Did you see me in the book Gannon? I drove him around and told him many stories about "real life" in Detroit.We finally bought this book, and I tore through it in a day. The writer has a wonderful easy style, winding and weaving a great narrative...with potent footnotes, and a thorough index at the end. It is setup not unlike a textbook, true scholarship.
I vaguely remember this fellow around town.
It was simply weird reading, in a book, stories we live and share here every day.
I think it was well-written, but tainted by those he chose to align himself with...Detroit is not one big fight to most people I know and hang around. At least one hustling fighter in the book was treated with perhaps a bit too much coverage, and certainly his prejudices affected Binelli's perceptions. I wonder if Mark was around when this guy got his ass handed to him for letting the air out of an old lady's car tires when she parked in "his spot" for selling t-shirts in the Market?! Sure, he's a fighter...dude can be his own damned promoter! To the hammer, the whole world appears a nail.
Then again, the author didn't even land back here until 2009, just after all the really wild stuff stopped. Now, we've got so many new faces in some parts of town, even less than one year later [[after the publication) portions of Detroit have morphed into very different, nearly unrecognizable places. And the decline in the rest of it has predictably continued unabated.
But I've made the same drive into the city three times since reading his take of his time here, and the simple fact that I'm seeing a few things I didn't previously proves that Mr. Binelli did, indeed, hit a home run with this book. At least with THIS lifelong Detroiter.
Buy "Detroit City Is the Place to Be" by Mark Binelli, if you haven't already. If so, buy another for a friend.
Cheers!
John
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