arteries of traffic. The roofs of the town are no longer a rumble of idiotic hats cocked at a devil-may-care angle. Windows no longer wink lopsidedly at one another. Doorways and chimneys, railings and lanterns have changed.... Towns once were like improvised little melodramas. men once wore their backgrounds as they wore their clothes--to fit their moods. A cap and feather, a gable and a latticed window for romance. A glove and rapier, a turret and a postern gate for adventure. And for our immemorial friend Routine a humpty-dumpty jumble of alleys, feather pens, cobblestones, echoing stairways and bouncing milk carts. These things have all been properly corrected. Today the city frowns from one end to the other like a highly efficient and insanely practical platitude. Mood has given way to mode." The piece develops into a paean to taxicabs and the mysterious lives of the people ensconced within: "A teasing procession for the eye and the thought."
This selection made me want more (the other 400+ columns are uncollected).
The vignettes range from humorous, Damon Runyonesque character sketches to modernist meditations on life, art, urban living...his range is vast. He muses on the interior lives of the people on the street; evokes the atmosphere of lonely late-night walks; spins mood pieces about rain, the lake, and reflections on wet pavement; describes music and theater; puts himself in the mind of an escaped convict in hiding; he chats with a dimestore salesgirl about the people who buy 10-cent wedding rings. In one column, he wonders irritably why he is even attending a vaudeville concert, then become enthralled by the unprepossessing but unexpectedly brilliant violinist, and vows to stay for all three shows; but then he decides to just go home. It's amazing.
An excerpt from my favorite piece, and one of the more lyrical entries, "Ornament": "Ornaments change, and perhaps not for the best.... One by one the charming blunders of the past have been set to rights. Highways are no longer the casual folderols of adventure, but the reposeful and efficient arteries of traffic. The roofs of the town are no longer a rumble of idiotic hats cocked at a devil-may-care angle. Windows no longer wink lopsidedly at one another. Doorways and chimneys, railings and lanterns have changed.... Towns once were like improvised little melodramas. men once wore their backgrounds as they wore their clothes--to fit their moods. A cap and feather, a gable and a latticed window for romance. A glove and rapier, a turret and a postern gate for adventure. And for our immemorial friend Routine a humpty-dumpty jumble of alleys, feather pens, cobblestones, echoing stairways and bouncing milk carts. These things have all been properly corrected. Today the city frowns from one end to the other like a highly efficient and insanely practical platitude. Mood has given way to mode." The piece develops into a paean to taxicabs and the mysterious lives of the people ensconced within: "A teasing procession for the eye and the thought."
This selection made me want more (the other 400+ columns are uncollected).
January 10, 2017
A series of sketches written for the Chicago Daily News beginning in 1921. In the words of Henry Justin Smith's preface:
"Comedies, dialogues, homilies, one-act tragedies, storiettes, sepia panels, word-etchings, satires, tone-poems, fuges, bourrees, — something different every day.... Stories seemingly born out of nothing, and written — to judge by the typing — in ten minutes, but in reality, as a rule, based upon actual incident, developed by a period of soaking in the peculiar chemicals of Ben's nature, and written with much sophistication in the choice of words. There were dramatic studies often intensely subjective, lit with the moods of Ben himself, not of the things dramatized. There were self-revelations characteristically frank and provokingly debonaire. There was comment upon everything under the sun; assaults upon all the idols of antiquity, of mediaevalism, of neo-boobism. There were raw chunks of philosophy, delivered with gusto and sometimes with inaccuracy. There were subtle jabs at well-established Babbitry."
A few are still worth reading. Most of them are not. Some of them weren't even worth the newsprint they were first printed on.
You might imagine that they'd provide a portrait of Chicago of the era, but they don't — or only a very diffuse one. The fiction of authors like Edna Ferber or Frank Norris gives a much clearer picture than this soi-disant journalism.
