PK

James Hurt argues that my home state, and by extension the vast American Midwest, materialized from nothingness. And so the symbols most closely associated with the state--the prairie, Abraham Lincoln and Chicago--are often thought of as having come from nothing: The prairie gave a name to vast nothingness, Lincoln emerged from hardscrabble roots to unparalleled prominence and Chicago's world-renown skyscrapers rose from a flat, smelly wasteland. That rise from nothing, making much from little, is an idea that Illinoisians, not to mention their fellow Midwesterners, hold dear. But another part of our psychology is that despite our stubborn pride, we're never completely sure we measure up. Hurt writes of the "curious sort of ambivalence in the way my fellow Illinoisians talk about where they live, a mixture of affection and embarrassment," noting that "cultural insecurity [is] part of a Midwestern style." Loving Chicago, Algren writes, is "like loving a woman with a broken nose. You may well find lovelier lovelies, but never a lovely so real."