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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
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      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
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      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
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      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
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      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
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      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
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      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
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      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
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      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
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      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
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      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
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      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
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      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
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      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
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  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
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    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
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      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022

Vincent Francone 

Thieves

           
I witnessed a book theft on the Red line, heading north. It was around noon. A young woman was reading a paperback and, as we pulled into the Wilson station, a young man—no more than twenty—snatched the book from her hands and bolted from the train. The young woman was obviously too shocked to scream: “STOP! THIEF!” or anything along those lines. She merely stood up, said, “what the?” in a confused tone and watched like the rest of us as the man ran across the platform to the exit. The train driver radioed the police and the young woman was asked to exit the train and wait on the platform. There the cops would take her statement, but all of us were sure that the young man would never be found. Before she walked off, I asked her what she was reading.

“A Tale of Two Cities. My favorite book!”

Less than a week after witnessing the incident, I heard someone at work tell a similar story. Apparently, libraries across the city were also being burglarized. Many of the old buildings, lacking proper video surveillance and sophisticated locks, were easy targets. Stunned librarians arrived in the morning to find a mess—shelves knocked over, books missing, computers on the floor.

The rash of book thefts got some press. I read in the paper that a woman had her copy of Moby Dick stolen while riding the train. It was early evening, again on the Red line, this time near Chinatown. The procedure was the same: the thief waited until the train pulled into the station, grabbed the book out of her hand, and ran to the station exit. According to the article, the woman never got a good look at the thief.

“I wasn’t paying attention. Melville was too absorbing. I’m so stupid—I should be more aware of the world around me.”

Her tale served as warning; the paper reminded its readers to be careful when reading on the train. As a final comment, the woman said: “And I had just bought the book. It was brand new!”

There was suspicion by the police that the thieves were targeting new editions and recent releases only, but that theory was suspended when Powell’s on 57th and The Bookman’s Corner on Clark, both used book stores, were burglarized. Powell’s’ entire poetry section was gone, as was most of their philosophy. The bandits made off with a wide selection of the German, British, and Russian history from Bookman’s Corner.

There was much talk of the motivation behind the crimes. At first, optimistic academics speculated that the thieves were literature hungry youths bored with the limits of popular entertainment. No video game could compare to Faulkner. Transformers 2 was not sufficiently challenging to their intellect, so they pilfered Yeats. The thinking behind this was similar to the recent debates about expanding universities to include non-traditional students. Everyone, they said, deserves a college degree and, more importantly, the college experience. If grants could not be obtained, the people would steal an education.

Skeptics found this theory laughable. No young thug was willing to risk arrest simply because they were unsatisfied with pop culture. Secondly, the allure of the XBox was never going to wane, and even if it did the professors were delusional if they thought inner city youth would turn to Chaucer. Rather, they proposed a second theory: the advance of technology in the 20thcentury gave way to a 21st century where nearly everyone owned, or had regular access to, a computer, Jet Fuel Review 69 smart phone, an iPod, and countless other electronic devices. The worth of these gadgets was decreasing as their prices dropped and their ubiquity was cemented. Since hand held digital gizmos were as common as trees, their black market value plummeted. But the black market must go on, so the thieves and fences turned to books, a disappearing product. While books themselves were still being written and published, the stores that used to sell them were vanishing from the city. Yes, a few remained, but the big chains were dying. Borders had closed all its doors. Barnes and Noble was scaling back as well. Waldenbooks, the sole literary beacon of the suburban mall, was history. Subsequent to reduction in bookstores, physical books were hot commodities and any hot commodity was grist for the black market mill.

Two weeks after I witnessed the incident on the Red line, I became a victim. I was reading Nazim Hikmet, which, egotistically, I thought was too obscure to appeal to thieves who had previously avoided literature in translation. I sat secure with my poetry riding the train toward Loyola. Normally I rose form my seat, double checked my backpack, and secured it to my body while the train made its final stretch toward my stop. This time I was too absorbed in all the things Hikmet never knew he loved to notice that we were seconds away from pulling into the station. My eyes lifted from the page and I saw a young man barely out of his teens in a black hooded shirt, with dark skin, shaved head, and a chewed pen cap in his mouth. He snatched Hikmet form my hands and ran through the doors. I rushed after him. The platform has only one exit and I raced toward it, all the while keeping the thief in my sight. In his haste, he knocked over an old woman who fell down the stairs. After a horrifying tumble, she landed on the concrete below with the thief close behind. He jumped over the old woman’s body and ran through the station and out into the street. The poor woman lay twisted and inert on the ground, a mob forming around her. A stocky transit employee radioed the police. They all looked at me with accusatory eyes.




​
--
Vincent Francone is a writer living in Chicago. He has been published in Rhino, Spectrum, and The Oklahoma Review among other journals, and he won first place in the 2009 Illinois Emerging Writers Competition for his long poem, “Chicago.” He is at work on a novel and a collection of stories. Read his blog at: www.zombiedante.blogspot.com

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  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
    • Masthead
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    • Submit Here
  • Features
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  • Previous Issues
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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022