A TIme and an Occupation

continued

manufactured cameras there until 1962. For a generation, its most popular product was America’s best-selling thirty-five-millimeter camera.

Local writer Steve Amick has found inspiration there for his second novel, Nothing but a Smile, a historical novel set mostly in Chicago at the end of World War II. Wink Dutton is a re-turning veteran, a budding cartoonist who lost the use of his drawing hand in a stupid accident onboard a submarine. Having no idea how he will make a living now that his one talent has been rendered useless, he visits a war buddy’s wife who is running her family’s camera shop in Chicago’s Loop.

Wink finds a way to help Sal with the business, and he soon discovers that to make ends meet she has been taking pinup pictures of herself. These were the “girlies,” very soft-core porn shots popular with GIs, the kind that suggested a lot more information than they ever dared to show. When Sal’s husband dies on his way home after the war, the two titillators get married. Wink and Sal are hardworking, lovable characters who simply seem to be free of much of the noisy prudery of their time. Most of the novel is a celebration of that sense of freedom.