“I think everyone is familiar with Chicago’s well-known mythology – Al Capone, hog butcher to the world, Saul Bellow, But Chicago now is something less well-known, and the gap between those two things – the reality of the city today and the mythology of its yesteryears – creates a winning sense of ownership among people who live there, of guardedness, of toughness and skepticism, which is uniquely Chicagoan.  It’s a big reason why I think we should pick Chicago as a city over, say New York, which mulches its outward image annually in the arena of pop culture.  I felt for this reason the issue would have something truly new to say about the city, and by extension, about America.” – John Freeman, editor of the Granta literary magazine, on why the magazine chose to feature Chicago as the theme for its upcoming issue. 

This was via a review in New City.