There’s a glorious passage in Night Moves, the latest book by music editor and critic (and onetime Reader contributor) Jessica Hopper, during which she recounts a 2004 bike ride down Damen Avenue. As she travels along, she rattles off a stream-of-consciousness list of the Chicago landmarks she passes along the way (“Pilsen’s strip malls,” “Little Italy’s ass end,” “the Drag City office”).
Your interest in the texture of Chicago has always shown through in your writing, but what made this retrospective important for you to publish now?
You recount more than one night out where, say, you wish a hole would open up in the ground, swallow you whole, and transport you home. Those nights where you were stuck in a booth drinking your water with ice [Hopper doesn’t drink or use drugs], the scene bustling around you … Was it about observing the scene? What made you go out?
I’m not a supersentimental person, even though my last two books have been anthologies and works from my past. This book helped me become reacquainted with my younger self—and in some ways rightsize my memory. So much of my memory of that time is … I’m just broke. But I also remember having a lot of space in my life. Today that space is informed by my children, my children’s schedules, and being married. I wonder, “Would 28-year-old me be disappointed in 42-year-old me?” That rightsizing is more of what happened than getting wistful for what was.
So much happens on a bike—and the action is often moved ahead because of a bike. How integral was the bike ride to discovering your Chicagoness?
By Jessica Hopper (Texas). In conversation with Megan Stielstra Thu 9/20, 7 PM, Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, 773-769-9299, womenandchildrenfirst.com, free.