Hecht is at his best when he concentrates on individuals or the ironies of the newspaper business — as in these vignettes:
"Don Quixote and His Last Windmill"
"The Watch Fixer"
"Vagabondia"
"The Man from Yesterday"
"Comedies, dialogues, homilies, one-act tragedies, storiettes, sepia panels, word-etchings, satires, tone-poems, fuges, bourrees, — something different every day.... Stories seemingly born out of nothing, and written — to judge by the typing — in ten minutes, but in reality, as a rule, based upon actual incident, developed by a period of soaking in the peculiar chemicals of Ben's nature, and written with much sophistication in the choice of words. There were dramatic studies often intensely subjective, lit with the moods of Ben himself, not of the things dramatized. There were self-revelations characteristically frank and provokingly debonaire. There was comment upon everything under the sun; assaults upon all the idols of antiquity, of mediaevalism, of neo-boobism. There were raw chunks of philosophy, delivered with gusto and sometimes with inaccuracy. There were subtle jabs at well-established Babbitry."
A few are still worth reading. Most of them are not. Some of them weren't even worth the newsprint they were first printed on.
You might imagine that they'd provide a portrait of Chicago of the era, but they don't — or only a very diffuse one. The fiction of authors like Edna Ferber or Frank Norris gives a much clearer picture than this soi-disant journalism.
Hecht is at his best when he concentrates on individuals or the ironies of the newspaper business — as in these vignettes:
"Don Quixote and His Last Windmill"
"The Watch Fixer"
"Vagabondia"
"The Man from Yesterday"
July 5, 2018
Not really a novel so much as a collection of sketches of people from all walks of life and how they get by in The Big City. I enjoyed most of it a great deal, however I have to admit that there's something awfully slight about them. None of the characters' profiles go into any great depth at all and there's nothing terribly enlightening about the stories, either. It's almost like the literary equivalent to television: entertaining, but don't think you'll remember much after reading it.
September 7, 2011
What fun! I picked this up free for the Kindle and finally started dipping into it on my 'L' rides. These are newspaper columns he wrote for the Chicago Daily News in the early 1920s. A lively, humorous, and often startlingly familiar look at life in Chicago at the beginning of Prohibition. I was sorry to finish it.
August 20, 2007
absolutely fantastic. a must-read for any chicago-lover.
Want to read
December 30, 2014True stories from a journalist. "a lens into City life.". This is another book I keep on nightstand, and read a chapter\story at a time.
July 19, 2011
Nice character sketches.
July 30, 2016
A wonderful window into the Chicago of 90 years ago, and a very early example of relating human interest stories in the newspaper.
June 27, 2020
Chicago is my city so I loved all the markers of place scattered throughout this collection of newspaper columns from 1921 and 1922. In "Nirvana" a prostitute Hecht meets at Sheridan and Wilson tells him about picking up a john outside the Edgewater Beach Hotel. (According to Wiki, "The hotel served many famous guests, including Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Charlie Chaplin, Bette Davis, Lena Horne, Tallulah Bankhead, Nat King Cole, and U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. The hotel was known for hosting big bands such as those of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Xavier Cugat, Dan Russo, Ted Fiorito, and Wayne King, which were also broadcast on the hotel's own radio station, a precursor to WGN, with the call letters WEBH. In January 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at the hotel at the Conference on Religion and Race.") The hotel was built so perfectly it took three years (1969-1971) to tear it down. ("only the Edgewater Beach Apartments and its gardens survive as a vestige of the resort's elegance.") As I type this I am inside the aforementioned apartments, built as an exact replica of the hotel, but in sunrise pink rather than sunrise yellow. This sense of the past deepens the way we value the present. We situate ourselves in history and feel ourselves part of it, part of the passing parade.
In my life I've edited several books as I read them to deepen my connection to the material and simplify my rereading when I decide to revisit. I've done this with Roberto Bolano's Antwerp, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, Harold Bloom's Best Poems of the English Language from Chaucer to Frost, Melville's Moby Dick, and Tolstoy's War and Peace. I did it again with 1001 Afternoons in Chicago, because sometimes Ben Hecht's pomposity interfered with my pleasure and because sometimes his judgmental qualities alienated my more modern sensibility.
This book is still a major achievement. Ben Hecht's snapshots take us all over the city. It's a pleasure to travel with him. And the assistance of the gorgeous illustrations by Herman Rosse helps us situate ourselves even more clearly in Roaring Twenties Chicago.
