Jim Ray Daniels

Earlier this week I reviewed a book based in North Dakota, and went on a bit about my experience living there and the impact that had on my review. For the second time this week I find myself talking about the same thing, though this time it is about how growing up in Metro Detroit affects my read of Eight Mile High. Short answer? A great deal, but that should not stop you from searching out this collection even if you have no connection to the Motor City.

Though younger than the author by a few years, we grew up in roughly the same era and in roughly the same place. Daniels grew up in a first ring suburb in Macomb County, east of Detroit, I grew up in a first ring suburb in Oakland County west of Detroit. My suburb was more affluent than his. No one who lived near me worked the line at the plants, some were engineers or executives, many more were professionals and business owners. That said, my dad owned stores on the east side, and I grew up from the age of 7 working in St. Clair Shores (which is not as lovely as it sounds, like other east side working class suburbs they went for pretty names and ugly streets with garages big enough to house your fishing boat but too small to also house your car(s) -- see, eg, Sterling Heights and Madison Heights.)

I know the people Daniels is talking about, and he does an exceptional job of getting inside of these men. (Women are side characters, and though he casts a sympathetic eye on them, he understands women less.) Daniels writes with great elegance and insight about people whose ambitions have been trampled. Boys taught that aspiration meant working a skilled trade on the line, of not working the alky or lobster shifts. He introduces us to adults already hollowed out by days filled with repetition, on the line and off the line. He writes too about those few who aspire to education or to work which takes them to places even loftier than the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club. He writes about impostor syndrome. He writes about finding that outside of Warren (or East Detroit, or Wyandotte, or Roseville, or....) there are scores of people who excel academically and not just a handful, and that to go up against them you have to work hard and have faith in yourself. Daniels also writes exceptionally well about boys and men longing for sex and love and connection. There are some stories, and some portions of stories which are a bit ham-fisted - I think a better editor would have done a lot -- but overall this is excellent, and it chronicles the lives of people rarely chronicled. These people were the first Reagan Democrats ever studied. (Really, Macomb County is ground zero for Reagan Democrats who then became Trump Nation https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/op....) And Michael Moore did a good job helping us to understand a similar population in Roger and Me. (Funny story -- my college boyfriend was from Flint and was very close to Michael and to Wendey Stanzler who edited Roger and Me. The night before I graduated MSU, as said bf and I were taking off to backpack for a couple years, Wendey and Michael told us over some Stroh's beers they were making a movie about Flint and about auto workers and we laughed and laughed. But I digress) But all this study has been nonficiton, and these folks are rarely (never?) the subject of fiction, which can do so much more than nonfiction to help us understand people, to empathize.

I wondered as I read this if it would be of great interest to non-Detroiters. I still don't know the answer. I am exceptionally non-nostalgic about the D. There are still things I think of fondly, but my entire goal in life from about the age of 5 was to get out of Detroit, and I left Michigan 3 days after college graduation never to return for more than a quick visit. I have not been back to the Detroit area in 14 years, since my father passed away (Up North doesn't count, its a different world.) But Detroit is still an essential part of who I am. It soaked into me for 21 years, and into my parents for their entire lives. This is a component of my story that non-Detroiters never fully understand. And so maybe I loved this collection of stories more than someone without the same roots would not, but I think in these well-drawn characters there is something for other people to learn from and enjoy. For my money it tells people a whole lot more about Trump Nation than Hillbilly Elegy and it does it with a more loving and empathetic eye. Well worth your time. If any non-D people read this, please let me know what you think. I am really interested in whether the lives of shop rats and their progeny is too insular and pedestrian for others. Also, if you do end up liking this book I cannot recommend the book Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line strongly enough. It is brilliant, and hilarious and heartbreaking. Rivethead and this book will tell you a lot about how we got where we are.… (mais)

This is a fast and readable collection, and there are a few striking moments, but for the most part, I found myself reading it simply to read it. There were no poems that begged for rereading, and few pieces (if any) that really struck me as especially entertaining or poetic. For the most part, in fact, the poems read more like fragmented prose, the most entertaining among them being notable more for their cynical jokes about academia than their poetic merit. On the whole, this probably isn't a collection I'd recommend.… (mais)

I really enjoyed Jim Ray Daniels's Detroit Tales, but, unfortunately, this one didn't quite live up to its predecessor. The stories in this collection are a bit grittier, but for some reason, I was less interested in these characters and had little empathy for them. Perhaps it was because so many of them seem to have brought their troubles upon themselves unnecessarily. The writing itself just wasn't as fine. Daniels seemed to be relying on tricks rather than expertise and insight--tricks such as having characters in several stories spend time at the same seedy motel, Carl's Kabins (and inevitably someone in each comments on the fact that Carl didn't change the C in Carl to a K or the K in Kabins to a C). I will probably read more by Daniels, but not for awhile.… (mais)