Chicago Magazine Piece by Prof. Tom Chiarella is Praised

January 29, 2015

"A lot of food writers -- some I know personally, others by byline -- have written pretty interesting, thoughtful, and long things in the past month or so," offers the Chicago Reader's Michael Gebert. "The centerpiece of Chicago magazine's bar issue is this portrait of Billy Goat Tavern bartender Jeff Magill by Tom Chiarella," Hampton and Esther Boswell Distinguished University Professor of Creative Writing at DePauw University and a "writer-at-large" for Esquire magazine.

Gebert writes, "The irony, I'm sure at least somewhat intentional, is that it's a vintage New Journalism-style piece about exactly the place where the last of the old New Journalists would hang out: a Sinatra-era watering hole whose tale is told with the kind of Sinatra-era hard-drinking swagger that was always threatening to tip New Journalism over into macho bullshit. But you have to give it credit for a perfect fusion of subject and style, that's for sure, and it does a great job of capturing a man who understands his audience better than they understand themselves."

Access the article -- headlined "Long-form food writing isn't dead meat" -- at the weekly newspaper's website.

Professor Chiarella's feature -- "Consider the Bartender" -- can be found here.

The former chair of DePauw's English department, Tom Chiarella is the author of three books -- Foley's Luck, Writing Dialogue and Thursday's Game: Notes from a Golfer with Far to Go -- and his work was included in The Best American Magazine Writing 2009.

In November, Chiarella moderated an Ubben Lecture featuring Jimmy Kimmel (the professor profiled the TV personality in the April 2014 edition of Esquire).  A summary of the event is available here; a video montage is embedded below.

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