A Detroit Mix

Busy week this week. Next, too. I’m doing some freelance work, volunteering at a bookstore (more on this later), wrapping up the draft of the new novel, trying to take one thing at a time, keep some sense of spaciousness. So in lieu of another account of my time so far in Detroit allow me to direct you to …

An essay:

Detroit’s Arcadia in Harper’s. Cliches fog over the truth, and Rebecca Solnit is someone who discerns the shapes of trees. This line, a thousand times: “I have seen an oddly heartening new version of the landscape it portrays, a landscape that is not quite post-apocalyptic but that is strangely – and sometimes even beautifully – post-American.”

A film:

Only Lovers Left Alive. Jim Jarmusch’s existential vampire movie. An adjective is insomniac.

A book:

Detroit: An American Autopsy. The most fun and outrageous work of non-fiction I’ve encountered in a long while. Reads like noir. You can see why Bourdain had Charlie LeDuff be his tour guide for the Detroit episode of Parts Unknown.

An anthology:

A Detroit Anthology. A collection of stories, photos, art, poetry, written by residents, past, present, temporary. It’s edited by journalist Anna Clark, who I met at a reading in Hamtramck and seems to be involved with any and everything literary here. I would hand a copy of this to anyone who asks, “What’s Detroit like?”

March 2022 update: upon re-reading this, I’d be remiss not to include also Aaron Foley’s How to Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass.