What do Lucy Parsons, Clarence Darrow, Carl Sandburg, Mary MacLane, Lawrence Lipton, Elizabeth Davis (Queen of the Hoboes), Jun Fujita, Sherwood Anderson, Ralph Chaplin, Kather-ine Dunham, Djuna Barnes, Kenneth Rexroth, and Slim Brundage have in common? They were all Dil Picklers!
And what was the Dil Pickle? Founded in 1914 by former Wobbly Jack Jones, Irish revolutionist Jim Larkin, and a group of fantastic IWW-oriented Bughouse Square hobos and soapboxers, the Dil Pickle in just a few years was widely recognized as the wildest, most playful, most creative, and most radical nightspot in the known universe-especially after Dr Ben Reitman (Emma Goldman's former lover and press agent) joined the club in 1917.
In this book-the first ever devoted to one of this country's most colorful and best-loved counter-institutions-Franklin Rosemont has collected forty-one reminiscences of the Dil Pickle by poets, artists, journalists, novelists, hobos, scholars, anarchists, wobblies, and other assorted radicals and oddballs. Among them are accounts by the club's founders, habitu_s, visitors, and even a few hardhearted critics. Few of these texts have ever been reprinted since their original publication in old, hard-to-find books and periodicals. Three appear here for the first time.
Included are lively portrayals of the Dil Pickle as "A Most Important Part of the Mythology of Chicago" (Kenneth Rexroth), "A Temple of the Disinherited" (Emanuel Carnevali), "A Hobo Jungle of Ideas" (Alexander Ebin), "The Flaming Crater of Chicago's Revolution in the Arts" (Vincent Starrett), and "Bohemia in All its Glory" (John Drury)-and much more.
Franklin Rosemont's introduction provides the fullest account so far of the Dil Pickle's chaotic history-its background in "Chicago Idea" anarchism and earlier free-speech forums, as well as its close association with the IWW and the Charles H. Kerr Company-and goes on to explore the role of the Picklers in the arts and the "Chicago Renaissance," along with its meaning(s) for our own troubled times.
"An amazing job of bringing the Dil Pickle to life. I am lost in admiration over the material a sensational collection!"-Leon M. Despres
