Order DETROIT: AN AMERICAN AUTOPSY here
* a suggestion by Frank Bill *
Carlisle sat in a corner, near the front, in a cloud of smoke. You could still smoke in the restaurants in Michigan. He was drinking black coffee.
We made small talk and then ordered. He got oatmeal. Fucking oatmeal and cigarettes. How precious.
I am fascinated by so many places I've never been to. I call them my dreamscapes. They are sprawling, barren concrete wastelands that life has abandoned long ago, yet still harbor people. I've had the privilege of visiting Las Vegas on my 30th birthday (thanks to Josie), but I have never been to Detroit. Only problem is that I'm way too chickenshit to visit Detroit in the state that it's in now. Fortunately for me, someone I know recommended DETROIT: AN AMERICAN AUTOPSY, by Charlie LeDuff in an open call for non-fiction reading suggestions I made on social media. Not only it kept alive every Gothic fantasies I had about Motor City, but it stood admirably well against the plethora of detective novels I've read this year.
So, Charlie LeDuff is a Pulitzer prize winning journalist and an all-around controversial public figure who felt the need to go back home to Detroit, where he was born, and lay low after spending several years working for The New York Times. The Detroit he finds is in an advanced state of decomposition, ruined by crooked politician, economic issues and petty criminality. It's when LeDuff finds a dead man encased in four feet of ice at the bottom of an elevator shaft that he decides to start investigating on his own city, to try and figure out what happened to the place he once grew up in. It never was a great place, to his own admission, but home is home. It hurts to see it burn.
DETROIT: AN AMERICAN AUTOPSY is a non-fiction book the tradition of David Smon's HOMICIDE: A YEAR ON THE KILLING STREETS, as it would make tremendous fiction anyway, given that anyone would bother fictionalizing it. Charlie LeDuff's first person narration is as strong as any private detective's in literature, except that what he investigates is economic and cultural genocide. There are several mysteries intertwined in the city of Detroit and by untangling the facts about them, LeDuff starts understanding his own life and memories a little better, prompting him to carry on with the investigation. DETROIT: AN AMERICAN AUTOPSY is great reporting, but it feels so vivid and urgent because it's personal to Charlie LeDuff.
So, Charlie LeDuff is a Pulitzer prize winning journalist and an all-around controversial public figure who felt the need to go back home to Detroit, where he was born, and lay low after spending several years working for The New York Times. The Detroit he finds is in an advanced state of decomposition, ruined by crooked politician, economic issues and petty criminality. It's when LeDuff finds a dead man encased in four feet of ice at the bottom of an elevator shaft that he decides to start investigating on his own city, to try and figure out what happened to the place he once grew up in. It never was a great place, to his own admission, but home is home. It hurts to see it burn.
DETROIT: AN AMERICAN AUTOPSY is a non-fiction book the tradition of David Smon's HOMICIDE: A YEAR ON THE KILLING STREETS, as it would make tremendous fiction anyway, given that anyone would bother fictionalizing it. Charlie LeDuff's first person narration is as strong as any private detective's in literature, except that what he investigates is economic and cultural genocide. There are several mysteries intertwined in the city of Detroit and by untangling the facts about them, LeDuff starts understanding his own life and memories a little better, prompting him to carry on with the investigation. DETROIT: AN AMERICAN AUTOPSY is great reporting, but it feels so vivid and urgent because it's personal to Charlie LeDuff.
''In Detroit, it's so fucking poor that fire is cheaper than a movie. A can of gas is three-fifty and a movie is eight bucks, and there aren't any movie theaters left in Detroit, so fuck it. They burn the empty house next door and they sit on the fucking porch with a forty, and they're barbecuing and laughing 'cause it's fucking entertainment. It's unbelievable. An the old lady living next door, she don't have insurance, and her house goes up in flame and she's homeless and another fucking block dies.''
Some people might take issue with the very existence of a book like DETROIT: AN AMERICAN AUTOPSY, as it romanticizes and makes profit out of a Great American Tragedy. It's a valid complaint, but in a capitalist economy, Detroit is beyond a happy ending. It'll take people like Charlie LeDuff to romanticize is an reinsert the city into the cultural discourse in order to get America interested in its future again. So yeah, it's weird that a book like DETROIT: AN AMERICAN AUTOPSY exists, but since it's tremendously well-done and that its heart is at the right place, it can only help because it gets people to talk about the fate of Motor City.
I've had my own, self-involved reasons to read (and enjoy the hell out of) DETROIT: AN AMERICAN AUTOPSY. The dreamscape Charlie LeDuff drew in my mind had the sprawling tentacles of Los Angeles, the hypnotic power of Bellona and the urban decay of Silent Hill. I do know more about the city of Detroit though, and the ills that have been slowly turning it into a wasteland. Not that I think I'm some kind of transformative agent or anything, but knowing what's really going on is part of the battle, isn't it? So, not only DETROIT: AN AMERICAN AUTOPSY is a tremendously presented series of intertwined mysteries draining the life of a city, but it's also a way to make the future of Detroit cool again. Whatever your reasons are to read it, it's not going to let you down. DETROIT AN AMERICAN AUTOPSY is just fantastic writing.
I've had my own, self-involved reasons to read (and enjoy the hell out of) DETROIT: AN AMERICAN AUTOPSY. The dreamscape Charlie LeDuff drew in my mind had the sprawling tentacles of Los Angeles, the hypnotic power of Bellona and the urban decay of Silent Hill. I do know more about the city of Detroit though, and the ills that have been slowly turning it into a wasteland. Not that I think I'm some kind of transformative agent or anything, but knowing what's really going on is part of the battle, isn't it? So, not only DETROIT: AN AMERICAN AUTOPSY is a tremendously presented series of intertwined mysteries draining the life of a city, but it's also a way to make the future of Detroit cool again. Whatever your reasons are to read it, it's not going to let you down. DETROIT AN AMERICAN AUTOPSY is just fantastic writing.
