by Scott Lasser
“What are you thinking?” Carolyn asked.
“That we have a second chance.”
“You know, you can call anything a second chance.”
“Thank God for that,” he said.
She smiled at him, and then Karl began to fuss. “I’m sure he’s hungry by now,” she said. David handed him back and checked on Kevin, who was walking Champ around them in big circles. David was again reminded how a young child’s needs were immediate; it kept you living close to the ground, focused on the true moments. They found a bench in the sun and Carolyn fed Karl, covered by a light blanket, as Detroiters walked up and down the riverfront.
He looked at Carolyn, then at his son, the little feet sticking out from the blanket, and then at his stepson. He had responsibilities now, and he intended to enjoy them. He and Carolyn had talked of moving out of the city, but in the end they’d found each other here.
A year ago he couldn’t have imagined he’d ever come back, and now he couldn’t fathom leaving. His old friends, on the other hand, had all scattered. Still, he knew that Tom Phillips and Tim Forrester weren’t so different from him, that they’d get curious and then one day he’d get a call. They’d want to know where he was, and he would relish their surprise when he told them he had stayed.
Acknowledgments
FOR VITAL HELP and support in the writing of this book, I am indebted to James Watkins, Liz Duvall, Alison Liss, Emerald Cousin, Jennifer Barron, and especially Derek Green, Pamela Bowen Stanley, Jill Bialosky, and Jennifer Rudolph Walsh.
SAY NICE THINGS ABOUT DETROIT
Scott Lasser
* * *
R E A D I N G G R O U P G U I D E
* * *
A U T H O R ’ S N O T E
One day in my youth I went over to my girlfriend’s house, and in the driveway I found a souped-up Mercedes with dual-chrome exhaust, twenty-inch back wheels, and rear-mounted speakers behind darkly tinted windows. A drug-dealer car, out of place in this neighborhood. And then my blonde girlfriend walked out of the house with a tall black man whom she introduced as her brother. I didn’t even know she had a brother. Besides, this was Detroit, one of the most segregated cities in the country, where blonde girls didn’t tend to have black brothers, or vice versa (these two shared the same mother). I thought, Wow, there’s an awful lot in the world I don’t know about. I really need to write about this.
And so I finally have.
I got started on this book in 2008. It was several months before Lehman Brothers (my former employer, as it turns out) would go under and almost take the world economy with it, but no one was really feeling it yet. Except in Detroit.
Sometimes numbers can tell a story; in Detroit the statistics are mind-boggling. The city has lost so many people that those who have left outnumber all the people who currently live in San Francisco. The open space inside Detroit’s borders, taken as a whole, is greater than the entire area of Boston. The 2010 census showed that in the first decade of this millennium Detroit lost a quarter of its citizens, or 100,000 more people than New Orleans without a Katrina.
I knew I had to set a novel in Detroit.
The city was already losing population when I was born there, but I was raised to feel great pride in my hometown. In its heyday Detroit was the seat of America’s industrial might—“the arsenal of democracy,” FDR called it—and arguably the world’s most powerful engine of wealth creation. It is the birthplace of the American middle class. Its contributions to American music are inestimable. And it is largely a ruin.
So, how to tackle this in a novel? I decided early on that I wanted to model my story on that most classic of human tales: the journey home. After all, we’re talking about Detroit. Damn near everyone has already left.
All I needed was a way in, and then I remembered that girlfriend and her brother.
I should add that the Mercedes was, in fact, a drug-dealer car. The brother was an FBI agent, and he was using that car for his undercover work. This incident, fictionalized, makes up the first couple pages of Say Nice Things About Detroit. It gave me entrée into the story of race, family, home, and dreams gone awry and reimagined that you find here.
D I S C U S S I O N Q U E S T I O N S
1. Detroit is more than background for the novel—it plays an essential role in the story and in the hearts and minds of the characters. What are some of the landmarks and scenes that help bring the city to life?
2. Everett and Dirk love each other like brothers. David comes, briefly, to think of Marlon as a son. How do the characters in the novel construct and experience family?
3. The Detroit that the novel shows us is deeply segregated, but some of the characters in the novel—Dirk, Natalie, David—are able to transcend the boundaries of race. What are some of the challenges they face in doing so, and how do they overcome those challenges?
