Oct. 16--There is a thread in the contemporary American narrative that goes, roughly speaking, like this: Boy, aren't we dumb. We don't trust science. We base public policy on emotion and inertia. We pick leaders using the have-a-beer-with, rather than the solve-a-problem, standard. Boy, aren't we dumb.
But every year in this city comes a counterargument. The Chicago Humanities Festival, three weeks of overt thought provocation occurring in auditoriums around the city and in Evanston, speaks to the brighter, broader-minded angels of our natures, those guiding spirits that still crack a book and haven't narrowed worldly concerns down to block, family, corpus.
Watching this event unfold year after year -- its 26th season runs Oct. 24-Nov. 8 -- has been heartening. Not only has it provided a reliable way to hear and, importantly, see smart people as they talk about some of their best ideas, but the annual staging of 100-plus events has proven that the marketplace rewards more than the shocking and the celebrated.
A look at the 34 CHF events that have sold out (as of Thursday morning) shows a remarkably eclectic, inquisitive grouping, including several stagings of Manual Cinema's shadow-puppetry filmmaking and talks bearing such certifiably not-fluffy titles as "Citizens Under Surveillance," "Passing in White America" and "Skyscrapers and Race."
The festival, to be sure, does not turn its back on famous people, many of whom make visits because they have new books to sell. It sponsored last year a James Franco poetry reading, which brings to mind the time that, you know, Robert Frost did "Hamlet." Oh, he didn't? Never mind.
CHF each year organizes around a theme. For 2015 it's "Citizens," which means that many of the events will ponder the individual's place in a broader society, with resonances of news events including the violence in Ferguson, Mo., United States immigration policy and National Security Agency spying.
But thematic adherence is not an absolute. As new artistic director Jonathan Elmer acknowledged, "At some point we just sort of say, 'If we could get Elvis Costello, let's get Elvis Costello.' "
This year, they got Costello (who is, after all, a citizen.) And they landed comics Patton Oswalt and Aasif Mandvi, plus TV/cookbook chefs Nigella Lawson and Yotam Ottolenghi. But even if the CHF's marquee names aren't exactly the Kardashians, and they are joined -- check that: outnumbered -- on the extensive program by academics who rarely get a broad public forum while researching subjects such as the anthropological significance of the color blue.
Costello and Mandvi, both pushing books, have sold out, as has Evanston author Audrey Niffenegger ("The Time Traveler's Wife"). The chefs and Oswalt have not.
Every year the CHF seems to book some leading public intellectuals. Those on the 2015 program include Roxane Gay ("Bad Feminist"), Lawrence Lessig and newly minted MacArthur "genius grant" winner Ta-Nehisi Coates. Coates sold out the first day tickets went on sale to the general public, Sept. 14.
Looking at the list of sellouts is a reminder that many of us did, indeed, go to college and got enough out of it to want to experience a few more tastes. But what's also interesting is looking at what sold out when.
Selling out Sept. 8, the first day tickets became available to CHF members, was a range of tours related to the festival's first-ever day of programming tied to Pilsen. The "Pilsen Day," on Nov. 8, joins long-standing days in Hyde Park (Oct. 24) and Evanston (Oct. 25). The quick ticket sales suggest intense curiosity about the Chicago Latino neighborhood.
On that Day One sellout list -- smaller events, to be sure, than the 500-seat auditorium appearances that are also part of the festival -- are four tours of the Jane Addams Hull House Museum, two tours of Pilsen art galleries, two walking tours of Pilsen wall murals and a guided tour of the National Museum of Mexican Art's annual Dia de los Muertos exhibition.
The only non-tour event to sell out on that first day was "The Day After D-Day," historian Mary Louise Roberts talking about what happened between Allied soldiers and French citizens during and after World War II. Full disclosure: Roberts book on the topic does have "Sex and the American GI" as part of its subtitle.
The second day of ticket sales to members saw two more intellectually challenging events become fully subscribed: "Artists and Cities" features video artist David Hartt's looks at Athens, Greece, and Detroit, to accompaniment by Sam Prekop of the band The Sea and Cake; "Passing in White America" features Stanford historian Allyson Hobbs, whose book, "A Chosen Exile," explores the complications endured by African-Americans who presented as white.
When general public sales were allowed Sept. 14, the first sellouts by the at least somewhat famous occurred: Niffenegger, Coates, and Mandvi. But so, too, did "The Myth of Seneca Falls," historian Lisa Tetrault exploring the origin story of women's suffrage, and "From the Bullet to the Ballot," historian Jakobi Williams tracing the path in Chicago from the Black Panther Party to the Obama presidency.
Since then, another 18 events have run out of tickets, with only singer-songwriter Costello among them as a name that would be fairly widely known. And, again, he is not a Kardashian.
Maybe some of this annual evidence of intellectual curiosity is the season, with autumn being the time that we buckle down a bit after summer frivolity. Some of it, certainly, is the humanities festival itself, which has cultivated a soil in which such events can thrive.
But looking at the entirety of this record, you mostly have to conclude that we might just be slightly less dimwitted than is generally believed, that the common wisdom about our lack of wisdom is in itself unwise. Translated to the naming conventions of a CHF event, that might read: "The Myth of 'Boy, Aren't We Dumb': Stealth Intellectualism in Early 21st Century America."
sajohnson@tribpub.com
Chicago Humanities Festival
When: Sat.-Nov. 8
Where: Various locations
Tickets: Prices vary; For complete information, visit www.chicagohumanities.org
