Shteir highlighted the city's murder rate, parking costs, bad weather and overall inflated sense of itself. She raised the flight of residents from the city to the suburbs, writing: "The city's population, for example, is currently at 2.7 million, having dropped since a high of 3.6 million in 1950. But the bloviating roars on, as if hot air could prevent Chicago from turning into Detroit."
When a critic takes on a city's refusal to acknowledge its own blemishes, it becomes a bit tricky for residents to respond without proving the critic's point.
That's the position Chicagoans find themselves in with DePaul University theater professor Rachel Shteir, whose recent piece in The New York Times Book Review painted a less-than-flattering portrait of the Second City.
Asked Tuesday about the defensive uproar over her article, Shteir said: "I guess I feel it simply proves what the thesis of the piece was, which is that there's only one way to talk about Chicago."
In her review, she describes that one way as incessant boosterism.
Shteir highlighted the city's murder rate, parking costs, bad weather and overall inflated sense of itself. She raised the flight of residents from the city to the suburbs, writing: "The city's population, for example, is currently at 2.7 million, having dropped since a high of 3.6 million in 1950. But the bloviating roars on, as if hot air could prevent Chicago from turning into Detroit."
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