4. David and Dirk never meet, but their connection runs deep: David falls in love with Dirk’s half-sister, he buys Dirk’s old house, and he cares for Dirk’s nephew. Does David feel he has inherited a kind of legacy from Dirk? What kind of a legacy?
5. The novel begins just after the murder of Dirk and Natalie, and it ends just after the attempted murder of David and Carolyn. In what ways do these two crime scenes mirror each other? What has changed, from beginning to end, and what, do we suspect, will always remain the same?
6. The novel’s title comes from a slogan on a child’s T-shirt (p. 60). How does the title reflect and comment on the characters’ relationship with their city?
7. Many of the characters in the novel are parents of young sons. What do some of these parent-child relationships have in common? How do they differ?
8. In the end, the reader knows something that the characters never will: how and why Dirk and Natalie were killed. Why do you think the author chose to reveal this information to the reader but not to David or Carolyn? What is the effect?
9. David and Carolyn start a new family and a new life in a familiar place, honoring the past as they move into the future. In what ways will Cory, Dirk, and Natalie remain with them?
10. Carolyn watches her son meet up with his friends at the same fast-food joint she used to go to as a girl. David takes a neighbor to see his favorite childhood baseball team play, but at a new stadium. What does it mean to go home again? Is it possible?
S E L E C T E D N O R T O N B O O K S W I T H
R E A D I N G G R O U P G U I D E S A V A I L A B L E
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More Praise for
Say
Nice
Things
About
Detroit
“Lasser . . . composes his sympathetic cast into tableaux that are meaningful, even emblematic. . . . His restrained portrait of Detroit evokes real pathos.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“By the end we get to know the city almost as intimately as we know the characters.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Readers will savor this fast-paced tale of redemption in one sitting.”
—Library Journal
“In prose as sparse as the streets of the modern Motor City, Say Nice Things About Detroit captures the hopelessness and determination underpinning a blighted city unraveled by racism.”
—Jewish Book Council
“Lasser’s narrative is rich in detail about Detroit geography, weather, music and racial politics, and has an authenticity that’s hard to match.”
—Detroit News
“Mr. Lasser is a fine storyteller and his easy, understated style moves the novel along.”
—Washington Times
“You’ll love Scott Lasser’s style. His book spans a few years but keeps moving with dialogue that’s natural and alive: whites and blacks in Detroit, a setting you come to know and can feel what it’s about. I know; I’ve been here most of my life.”
—Elmore Leonard
“This is a sharp, clear portrait of who we are now. Scott Lasser continues to shape a very distinct literary map.”
—Colum McCann
“Scott Lasser has written a moving story of people whose lives are stalled until they face events and places they’d rather avoid. His book suggests that for people and cities, life’s greatest rewards are only achieved through struggle. A moving tribute to second chances and the august, desolate, melancholy city of Detroit.”
—Thomas McGuane
“In a city famous for ruin, a pilgrim’s tale of rebirth and renewal: Scott Lasser’s narrative gifts are abundant, his characters a compelling and convincing lot. Say Nice Things About Detroit, while true to life’s damages and sadnesses, is nonetheless a joyous, vital read.”
—Thomas Lynch
“Say Nice Things About Detroit, Scott Lasser’s new novel, is a moving, fast-paced, economical story of race, crime, and hope. Weighted by the death of his son and the end of his marriage, David Halpert, a young lawyer, returns home to the chaos of a dying Detroit to discover a love affair and his own brush with violence as the book rushes to its stunning conclusion.”
—Susan Richards Shreve
Copyright © 2012 by Scott Lasser
All rights reserved
First published as a Norton paperback 2013
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lasser, Scott.
Say nice things about Detroit / Scott Lasser. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-393-08299-9
1. Life change events—Fiction. 2. Homecoming—Fiction.
3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 4. Detroit Metropolitan
Area (Mich.)—Social conditions—21st century—Fiction.
5. Detroit (Mich.)—Economic conditions—21st century—Fiction.
6. Detroit (Mich.)—Race relations—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3562.A7528S29 2012
813’.54—dc23
2012006784
ISBN 978-0-393-34553-7 pbk.
eISBN: 978-0-393-08417-7
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