Rusty wheels scrape against metal. The cars race past back porches and loud graffiti—the tracks thunder. In 1970, Chicago’s trains were missing their iconic color names but rushed forward into a new day—moving riders to school, work, and everywhere in between.
Set over one long August day, The El follows main character Teddy, the only Indigenous member of his gang, the Simon City Royals, as he and the gang travel across Chicago’s neighborhoods on the El, heading to a pivotal meeting at Roosevelt High School that could reshape the city’s gang landscape.
Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.’s debut novel transports readers to a Chicago long past, where El riders wait on wooden-planked platforms and need tokens to get past the turnstiles. Calling this book a trip from Rogers Park to Albany Park and back would be extremely silly. And yet, it is—a glimpse of when neighborhood boundaries were stricter, the North Side hadn’t been fully gentrified yet, and different gangs had carved out their spots on the map.
For Teddy’s gang, heading across town means traveling through no-man’s lands they’d never seen before or territory hostile to them. The journey to Roosevelt High School is a violent one, crossing past gunshots, police encounters, and friction in their own ranks, on the way to something Teddy hopes will be bigger than themselves. As they soldier on, the book jumps between other people’s points of view and captures the sights, sounds, and sometimes stinks of the city in a mosaic style.
“Almost everywhere you had to go, you took the train. It was fast; it was cheap. If I didn’t have money, I could sneak on at certain stops,” he said. “The El was just part of life, this constant cycle of movement through the city, and that’s what I wanted to capture—this sense that the story continues, that these lives continue. This is just one day in an ongoing experience of navigating the city and all its territories and possibilities.”
In this conversation, Van Alst talks about the autobiographical elements of his work, what it means to map the city through the past, and storytelling as a survival mechanism.
This interview was edited for clarity and length.
Reema Saleh
So you’ve used “semi-autobiographical” a lot to describe this book, and the word has haunted me for a while. What parts of the book come from your actual experiences, and how much is fiction?
Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
You know, I grew up in the city. I was born in Uptown and grew up on the North Side. And people were gang bangers. It’s just how it was. There are a lot of amalgamations of people and names changed and things like that. But that meeting that’s central to the book—that was a real meeting. We had to go up there, and there were considerations about going to another neighborhood. Part of it was that if you’re not from there, they’re gonna arrest you. So if you’re walking around the neighborhood, you need an address there.
The genesis for the book was living in Portland. I missed Chicago all the time. I used to ride the El a lot, so I wanted to write a story about what it was like—what it sounded like, what it looked like, what it smelled like. Everything. I started this story, and all of a sudden, people just started getting on the train, and it was their stories too. Then it just took off, like it went express. The train just took off, and the stories came with it. I worked to tell those stories, get them right, and it turned into a novel. I like vignettes. I don’t always have the attention span for a big, full novel. But this story needs to be a full novel, even though it’s only one day.
Reema Saleh
When did you decide on the multiple point-of-view structure? All the time, it jumps between many different characters in the same space.
Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
There are a lot of moving parts. When I write, whether it’s a story or novel, it’s really dialogue-heavy, because to me, that’s where things are taking place. You can convey the description through dialogue, so I prefer writing dialogue. In this instance, I was like, “Well, there are a lot of people here, and it was 40-plus years ago, so people are going to have different memories.”
I think it was important to show that not everybody experiences things the same way, but also how much of it is similar, too. I thought, “Let’s try this in a way that almost looks like chapters.” I didn’t set out to write a novel; that’s not what happened, but while writing it, it turned into one. It became like each character talking, telling their own story, and sometimes each other’s story becomes a chapter within the novel. I was trying to do something different, making art that’s not so traditional.
Reema Saleh
I loved how it jumped into different people’s perspectives—not just Teddy and the rest of the Simon City Royals, but CTA workers and the police officers’ POVs, too. Sometimes, I was like, “What’s going on?”
Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
That’s how life happens. Violence just happens. That’s the nature of violence, at least the way you experience it as a teenager. When you’re a gangbanger, you spend a lot of time doing nothing, just waiting. You’re just sitting around, hanging out, and then boom! Something happens.
