Author of the week: Mark Binelli

last updated 8 January 2015

Mark Binelli wants to set the record straight about Detroit, said John Williams in NYTimes.com. Dismayed, he says, “because the stories coming out of Detroit tended to be so tediously one-note,” the Rolling Stone editor moved back to the city of his childhood at a time when many Detroiters were hightailing it out. His new book, Detroit City Is the Place to Be, reflects on Detroit’s rise, fall, and possible rise again by bringing various current residents to vivid life. “Detroit isn’t just a tragic city of ruins,” Binelli says. “It’s a deeply weird place, filled with the sorts of characters you’d have found in Joseph Mitchell’s New York a century earlier.” Sure, problems remain, but Binelli says he’s encouraged by a “DIY energy” that will be “a crucial part of Detroit’s next chapter.”

Binelli’s book really shows us two Detroits, said Steve Dollar in The Wall Street Journal. “It’s basically a lawless place,” says the author. “That’s a bad thing in many ways, but it does offer this freedom that feels like a real thing.” Lawlessness is forcing innovation and experimentation of all sorts, ranging from urban farming to the do-it-yourself dog catchers combating an overpopulation of strays. But while that frontier spirit is attracting a young bohemian class, many lifetime Detroiters simply long for normalcy. “They’re sick of driving by the Packard plant that’s been abandoned for 50 years,” says Binelli. “They want to live in a regular functioning city.” The city isn’t merely an art project, he says. “I just hope a balance can be struck.”