SOURCE: Cook, Bruce. “Walks On the Southwest Side.” Washington Post Book World 10, no. 2 (13 January 1980): 1-2.

In the review below, Cook regards Dybek among the pantheon of Chicago “neighborhood laureates” and praises his distinct combination of Eastern European-inspired flavor with the cynicism of the Chicago tradition.

A long a diagonal line southwest from Chicago's Loop lies a vast terra incognita once populated almost completely by Slavic groups which has been changing over to black and Latin during the past couple of decades. Chicago has had neighborhood laureates in the past—James T. Farrell, who wrote of the south-side Irish; Gwendolyn Brooks, the fine poet who sings of the black south side; Nelson Algren, whose people are the Poles of the near-northwest side; and Saul Bellow, who has written so well about the west-side Jews. But nobody has come forward to speak for that mixed patch surrounding Douglas Park on...