Hog Butcher, Tool Maker

It's a little silly to argue about what is American and what isn't, since part of the greatness of the United States is that there is no single way to be American. Still, something about Chicago captures the American spirit, I think. In a sense this city is a microcosm of the United States, a living testament to our ambition, our brashness, our vigor, our repudiation of class and the status quo. Philadelphia is too class-conscious, LA is too warm and easy and spread out, Boston is too erudite, New York comes close but has an effete, pampered feel (almost Old World). Carl Sandburg summed it up in his poem Chicago. The essence comes in the final stanza: proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, and so on. The poem revels in the same aesthetic as the 1930s Soviet conception of progress through industrialization and technology, but with raw striving capitalism taking the place of the New Man and state primacy.

Of course, all cities are beginning to look alike, and Chicago is no longer as distinctive as it once was (because of economic geography?). What remains, I think, is that Chicago is proud to be the City that Works. Chicago isn't in thrall to the past, it is a city where you tear down and build new. It is a city of ambition and restlessness and progress.

So far as I know, Chicago is unique in its ability to engender such pride (as displayed in this post). Don't get a Chicago native started about his city: he'll talk your ear off about its architecture, its parks, its universities, its sports teams. A legend says that this is why Chicago is called the "windy city," but in fact that doesn't appear to be the straight dope.

So if you understand the United States in terms of its ambition, its newness, its lack of pretension, and its pride in all of the above, then Chicago is in fact the most American city. For better or worse, our nation is a nation of Hog Butchers and Tool Makers, "with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning."