Norbert Blei

Norbert Blei (August 23, 1935 – April 23, 2013) was an American writer of non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. In 1994, he established Cross+Roads Press, dedicated to the publication of first chapbooks by poets, short story writers, novelists and artists.

Biography

Blei was born in an ethnic (primarily Czechoslovakian) neighborhood of western Chicago, Illinois known as Little Village. An only child, Blei and his parents moved to the near-western Chicago suburb of Cicero when he was in grade school.

Blei attended Illinois State University, studying English, and graduated in 1956. He taught high school English and subsequently worked at the City News Bureau of Chicago as a reporter. In 1969, Blei left Chicago and moved to Door County, Wisconsin, a rural vacation destination for Midwesterners on the Door Peninsula in Lake Michigan. For four decades, he worked in a converted chicken coop in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin.

Blei's first book was ''The Hour of the Sunshine Now: Short Stories by Norbert Blei'', published in 1978.

Blei was an early adopter of the Internet as a means to distribute his own work and call attention to other writers. His ''Poetry Dispatch'' was a weekly enewsletter that featured a short selection of poems by a single, noteworthy poet, while ''Notes from the Underground'' was an irregular email that featured brief essays on current topics, literary and otherwise.

Literary themes

A sense of community and threats to community were the twin themes of Blei's writing, whether he is writing about urban Chicago or rural Wisconsin:

"Norb specializes in the fleeting look at the little people of the city, the aged newsstand operators, the small restaurant owners, Greek, Bohemian, Slovak, who still provide, in out-of-the-way neighborhoods, national dishes and national atmosphere. And he is determined to get these glimpses of a disappearing Chicago on paper before they are ploughed under to make way for new high-rise apartments, or succumb to the creeping wave of debris, human and material, so characteristic of most large cities these days." (Henry Shea, 1970)

"Thus a profound feeling of loss permeates all of Blei's work. Perhaps Blei's own sense of himself as an isolated, alienated writer—a consistent self-portrait, across geographies and through years of economic and literary success and failure, prominence and reduced visibility—derives from his sense of doomed place, or, more properly, doomed community in place. Whether author imposes his vision on place (others in Cicero and Door County have found more to cheer about over the past thirty years), or place imposes itself on author, the result is an author celebrating the forgotten, the beat and defeated: others and himself." (David Pichaske, 2000)

Cross+Roads Press

In the early 1990s, Blei started Cross+Roads Press to offer established and beginning writers an opportunity to be published in chapbook form. To date, works by almost 40 writers have been published.

The Clearing

For over 30 years, Blei was writer-in-residence at The Clearing, a folk arts school founded in 1935 by landscape architect Jens Jensen. Blei's annual June writing classes drew developing writers from across the country. After 2007, Blei conducted his annual writing classes independently.

Visual arts

Blei was a watercolor artist. Following a trip to Berlin in the then-West Germany in the early 1980s, he created a series of works based on the experience. The "Die Mauer" paintings focused on the Berlin Wall and were exhibited in Santa Fe and other locations.

Writing projects

Blei collaborated with the pseudonymous Monsieur K, located in France, who created an assortment of web sites for posting writings artists judged to abide by the spirit of "free jazz". Blei regularly provided Monsieur K with commentary on significant artistic events for the Metropolis site, poetry and other material for the Basho's Road site, and artistic profiles and critiques for Poetry Dispatch & Other Notes from the Underground.

Controversy

Blei fomented local controversy when he outlined a new vision for Door County, Wisconsin in an article in the area's weekly newspaper, ''The Door Reminder''. Published in 1992, it was titled "Shut the Damn Door". The area's residents were sharply divided on the proposal, as recounted in an essay by Blei's publisher at Ellis Press, David Pichaske: "Blei outlined a Master Plan for the Future of Door County loosely based on the 'Industrial Tourism' chapter of Ed Abbey's Desert Solitaire. Blei suggests that county officials freeze all building, property sales, and residential, commercial and public planning in the County; turn the entire County over to Nature Conservancy; close the new bridge at Sturgeon Bay and make an outdoor walking mall of it, with artsy-craftsy shops, a Ferris wheel, and Chicago style food vendors; admit tourists freely across the old bridge May through October, subject to a tax of $50 per vehicle per week and $25 per person per day, but from November through April by visa only; tear up all highways and back roads and return them to their natural state of dirt, gravel, good Door County earth; place a moratorium on new road construction in the County; encourage vandalism of commercial signs while instituting a $3,000 fine for anyone caught erecting new advertisements or newspaper mail boxes; tear up 'ugly metal road signs' and either replace them with wooden ones or leave the roads nameless. 'Take any dirt road and get lost,' Blei concludes. 'You may discover the real value of this place. You may discover yourself.'"

