Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff opens dramatically: the author is gassing up his car and has to pull out a gun to protect himself from dangerous men who appear out of nowhere.
Detroit, according to LeDuff, is an abandoned city. Abandoned by the white and Black middle class. Abandoned by jobs. Abandoned by the government. Abandoned by 911; you can’t be sure anyone will come if you have an emergency.
The title suggests that Detroit is a dead city. It isn’t dead, but the Detroit LeDuff grew up in is.
It’s a city with thousands of unsolved homicides. It’s a city that can’t keep its lights on. It’s the arson capital of the United States. Judges let violent criminals walk. Multinational companies poison its land. Elected officials loot the city. Incompetent auto executives destroy the industry that made it rich and famous. Firefighters can’t even afford a screen door. Suspected terrorists turn out to be just thugs. The police manipulate crime statistics to make themselves look better.
It’s one gritty scene after another.
There are fascinating vignettes about corrupt officials, including City Councilwoman Monica Conyers and Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, both of whom took bribes and went to prison.
Why would a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist like LeDuff work at The Detroit News? It was a choice. He gave up his dream job at The New York Times because he loved his city, where he has long, deep roots.
LeDuff is hard on Detroit, but he’s even harder on himself, writing about smashing a pizza in his wife’s face and getting thrown in jail, and about his sister becoming a prostitute and dying young, to name a few of the tragedies in a city full of them.
Is this a balanced portrait of the city? He doesn’t mention anything good going on, particularly in the art and music communities, but he says that isn’t news; that’s the way things are supposed to be.
It’s a dystopian world for the reader. What pulls it together is the masterful prose and naked storytelling. It’s also an important historical memoir of what can happen to the best of cities and people. This book shines a bright light on the darkness of the Motor City, with a dash of Raymond Chandler.
“Go ahead and laugh at Detroit,” LeDuff writes, “because you are laughing at yourself.”
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