Excerpt from A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago A week or so later Ben came in again. Bringing actual manuscript for eight or ten stories. He was haggard but very happy. It was clear that he had sat up nights with those sto ries. He thumbed them over as though he hated to let them go. They were the first fruits of his Big Idea - {the idea that just under the edge of the news as commonly understood, the news often atly and unimaginatively told, lay life; that in this urban life there dwelt the stuff of literature, not hidden in remote places, either. But walking the downtown streets, peering from the windows of sky scrapers, sunning it self in parks and boulevards. He was going to be its interpre ter.

His was to be the lens throwing city life into new colors, his the microscope revealing its contortions in life and death. It was no newspaperdream at all, in fact. It was an artist's dream. And it had begun to come true. Here were the stories. Hoped I'd like 'em. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.

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