Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Chicago is many things to many people, and to me, it is a place where you can write.
'The Dante Club' was one of America's most important book clubs, as their Wednesday night meetings ultimately led to our country's first exposure to Dante's poetry on a wide scale.
I had no particular image of Chicago in mind when I wrote 'My Kind of Town.' All I wanted to do was write a song in praise of Chicago, and that's what I did.
Deep down I knew that if Hell existed, it was a real place full of ruthless, venal people, like the commodity pits at the Chicago Board of Trade, Disney World, or oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court.
I must say that it's easy to write nice things about Chicago because it's that kind of town.
When I first started writing, I wrote a book called 'Bruiser,' and it was pretty much set in Chicago.
One of the fascinating things about researching Heaven and Hell is, of course, the fact that there are so few descriptions of Heaven, because most people can't really explain what it would be like beyond a couple of sentences, whereas Hell is quite often personal.
Because that is what such a city is, in the New World, a writer's heaven.
Detroit turned out to be heaven, but it also turned out to be hell.
Hell has been described as a pocket edition of Chicago.