Works

Novels

* ''The Second Novel: Becoming a Writer'' (1978)
* ''Adventures in an American's Literature'' (1982)

Story collections

* ''The Hour of the Sunshine Now: Short Stories by Norbert Blei'' (1978)
* ''The Ghost of Sandburg's Phizzog'' (1986)

Non-fiction

* ''Door Way: The People in the Landscape'' (1981)
* ''Door Steps'' (1983)
* ''Door to Door'' (1985)
* ''Neighborhood'' (1987)
* ''Meditations on a Small Lake'' (1987)
* ''Chi-Town'' (1990)
* ''Chronicles of a Rural Journalist in America'' (1990)
* ''Winter Book'' (2002)

Poetry

* ''Paint Me a Picture/Make Me a Poem'' (1987)

Collections and anthologies

* Wisconsin's Rustic Roads: A Road Less Travelled; Photographs by Bob Rashid, Text By Ben Logan, George Vukelich, Jean Feraca, Norbert Blei and Bill Stokes (1995)
* Rooted: Seven Midwest Writers of Place, by David Pichaske, University of Iowa Press (2006


Anthologies
selected list, (Archived August 3, 2011)

Recordings

* The Quiet Time, Door County in Winter: Readings by Norb Blei/Music by Jim Spector (1997)
* Readings from Door Way (1996)

Articles

Henderson dark man of Door
''Door County Advocate'', September 13, 1977

Bailey Harbor's Bird Carver
''Door County Advocate'', September 27, 1977

With Gerhard Miller, painting had to come out, and it did
''Door County Advocate'', November 1, 1977

Artist Miller heard sailors spin yarns on schooner decks
''Door County Advocate'', November 3, 1977

Woodworker Anderson example of generation seeking its own way
''Door County Advocate'', March 7, 1978
Kash: a potter's way in Door
''Door County Advocate'', July 20, 1978
Hard driving restauranteur Al Johnson doesn't mince words
''Door County Advocate'', June 22, 1978
'They got to let the fishermen fish'
''Door County Advocate'', October 18, 1977
'Teacher' Phil Sweet doesn't fall back on dogmatic answers
''Door County Advocate'', June 15, 1978
'Clean piece Wally,' the world's greatest car salesman
''Door County Advocate'', December 28, 1978
Tom Collis--Socrates at Newport
January 26, 1978
Break with agency, eye trouble steps in bring Austin to Door
''Door County Advocate'', March 23, 1978
Phil Austin feels compelled to capture a passing beauty
''Door County Advocate'', March 28, 1978
"It boils down to greed"
by Norbert Blei, in Conversations on Door County by Dave Crehore, ''Wisconsin Natural Resources'', May-June 1986, Volume 10, Number 3, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, page 16

References

Article by Doug Moe, Wisconsin State Journal, 'Blei's words still resonate in reprint'
(June 11, 2008; Archived August 20, 2008)




# ttps://web.archive.org/web/20110714193037/http://norbertblei.com/code/one-on-one.asp Marshall Cook interview with Norbert Blei(Archived July 14, 2011)

Door TourPage interview re: Crossroads Press
(Archived July 14, 2011)

External links

*

poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground

Basho's Road

Outlaw Poetry Network


(Archived March 1, 2019)

Chowhound: Norbert Blei's Neighborhood (Bohemian Chicago)
(September 3, 2003; Archived March 5, 2016)
*
The Chair Trick
at ''The New Yorker''

Farm may not be productive but owner Norbert Blei is
by Keta Steebs, ''Door County Advocate'', February 23, 1978 (an
Blei's response
on February 23, 1978)
Writer - teacher Norb Blei likes the off season here
by Henry Shea, ''Door County Advocate'' September 17, 1970
Norbert Blei Retrospective
recorded during Blei's public readings on March 13, 2011, December 23, 2009, and December 23, 2010

{{DEFAULTSORT:Blei, Norbert
1935 births
2013 deaths
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American male writers
Writers from Chicago
People from Door County, Wisconsin
Novelists from Wisconsin
Illinois State University alumni
Novelists from Illinois
American male novelists
American male essayists
American male short story writers
20th-century American short story writers
20th-century American essayists
People from Cicero, Illinois