I think of it as a film, right? I have a PhD in film studies. So the different characters? It’s like a jump cut. It’s a jump cut to the cop going, “Oh my God!” or the CTA supervisor gasping. I try to convey the quickness of that within that smaller space. I think a lot of funny stuff happens in there in the reactions of the adults, so you have to capture that surprise, too. If there is action taking place, we jump cut to an observer going, “Holy crap,” and then you cut back. It’s difficult to do in literary fashion, but you do have some tools at your disposal through grammar, through punctuation, through structure, until you get the fuller story that way.
Reema Saleh
Once the characters get to the conference, it becomes very corporate. They have to worry about collecting dues and doing business things, and they’re bored.
Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
We’re gangbanger kids having a good time. Remember, it’s still the twilight of the ’70s, where gangbanging was just like—you would fight different sets, you would beat each other up, or see each other on the streets and get beaten up. But this was different. This was coming from the seniors and people who had been locked up, trying to make it work, and there is a lot of structure. All this stuff has to happen to make it work.
But imagine being 14 or 15, and it becomes like a sales meeting. The guys’ eyes are glazing over, like “what the hell.” At that age, they’re not invested in becoming part of a structure that moves forward as a unit. They’re not interested in anything other than their own folks right there. That’s who you care about, and then, you’re asked to transfer those allegiances and work within a new system.
A lot of times for gangbanging, there is a mix of anarchic energy and also very structured rules. There are a lot of rules and places you can’t go. You can’t do certain things in your own neighborhood that would draw cops or scrutiny or civilians to be in your business. It’s an alternate corporate structure, except instead of being sent home, there is a physical price to pay.
Reema Saleh
Did the conference in real life end up going anywhere?
Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
That’s sort of the dawn of these nations that, throughout the ’80s and into the ’90s, were Chicago gang institutions. You had Folks and People—the Folks Nation and the People Nation. On one side, you had Black Gangster Disciples, Latin Eagles, Imperial Gangsters, and Simon City Royals, who had all these different sets, who, a lot of times, have been enemies previously, but came together for the good of the nation. On the other side, you had Vice Lords and Kings. Eventually, Gaylords came along later. It was really cut and dry—you were either Folks, People, or neutrals. I think it made it easier even for the cops, because you had just two sides.
You have people moving around because that Nation was in place; it was easier for them to transition to a different school. It’s just this whole thing takes place underneath all these grown-ups doing their thing and drinking coffee or whatever it is they’re doing to work downtown at the board of trade and the financial district. They’re sitting next to people who have never been this far out of this neighborhood in their whole lives.
Then in the ’90s, when it fractures and people go to war with each other within their own nations, it’s just chaos. They can’t get a handle on it because it doesn’t have the previous structure. The truces are off, and then, you’re back to where you were before.
Reema Saleh
The book has a strong sense of Chicago geography—physical, social, and historical. How did the train system change how you wanted to tell the story?
Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
Somebody once told me about writing stories in Chicago: You know this city and all these streets, but your reader doesn’t, so you need to give them the shape of where everything is. My dad gave me two rules: don’t get lost and don’t get arrested, because I’m not going to come pick you up. He gave me a map of Chicago, which I had to memorize.
The job of the story is to transport the reader, and mapping it for people is a way of doing that. For the novel, I found an old vintage CTA map online and fixed it so it would look like it would on the train after it had been on the train for a long time—so it’s graffiti-ed up and everything. The map is at the beginning of the book, so you can see the journey labeled with different neighborhoods—showing where the Unknowns are, where the Kings are, where the Royals are. That map is really important to the story. When they get to certain stops, you can figure out from looking at the map that it’s not going to go well.
Reema Saleh
The book is very much about anticipation. Characters constantly expect something to happen—to get into trouble or run into a rival gang, and oftentimes, nothing happens.
Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
Gangbanging is one of the most stressful things that can happen. You’re sitting there, and then a car will drive by—uh oh—or the cops will come. There is a lot of waiting for something to happen, and sometimes nothing happens. You spend your whole day feeling stressed out, but nothing ever happens. It’s an unhealthy way to live, but that’s reality for a lot of young folks.
