“Chicago is the great American city. New York is one of the capitals of the world and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic, San Francisco is a lady, Boston has become Urban Renewal, Philadelphia and Baltimore and Washington wink like dull diamonds in the smog of Eastern Megalopolis, and New Orleans is unremarkable past the French Quarter. Detroit is a one-trade town, Pittsburgh has lost its golden triangle, St. Louis has become the golden arch of the corporation, and nights in Kansas City close early. The oil depletion allowance makes Houston and Dallas naught but checkerboards for this sort of game. But Chicago is a great American city. Perhaps it is the last of the great American cities.” — from “Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968” by Norman Mailer.

I’m trying to find online the entire opening passage of the Chicago section of Mailer’s book. I don’t mind buying the book again but I’d like to re-read right now the section in which he describes in great detail the killing of steers in the Chicago stockyards and how the aroma from this slaughter used to rise up and make its way up into the city and to some extent affect the town’s psychology. Or something like that. It was out of date when he wrote it (more reflective of the way things were done in the ’50s and before than in 1968) but it’s still lovely writing, and I was looking to read it once again. Alas…