Google the corner of East Garfield Boulevard and South Prairie Avenue. Map it, zoom in: If you're using Google Maps, you'll see an old picture of the corner, a long marble building just west of Washington Park, a former Walgreens, boarded-up, decaying, flanked by a fried chicken stand and a former currency exchange.

It's not every day you get invited to witness a museum destroy a work of art.

A year ago this time, Gillian Flynn was just another former Entertainment Weekly TV critic turned Chicago author of murder-mysteries who lived in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood and had already sold film rights to her first two novels ("Dark Places" and "Sharp Objects"). You know? C'mon, do something with yourself, sister! Then June arrived, and so did Flynn's blockbuster novel "Gone Girl."