In my life I've edited several books as I read them to deepen my connection to the material and simplify my rereading when I decide to revisit. I've done this with Roberto Bolano's Antwerp, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, Harold Bloom's Best Poems of the English Language from Chaucer to Frost, Melville's Moby Dick, and Tolstoy's War and Peace. I did it again with 1001 Afternoons in Chicago, because sometimes Ben Hecht's pomposity interfered with my pleasure and because sometimes his judgmental qualities alienated my more modern sensibility.
This book is still a major achievement. Ben Hecht's snapshots take us all over the city. It's a pleasure to travel with him. And the assistance of the gorgeous illustrations by Herman Rosse helps us situate ourselves even more clearly in Roaring Twenties Chicago.
February 14, 2021
STUNNING WRITING and woodcut illustrations. I have the original hardcover publication, which was actually printed (not published) by a company of women printers in NYC. Each story is "jazzy" and short and sometimes a bit slangy, and fascinating and modern seeming. Also illustrated with woodcuts along the sides of the pages and with a tailpiece of the main "character" in each very short story. What a book. Can't believe I just found it and just heard of it. Unfortunately the cover of my copy is not in good condition at all ...the spine is gone. But the insides are gloriously different and unusual and dare I say "unique". I'm so glad I have this, because the last thing I'd want to do is read it as a slick paperback reprint. YUCK.
~Linda Campbell Franklin
~Linda Campbell Franklin
November 21, 2024
Book one of reading all the Serial Reader books in alphabetical order!
There is a certain charming detail to this book, kind of an early ‘Humans of New York’ well before its time. I enjoyed these tiny snippets of human life, and the writing retains a fresh and modern kind of vibe (even where it’s clearly speaking about antiquated customs and the like).
Every single person in this book has a personality in the minutiae, and there is a certain beauty in the descriptions associated with these. I really enjoyed reading this one and getting tiny glimpses of people long gone but remembered in these tiny vignettes. A lovely book!
There is a certain charming detail to this book, kind of an early ‘Humans of New York’ well before its time. I enjoyed these tiny snippets of human life, and the writing retains a fresh and modern kind of vibe (even where it’s clearly speaking about antiquated customs and the like).
Every single person in this book has a personality in the minutiae, and there is a certain beauty in the descriptions associated with these. I really enjoyed reading this one and getting tiny glimpses of people long gone but remembered in these tiny vignettes. A lovely book!
September 8, 2024
Not quite 1001 Afternoons -- closer to 50, actually -- but still an impressive early work for newshound Hecht, later co-author of The Front Page and Hollywood screenwriter extraordinare. Gives one an incredible sense of the variety of urban life one hundred years ago in the Midwest and in America's Second City, from its centenarians, crooks, and strippers to its vaudevillians, laundry men, and dreamers. The creepy, expressionistic illustrations and design by Herman Rosse really add to the atmosphere.
February 12, 2020
A compilation of columns Hecht wrote in the 1920s for the Chicago Daily News, these pieces clearly influenced Chicago’s beloved Mike Royko and other writers of the mid-20th century. Hecht's man-on-the-street stories are evocative, sympathetic, and often melancholy. They made me homesick for this greatest of American cities.
May 25, 2020
I kept feeling like I was missing something. Many of the stories seemed to jump around and the characters became confusing. Some of the stories were fantastic, but by and large I just felt like I didn’t understand them. It was a good before bed read though.
April 17, 2021
My family were Chicagoans, so I find this fairly interesting but many stories were just okay. My favorite was An Iowa Humoresque which was about a girl wanting to be a dancer, wondering about the boy she loved and did not marry, returning home and finding out his fate.
February 13, 2019
Some incredibly interesting stuff here. Some rather not. I cannot fathom a regular column like Hecht's ever appearing in a newspaper these days. Made me miss Chicago, for sure.
May 1, 2019
I liked this at first, but it got repetitive fast. If you're curious, read five or six stories at random and you've basically read the whole book.
February 24, 2020
I loved this. The imagery was beautiful.
May 6, 2020
Some beautiful prose about Chicago
January 9, 2023
Some stories didn't age well but overall it was entertaining
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews