Even though I live in the Midwest, I sometimes think about Detroit, and it seems as foreign (if not more so) to me as do cities across the world in other countries and cultures. This mainly started when I found some pictures online of an abandoned building in Detroit that was once used to store textbooks and other school items and supplies (the Book Depository). It just looked so sad. Ever since I saw those I have been looking at and reading books about Detroit.
I found my latest read* on Detroit while I was poking around online looking for reviews of Paul Clemens's superlative investigative title Punching Out: One Year in a Closing Auto Plant. Detroit Disassembled is a big, gorgeous book of photography, although the photographs are anything beautiful. They document a city in decay.
What we found so jarring about these photographs (Mr. CR carefully looked at the pictures too) is how, whoever abandoned these buildings, seemed to abandon them midway. Nothing seems cleaned out or closed or locked down with any kind of order: in a former high school, desks are piled around haphazardly and science lab equpment sits out on counters; in the book depository, trees grow out of piles of books left jumbled on the floor to rot; in a library branch, the spinner still holds pulp paperbacks. It looks like stills from a horror movie, you know the type, when everyone in a small town just disappears into thin air, leaving their half-eaten meals on a table.
It's a horrible, gorgeous book. It needs to be looked at in conjunction with reading either Paul Clemens's Punching Out or Made in Detroit: A South of 8-Mile Memoir. I sometimes wonder if the whole city shouldn't be emptied and left to decay, and then maintained and visited as some sort of post-apocalyptic theme park (you know: see Alan Weisman's book The World without Us, about the process of how cities would go back to trees without us around, in action!). I'm not saying everyone who lives there would have to leave; maybe they could just live in some new buildings across town and then work jobs in the theme park. Or maybe that's too morbid. It was just an idea. Look at this book and tell me if you don't start having similar ideas.
*I say "read." Mainly I just looked at the pictures, although I did skim the essays by the photographer and by Philip Levine.
Detroit! I grew up in Michigan, and I never knew a different Detroit. We would go to Tiger Stadium for a ballgame. It would be so crowded around the stadium, and then while driving through the city there was nothing but abandoned building. I wouldn't even see people. Although back in the 1970s and 1980s and city workers were required to live in the city, and little enclaves were developed.
On the brighter side from the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/fashion/the-young-and-entrepreneurial-move-to-downtown-detroit-pushing-its-economic-recovery.html
Posted by: Venta | 02 September 2011 at 07:18 AM
Venta!
Someday we will have to talk about Detroit. I know its decay has been going on for a long time, but I still just find that so surreal. Although once when I drove through Chicago to get to where they filmed Oprah (that's right, I once attended an Oprah show, when I was young and innocent), I remembered the same kind of feeling: nice block, falling-down block, nice block, scary block. All right on top of each other. So weird.
Thanks for the link! I heard on the radio the other day that a lot of artist types are moving to Detroit for the cheap rent, the person on the air was calling it the "New Brooklyn." Kind of made me happy for some reason.
Posted by: Citizen Reader | 02 September 2011 at 10:10 AM
I can't believe you went to see Oprah! That just tickles me to death. You have made my day, CR. What was the episode?
Posted by: Venta | 02 September 2011 at 01:12 PM
Oh, Venta,
I went to Oprah a million years ago, largely to take a friend as her birthday or christmas present or something. The episode was about some movie Diane Keaton and Leonardo DiCaprio were in, so I think Diane Keaton was the guest. It was okay, but as we were leaving the parking lot a scary guy rammed my car while we were getting in and even grazed one of my friends--we were just lucky she wasn't seriously hurt. We even got to go to an iffy police station, where we gave them the license plate number and they just laughed, informing us no way would the guy have insurance. Picture a group of WI girls, nicely dressed, hanging out in a cop shop that seriously looked like a set from Law and Order (that is: scary). It was a lousy day, and has always given me more reason to dislike Oprah.
TMI? :)
Posted by: Citizen Reader | 04 September 2011 at 10:40 AM