About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherUniversity of Minnesota Press

ISBN-10081669110X

ISBN-139780816691104

eBay Product ID (ePID)20038691693

Product Key Features

Book TitleZenith City : Stories from Duluth

Number of Pages216 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2014

TopicUnited States / State & Local / General, General, Literary, United States / State & Local / MidWest (IA, Il, in, Ks, Mi, MN, Mo, Nd, Ne, Oh, Sd, Wi)

IllustratorYes

GenreBiography & Autobiography, History

AuthorMichael Fedo

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.6 in

Item Weight9 Oz

Item Length8.5 in

Item Width5.5 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN2013-042318

Reviews "A memoir, with a smattering of local history, Fedo's collection will engage any reader with his fond and frank reminiscences of family life combined with vivid recollections of his native Duluth as it once was and, in many ways, still is. Thoroughly enjoyable." --Jim Heffernan, author of C ooler Near the Lake: Fifty-two Favorites from Thirty-four Years of Deadlines, "A memoir, with a smattering of local history, Fedo's collection will engage any reader with his fond and frank reminiscences of family life combined with vivid recollections of his native Duluth as it once was and, in many ways, still is. Thoroughly enjoyable." --Jim Heffernan, author of C ooler Near the Lake: Fifty-two Favorites from Thirty-four Years of Deadlines, "[Fedo's] Zenith City won't make you feel warm and fuzzy. But you will learn some truths about Duluth and about one of its too many good ones who got away." -- Star Tribune, "For Duluthians, this prodigiously chronicled memoir will delight, awaken, and inform you of a place you thought you knew. Rising above the delicious details and references is a story of growing up in Middle America at a time not so long ago that seems of another era." --Wing Young Huie

Dewey Edition23

Dewey Decimal977.6771

Table Of ContentContents Introduction This Is Duluth! Miss Weddel and the Rats The Roomer School Days The Voice Beware the Ides of March He Believed Writers Are Made, Not Born Sinclair Lewis's Duluth Diners, Dives, No Drive-ins Thou Shalt Not Shine Dad's Legacy My Father and the Mobster A Family Informed by Pyloric Stenosis The Unmaking of a Missionary The Hill Discovering Rita The Grand Piano Smelt Cousin Jean Uncle See-See's Secret? Radio Days The Tree Keep Your Eyes Open Baseball Days Joe DiMaggio Turns His Lonely Eyes toward the Girl at 2833 West Third Street Jogging with James Joyce At the Flame For a Moment Dylan Played in Our Shadow Christmas with the Klines Remembering Satchmo Broxie Brotherhood Week in Duluth A Life Informed by a Lynching AcknowledgmentsPublication History

SynopsisDuluth may be the city of "untold delights" as lampooned in a Kentucky congressman's speech in 1871. Or it may be portrayed by a joke in Woody Allen's film Manhattan. Or then again, it may be the "Zenith City of the unsalted seas" celebrated by Dr. Thomas Preston Foster, founder of the city's first newspaper. But whatever else it may be, this city of granite hills, foghorns, and gritty history, the last stop on the shipping lanes of the Great Lakes, is undeniably a city with character--and characters. Duluth native Michael Fedo captures these characters through the happy-go-melancholy lens nurtured by the people and landscape of his youth. In Zenith City Fedo brings it back home. Framed by his reflections on Duluth's colorful--and occasionally very dark--history and its famous visitors, such as Sinclair Lewis, Joe DiMaggio, and Bob Dylan, his memories make the city as real as the boy next door but with a better story. Here, among the graceful, poignant, and often hilarious remembered moments--pranks played on a severe teacher, the family's unlikely mob connections, a rare childhood affliction--are the coordinates of Duluth's larger landscape: the diners and supper clubs, the baseball teams, radio days, and the smelt-fishing rites of spring. Woven through these tales of Duluth are Fedo's curious, instructive, and ultimately deeply moving stories about becoming a writer, from the guidance of an English teacher to the fourteen-year-old reporter's interview with Louis Armstrong to his absorption in the events that would culminate in his provocative and influential book The Lynchings in Duluth. These are the sorts of essays--personal, cultural, and historical, at once regional and far-reaching--that together create a picture of people in a place as rich in history and anecdote as Duluth and of the forces that forever bind them together., Duluth may be the city of "untold delights" as lampooned in a Kentucky congressman's speech in 1871. Or it may be portrayed by a joke in Woody Allen's film Manhattan . Or then again, it may be the "Zenith City of the unsalted seas" celebrated by Dr. Thomas Preston Foster, founder of the city's first newspaper. But whatever else it may be, this city of granite hills, foghorns, and gritty history, the last stop on the shipping lanes of the Great Lakes, is undeniably a city with character--and characters. Duluth native Michael Fedo captures these characters through the happy-go-melancholy lens nurtured by the people and landscape of his youth. In Zenith City Fedo brings it back home. Framed by his reflections on Duluth's colorful--and occasionally very dark--history and its famous visitors, such as Sinclair Lewis, Joe DiMaggio, and Bob Dylan, his memories make the city as real as the boy next door but with a better story. Here, among the graceful, poignant, and often hilarious remembered moments--pranks played on a severe teacher, the family's unlikely mob connections, a rare childhood affliction--are the coordinates of Duluth's larger landscape: the diners and supper clubs, the baseball teams, radio days, and the smelt-fishing rites of spring. Woven through these tales of Duluth are Fedo's curious, instructive, and ultimately deeply moving stories about becoming a writer, from the guidance of an English teacher to the fourteen-year-old reporter's interview with Louis Armstrong to his absorption in the events that would culminate in his provocative and influential book The Lynchings in Duluth. These are the sorts of essays--personal, cultural, and historical, at once regional and far-reaching--that together create a picture of people in a place as rich in history and anecdote as Duluth and of the forces that forever bind them together., Duluth may be the city of "untold delights"as lampooned in a Kentucky congressman's speech in 1871. Or it may be portrayed by a joke in Woody Allen's film Manhattan. Or then again, it may be the "Zenith City of the unsalted seas"celebrated by Dr. Thomas Preston Foster, founder of the city's first newspaper. But whatever else it may be, this city of granite hills, foghorns, and gritty history, the last stop on the shipping lanes of the Great Lakes, is undeniably a city with character--and characters. Duluth native Michael Fedo captures these characters through the happy-go-melancholy lens nurtured by the people and landscape of his youth. In Zenith City Fedo brings it back home. Framed by his reflections on Duluth's colorful--and occasionally very dark--history and its famous visitors, such as Sinclair Lewis, Joe DiMaggio, and Bob Dylan, his memories make the city as real as the boy next door but with a better story.Here, among the graceful, poignant, and often hilarious remembered moments--pranks played on a severe teacher, the family's unlikely mob connections, a rare childhood affliction--are the coordinates of Duluth's larger landscape: the diners and supper clubs, the baseball teams, radio days, and the smelt-fishing rites of spring. Woven through these tales of Duluth are Fedo's curious, instructive, and ultimately deeply moving stories about becoming a writer, from the guidance of an English teacher to the fourteen-year-old reporter's interview with Louis Armstrong to his absorption in the events that would culminate in his provocative and influential book The Lynchings in Duluth. These are the sorts of essays--personal, cultural, and historical, at once regional and far-reaching--that together create a picture of people in a place as rich in history and anecdote as Duluth and of the forces that forever bind them together.

LC Classification NumberF614.D8F44 2014