Len’s Books

Tribune reporter Colleen Mastony had a delightful piece on page 2 of last Thursday’s paper about the sale of Leon Despres’ library at O’Gara’s Bookstore on 57th Street. The late former alderman and longtime Hyde Park firebrand, who died earlier this year at 101, was known for his progressive activism and fervent opposition to Mayor Daley the Elder, but less well known was that Len was also an omnivorous reader and polymath.

As Mastony reports, his books bear witness to his phenomenal life, enshrining inscriptions from fellow Chicago greats such as Studs Terkel, Lois Weisberg, and Mike Royko. She writes:

“In some ways, bookshelves are like mirrors; they reflect a person's life, revealing a mosaic of thoughts and ideals. ‘There is a certain intimacy, a view into very private things about a person that you get by looking at their books,’ said Douglas Wilson, the owner of O'Gara & Wilson. . . .

“Despres was meticulous with his library. He tucked articles and correspondence into dust jackets. He never dog-eared pages and rarely wrote in his books, except to make a small dash in a margin with a pencil. When he took notes, he put them on loose leaf.

“‘He just loved his books,’ said Despres' son, Robert. ‘Among the reasons he said he didn't want to move out of the apartment was that he loved being surrounded by his books.’

“At the end of the summer, a small sign went up in the window at O'Gara & Wilson: ‘We are honored to sell fine books from the personal library of the late 5th Ward Alderman Leon Despres (1908-2009).’

“On a recent afternoon, a young law student came into the shop. The student greatly admired Despres and marveled at the stories of his life: the time that Despres was dispatched to Mexico to deliver a suitcase to Leon Trotsky, the labor protest that Despres had helped organize in 1937, the single-minded way Despres had stood up against Mayor Richard J. Daley -- who often retaliated at City Council meetings by having Despres' microphone switched off.”

That student ended up buying a copy of Chicago: City on the Make. It cost him $125, but considering it was inscribed to Len by author Nelson Algren himself, he must have thought it was worth it.

It’s a fine Hyde Park tale: books, O’Gara’s, and Leon Despres. Consume these stories while ye may: there’ll be none of them in Age of Kindle.

Happy Birthday, Jacques Barzun

Though we noted his centennial two years ago (and mentioned him again last year, come to think of it), Professor Barzun's longevity rates a mention every birthday. Today he's 102. Happy birthday, Sir.

This is worth reading.

Another Year for the Professor

Belated 101st birthday greetings to Jacques Barzun.

Happy Birthday, Len Despres

Alderman Leon Despres, one of the greatest Chicagoans in the city’s history, turns 100 today. You can do a lot in a hundred years, the more so if you’re relentlessly active, and “Len,” as he is known around the neighborhood, has combined longevity with alacrity for life and the pursuit of social justice to amass a list of accomplishments that no mere blog post could hope to summarize properly.

He is perhaps best known for the twenty years (1955-75) he spent representing Hyde Park and vicinity in the Chicago City Council as the 5th Ward alderman, most of which time he was the lone voice of dissent in that (ahem) great deliberative body against The Boss, Mayor Richard J. Daley. As a firebrand opponent of Daley’s autocratic rule, Despres so unnerved DaMare that his microphone was often turned off from the podium while he was in the middle of a speech.

Well beyond that, however, Leon Despres has been a tireless activist for progressive causes—labor, civil rights, women’s rights, political reform, economic justice—for more than 70 years. He had already earned enough respect in town by 1937 that he was asked to speak at the protest rally following the Memorial Day Massacre in South Chicago that year. And the people he’s met! He went horseback riding with Trotsky and took Frida Kahlo on a date to the movies.

And he’s never stopped. He was near 80 when I used to see him on the CTA in the mid-1980s, heading toward the Loop, where he was parliamentarian to a very different mayor, Harold Washington, sitting at Harold’s right hand (or was it the left?) during City Council meetings.

Happy birthday, Len. And thanks.

You can read, see and hear more about Leon Despres:

WBEZ’s Eight Forty Eight
Chicago Tribune (don’t miss the video)
Chicago Afternoons with Leon, by Kenan Heise
Despres’s 2005 book, Challenging the Daley Machine
Video: Beyond Haymarket and Pullman, in which Despres discusses Memorial Day Massacre

Jacques Barzun Turns 100

This has nothing to do with chess, but today Jacques Barzun, an historian and critic whose work I enjoy and admire, is one hundred years old, and I just want to mark the occasion here. My colleague Bob McHenry has a fitting paean to the professor here.

Chances are you've never even heard of Barzun, but he was an intimate of people you have heard of, such as Auden and Trilling, and he was one of the great men of letters of the 20th century. The 21st, too, come to think of it. Was and is. And as if to prove that there's a blog for everything you can imagine, there's even one for Barzun's birthday. If you indeed have never heard of Barzun, I recommend the recent article about him in The New Yorker.