304
pages, Penguin Press, ISBN-13: 978-1594205347
Charlie
LeDuff is a good writer, a strong stylist, and he writes spare, powerful prose
from the Gonzo – AKA Hunter S. Thompson – School of journalism. His credentials
are impressive: he is a Pulitzer Award winning author and a journalist who
embraces confronting the underbelly of the American experience; it’s tormented,
its down and out, its outcasts. With the Great Recession of 2008, he feels
drawn to go back to his roots in Detroit, which he argues is a microcosm of
what is going to happen to the rest of America. He leaves his job at the New York Times, then the Los Angeles Times, and takes a job at
the rundown Detroit News, described
as moribund with chalk line around his new office area rug that looks like, as
he describes, a murder scene.
In
his several, short chapters he captures the despair of scandalous politicians,
laid-off workers, his own dysfunctional family members, his own dysfunctional
marriage, and his own demon-possessed self. In the process, he’s held up by
robbers at a gas station; confronts the demons of losing his sister to an untimely
death many years ago in Detroit; reports on the murder of a call girl that
helps to bring down the corrupt mayor; a
sewage scandal; his brother’s dog dies from eating toxic dog food made in
China; he finds a dead man frozen in ice; fights with his wife about his
obsession with his work and dealing with the darkness…The despair in this book
is relentless with no comic respite, and at times I felt there was an egotism
that drove LeDuff to almost celebrate this dark madness, as if his graphic
descriptions of it would somehow empower him. The end result of these short
chapters of brutal anecdotage is some strong pieces that stand well by
themselves, but I’m sad to say they don’t add up to much. The chapters lack
cohesiveness and we, the readers, who have a grasp of what’s going on in the
headlines won’t be shocked by the Great Recession's havoc on people’s personal
lives.
I
wanted to read more about the city and the individuals who still live there,
and while LeDuff delivered, he also spoke a lot about his own Detroit, and the
sorrows he fled, and to which he returned. There’s nothing wrong with a memoir;
his personal experiences just didn’t shed any light on the city’s general
problems. I had the sense that the author’s admiration for Hunter S. Thompson (see
above) got the better of him. So while I was eager to read a coherent narrative
about a man confronting his personal demons in Motor City, what I got was some
disjointed chapters from a man who needs to find a way to shape, refine and
package his rage into a more coherent whole.
Detroit: An
American Autopsy
delivers far less than what was promised. If what you are looking for is a
systematic examination and evaluation of how and why Detroit is dying, and how
this might serve as a template for the future of other American cities, don’t
set your expectations high before reading this book. If, however, you’re OK
with selected anecdotal stories and recorded conversations mostly compiled when
the author worked at the News (just a
brief two year stint), as well as a few more personal stories related to family
and ancestral history, then this book may satisfy you. As for me, I would have
liked this book much more if the author had spent more time researching and
presenting other aspects of the city’s demise – and cut back a bit on the dirty
language, clichés, and lengthy verbose conversations (guess he had to fill the
pages somehow). Oh yeah, I almost forgot the tiresome noir style.
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