The Book of the Grotesque

The Book of the Grotesque is a quilted assembly of a trilogy of multilingual, multiracial films focused on the shared human experience of marginalization, isolation, and longing. The omnibus film and its accompanying novel are a portrait of Chicago, which has been called the most American of American cities. Its title is drawn from Sherwood Anderson’s "Winesburg, Ohio," a landmark work written in Chicago, and both Anderson and Ernest Hemingway are among its ensemble characters. The novel is populated by an array of Chicagoans, including protagonists who lived and died in obscurity, and minor presences such as filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, Jack Dempsey, (Shoeless) Joe Jackson, the Marx Brothers, Emma Goldman, and a saloon bouncer who in 1919 went by the name of Al Brown (Alphonse Capone).

 

The Book of the Grotesque is the name of a handwritten manuscript by an elderly man who never found the courage to seek a publisher. He has been writing the work for so long that he’s not sure if the characters are imagined, based on real persons he’s known, or the product of dreams. Each of the characters clings to a Truth that helps them to justify their existences, and it is the clutching onto these truths that make them Grotesques.

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This noir detective story set largely against the backdrop of 1919 Chicago. It follows individual lives during a bitter winter and a summer heatwave that breaks into violence, exploring themes of longing, systemic inequity, and the little epiphanies that will grace even the most marginalized of lives.​​​