Adults on their way to work don’t realize this kid’s probably stressed out of his mind. He’s never been this way, and there’s opposition here. He’s gonna have to negotiate to do the thing he has to do, and that’s stressful. It’s like going into another territory as a soldier, and you don’t have resources. You can’t change your uniform—you have your colors in your shoes, you have tattoos. You’re in another neighborhood trying to negotiate who knows what.
Reema Saleh
Your research process seems to rely heavily on memory. How much could you pull from your own experiences?
Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
I remember way more stuff from being 15 than I do from last week. I remember taking the El on the green cars with the wooden rails and open windows. I remember when it was 35 cents each way, and you could get tokens at school. I remember when full fare on Sundays was 90 cents, and for 10 cents more, you could get an all-day transfer and go anywhere.
Part of me knew certain things I needed to remember. There were moments when I thought, “This is important, you need to pay attention.” When I was young, I had this really good memory—I could just read something and pull it up later. I think the music, all of that kind of stuff—you don’t know it’s important until you get older. Maybe the book will show people that you have these certain memories, and childhood might be difficult, but these things make a difference in who you are when you’re older.
Reema Saleh
How has the North Side changed since you grew up there? Teddy was born in Uptown, and even at the time, it was becoming different.
Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
It’s incredibly different. Because Uptown is by the lake, it was only a matter of time before people got pushed out and it got gentrified. I think Uptown is kind of a tragedy—working people, poor people all got pushed out of the North Side. From the rent, which is outrageous, to the way it looks now. The places we went are gone.
You move into an area because the rent is cheap and space is available. Then people follow from the suburbs and the surrounding state school grads, like in the book. We lived in Wicker Park in the ‘90s, and it was grungy, but the rent was dirt cheap. All of a sudden, there would be people from the suburbs coming in like tourists to see the weirdos, punk rockers, and artists. My friends from that time held on for a while and moved to Pilsen because they could afford to live over there. I’m not going to say where they live now because I don’t want anybody to move there, too.
Whatever the desirability is. And it used to be the old sociology texts talking about the core city center. That went away, and now it’s sort of come back. The rich rich folks live down on LaSalle, on Dearborn, and Gold Coast. Lincoln Park wasn’t always a nice neighborhood but becomes what it is. To me, all those areas by the water are gonna change.
Reema Saleh
The main character, Teddy, is funny in a lot of ways. The Simon City Royals is a big community for him, but he is also running around carrying a copy of Mike Royko’s Boss (1971) about Mayor Daley’s rise to power. And Teddy admires him a lot. What’s going on in his head?
Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
Daley, the old man, was a gangbanger, too. I’m not trying to slander Richard J., but he starts off with the Hamburg Athletic Club—that’s what a lot of gangs were called, athletic clubs. So gangbanging when people used to just fight and not murder each other. Then, he starts working for the precinct captain to get out the vote. Pretty soon, he figures out how to get those people to vote for him. He becomes the most powerful mayor the country has ever known.
But this is where he starts—working class kid, immigrant family, South Side guy who figures out how to get people to do the things you need them to do and make it worth their while. It’s negotiation, it’s diplomacy, it’s all those things you don’t go to Northwestern for. It’s just an alternate education, and he’s successful at it.
Teddy is the kind of gangbanger who carries a book around all the time, because you’re sitting and waiting a lot, anticipating something that might not come. So why wouldn’t you read while you’re doing that? You didn’t have phones back in the day. You couldn’t sit on the park bench, farting around on your phone.
Reema Saleh
What’s the value of storytelling for these characters in the narrative? It comes up a lot for characters in this book—both living and dead.
Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
It’s everything. The story keeps him alive. Knowing that this story, that his story is just as important as anybody else’s story—that’s meaningful. All we are, at the end, is stories. You should tell good stories, be a good person if you can, and create good stories.
Stories are important, but great stories are everything. When I had students, I’d tell them if they weren’t going to show up or turn in assignments, they’d better tell me an excellent story, because that’s the only thing that’s going to make it better. And I knew that when my kids were little. That’s how you can read the same story six times in a row to get them to go to bed. If you understand the value of story and what it’s doing, it’s all worth it. Stories are everything.
FICTION
By Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
Vintage
August 12, 2025
