Just north of Towertown, on the outskirts of the elegant Gold Coast, was the famous Dill Pickle Club, establish to provide a theater in which poets could recite their verses. [Founder Jack] Jones often found it necessary, however, to tailor the presentation for the audience that was present, and typical nightclub entertainment was not uncommon. […]
The Search for “Chicago’s Great Soul” When Chicago was the intellectual and literary heart of America — and incredibly it once was — its nerve center was a rambling old barn in back of 876 1/2 North Dearborn Parkway, or, more specifically, at 18 Tooker Place. You walked down an alley and found, between two […]
Aside from where I stand at any given moment, the centrum mundi of egoism in North America is the Dill Pickle Club of Chicago Illinois. Here are excerpts from the Chicago Tribune on the rising and falling fortunes of the building where Sirfessor Malfew Seklew and Ragnar Redbeard once held court. Jack Jones was the […]
The Optimist’s Ego I do not feel me travelling these rails, Elbowing the herd; For have I not been chosen to be I? Some great wise power pruned so well Through the bloom of teeming life That I am pleased with this I that I am. It picked me a keen gray firey glance To […]
The Dill Pickle Club was the home of Dill Pickle Press, publisher of the 1927 edition of Might is Right by Ragnar Redbeard. The Dill Pickle Club was also a primary pulpit of pontification by Sirfessor Malfew Seklew, author of The Gospel of Malfew Seklew. Here are selections from three books that further give the […]
An astounding article on Sirfessor Malfew Seklew from the Chicago Daily Tribune of February 28 1916. The man identified here as Doc Rawleigh of the Toltec tribe may be Redwood Bailey, Cherokee. Bailey wrote about the Sirfessor in The Day Book for February 5 1916, and the Sirfessor replied in the same periodical five days […]
This article about Malfew Sklew and pals appeared in the Chicago Daily Tribune on March 9th, 1918. Over at 213 West Oak street last night gathered a clan under a new banner. It was the housewarming of “The Superite Coffee Tavern,” where, according to its founder, Sirfessor F.M. Wilkesbarre, the nimble witted can walk the intellectual slack […]
From “The Phoenix Nest,” a column by William Rose Benet appearing in the April 26 1947 edition of The Saturday Review (page 36)… Mark Twain relates in one of his stories, the furore up in Heaven when an obscure tailor, Billings by name, from somewhere in Tennessee, arrives in the Celestial realm. Shakespeare is proud […]
Some words are used in speech before they get written down, and early on in being written down they are spelled in many ways before they settle on a single spellings. The music we call jazz was also spelled jaz, jas, and jass early on. The Dil Pickle Club of Chicago (where Sirfessor Malfew Seklew often […]
On May 1st of 2016 Trevor Blake and I took to the lectern at Mother Foucault’s bookstore in Portland Oregon. The event was to announce the release of Underworld Amusements’ The Outbursts of Everett True that featured an introduction by Trevor Blake and OVO’s Max Stirner Bibliography by Trevor Blake. The entire event was recorded and […]
