The Blue Spong and the Flight from Mediocrity
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"Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions." ~William Gladstone
The year is 1924; the place is Chicago's Towertown, home to the city's Bohemian set. The Clam Sisters, their staff and guests at Palourde Parlor at 35 E. Chestnut Street, are about to have life as they know it turned on its head. When one of the Clam Sisters purchases a rare blue spong from an exotic songbird dealer, the aristocratic sisters find themselves exposed to a flying oddity that leads them to shed their commonplace and staid way of life, for something altogether bold and daring. Chinese tongs, vaudeville shows, fraudulent spiritualists … St Sukie de la Croix's novel is a humorous historical fantasy that showcases the follies of leading a mediocre existence.
St Sukie de la Croix
For three decades, St Sukie de la Croix, 70, has been a social commentator and researcher on Chicago’s LGBT history. He has published oral-history interviews; lectured; conducted historical tours; documented LGBT life through columns, photographs, humor features, and fiction; and written the book Chicago Whispers (U. of Wisconsin Press, 2012) on local LGBT history. St Sukie de la Croix, the man the Chicago Sun-Times described as “the gay Studs Terkel,” came to Chicago from his native Bath, England, in 1991. His columns appeared in news and entertainment sources such as Chicago Free Press, Gay Chicago, Nightlines/Nightspots, Outlines, Blacklines, Windy City Times, and GoPride.com, and publications around the country. In 2008 he was a historical consultant and appeared in the WTTW television documentary Out & Proud in Chicago. His crowning achievement came in 2012 when the University of Wisconsin published his in-depth, vibrant record of LGBT Chicagoans, Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago Before Stonewall. The book received glowing reviews and cemented de la Croix’s deserved position as a top-ranking historian and leader. In 2012 de la Croix was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame. In 2017 he published The Blue Spong and the Flight from Mediocrity, a novel set in 1924 Chicago, followed by The Orange Spong and Storytelling at the Vamp Art Café in 2020. In 2018 he published The Memoir of a Groucho Marxist, a work about growing up Gay in Great Britain, and in 2019, Out of the Underground: Homosexuals, the Radical Press and the Rise and Fall of the Gay Liberation Front. In 2019, St Sukie de la Croix and Owen Keehnen launched their Tell Me About It Project, which led to the 2019 publication of Tell Me About It. Two more volumes followed. In 2020, he published, The Orange Spong and Storytelling at the Vamp-Arts Café, the second book in the popular Spong Series. St Sukie continued his LGBTQ Chicago history series in 2021 with the publication of Chicago After Stonewall: A History of LGBTQ Chicago from Gay Lib to Gay Life, continuing the narrative of the Chicago LGBTQ rights movement from where Chicago Whispers, left off. His newest book, Twilight Manors in Palm Springs, God’s Waiting Room, is his fourth novel.
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