arts & entertainment
A Novel About Second Chances
Say Nice Things About Detroit offers its protagonist
and his hometown reasons for hope.
Esther Allweiss Ingber
Contributing Writer
A
uthor Scott Lasser may be living
in Colorado, but the Motor City
native has never stopped caring
about Detroit.
In Lasser's new novel,
Say Nice Things About
Detroit (W.W. Norton),
lead character David
Halpert is, like the author,
a Jewish native Detroiter
living in Colorado. The
news that Halpert's high
school girlfriend and
Scott Lasser
her black half-brother
were murdered in Detroit
complicates his return home to help with a
family crisis.
Halpert's first extended visit to Detroit in
25 years becomes a time for him to estab-
lish new relationships and reorder his life's
priorities. Before the novel's conclusion,
Halpert receives reinforcement that moving
back to Detroit — to "go all in',' as Lasser
expressed it to the Jewish News — is indeed
where he will achieve happiness.
Someday, Lasser conceded, he might
make the same choice for himself. In the
meantime, he'll discuss his latest book and
muse about the city at several Michigan
appearances July 16-19 (see box at end of
story).
Born in Detroit's Sinai Hospital, Lasser
was a toddler when his parents divorced. He
lived with his mother, Joyce (Lane) Lasser,
later Ginsberg, in Rensselaer Apartments in
Oak Park. Lasser's parents each remarried.
His father, Floyd Lasser, now deceased
and a former purchaser of steel for Ford
Motor Co., had a daughter, Kelly, with his
second wife.
Joyce, a former teacher in Oak Park who
now spends most of her time in California,
w s
(or
Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News
Sleuth TV
The PBS series History Detectives
begins its 10th season at 10 p.m.
Tuesday, July 17. If you haven't seen
41) this entertaining show, you really
l should. Antique experts and academ-
tio ics track down the true stories behind
objects with a questionable prov-
enance (or history of ownership). One
of the segments on the July 17 epi-
sode concerns a guitar that may have
belonged to Bob Dylan.
a)
36
July 12 2012
had a second son, Michael Ginsberg, with
her second husband.
That makes Lasser chuckle: "They finally
brought a Jewish character into the firm on
[AMC-TV's] Mad Men, and he has the same
name as my brother." The "real" Michael
Ginsberg is a physician in San Francisco.
After Joyce's remarriage, the family lived
in Bloomfield Hills, a suburb that was very
different from Oak Park. "I was the only Jew
in my fourth-grade class — coming from a
school district that closed for the High Holy
Days',' Lasser said. A cultural Jew today, he
became a bar mitzvah and was confirmed
at Temple Beth El.
Lasser, a 1980 graduate of Andover
High School, earned his bachelor's degree
at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire
and a master of fine arts at the University
of Michigan; he has a second master's
from Wharton School of Business at the
University of Pennsylvania.
"I'm a typical overeducated Jew',' said
Lasser, who currently is teaching beginning
writers at the Aspen Summer Words retreat
in Colorado.
He wrote his first novel, Battle Creek,
while working for Lehman Brothers.
Lasser's father, who played baseball as a
demonstration sport at the 1956 Summer
Olympics in Australia, inspired the amateur
baseball plot. Wall Street figures in the
author's next two novels, All I Could Get and
The Year That Follows.
Lasser's familiarity with Metro Detroit
makes it fun for local readers of Say Nice
Things About Detroit. For example, one
character "lives on a road off Lone Pine,
which was 17 Mile'
He also knows Los Angeles, where
another character resides, as well as Aspen,
where he has a girlfriend and lives with his
children from a previous marriage, Charlie,
22, and Ally, 14.
"My mother brought me out here when I
Rock On
The rock group Linkin Park, which has
sold more than 50 million albums, is
out with Living Things, its first new
CD in two years. Legendary producer
Rick Rubin, 49, helmed Living Things,
working with the band for the first
time.
Two members of the
six-member group are
Jewish: guitarist Brad
Delson, 34, and drum-
mer Rob Bourdon,
34. Delson and his
wife, Elise, have dis-
tinguished themselves
with their charitable
Delson
was 11',' said Lasser, a
"fanatical skier" and
former racer. "I'd never
seen a mountain —
couldn't believe it!"
Something that
happened to Lasser
in his mid-20s
inspired the new
book's plot. He
saw a Mercedes on his white
girlfriend's driveway and was told it
belonged to her black brother, an FBI agent.
"How that could be I did not know at
the time said Lasser (it turned out the
girlfriend and her brother had different
fathers)."This memory rolled around my
brain for two decades until it was the right
time to write this story:'
The novel's title is not, as might
be expected, an homage to a popular
Downtown Detroit store of the 1970s-80s
also called "Say Nice Things About Detroit:'
Instead, Lasser thought about a T-shirt that
made fun of the concept and its earnest
proprietor, Emily Gail. Worn by a thug in
his book, the shirt's design shows a gun
pointed at a dog's head.
Lasser has kept up with Detroit's troubles
through the years. He isn't naive about the
deterioration of many neighborhoods and
the fact that nearly 40 percent of Detroiters
live at or below the poverty line. Of great
interest to him was researching Detroit's
black community; a challenge was making
the speaking style of his black characters
seem real.
Why write about Detroit?
"It comes from getting older',' said Lasser.
"You're starting to think more about home
and the meaning of home. That's a theme
that resonates. This is a story of Exodus,
finding your way home, and what happens
if the land is not [all] milk and honey:'
At his last Andover reunion, Lasser dis-
giving.
Linkin Park will
tour to the Palace
of Auburn Hills on
Tuesday, Aug. 21.
First Roles
The Los Angeles
Bourdon
Times gathered a
bunch of famous
actors to do a joint video interview
about their first film role.
Julianna Margulies (The Good
Wife), 46, who is married to former
Michigander Keith Lieberthal, said
she lied to get her first screen role
(Out for Justice,1991). At the audi-
covered that half of his classmates had left
the Detroit area.Yet, he emphasized
again that he "wouldn't rule it
out to move back here some-
day. One of my motivations
for writing the book was how
much I missed Detroit."
Referring to a "Detroit diaspo-
ra," he said, "Thousands are from
Detroit in LA, a city where many
people are born somewhere else.
The Detroit expats feel a mixture of
love and despair. They want to see the
city reborn again.
"I don't see this kind of loyalty to
place — or a city's sports teams —
from people coming from anywhere that
isn't Detroit," he explained.
Lasser recently completed a screenplay
adaptation of Say Nice Things for Steve
Carell's Carousel Productions. Warner
Brothers optioned the film rights.
"I wasn't thinking even remotely that the
book would be a movie when I wrote it, but
I think it will work well on the screen:' he
said.
His next novel is set in Colorado, but he
expects he'll write more about Detroit.
"The city is not a symbol of despair
or decay, " he said, "but a source, believe
it or not, of hope. Hope is necessary for
action:'
❑
Scott Lasser's Michigan appear-
ances and book signings, all at 7 p.m.,
include: Monday, July 16 – Nicola's
Books, Westgate Shopping Center,
2513 Jackson Avenue, Ann Arbor
(734) 662-0600; Tuesday, July 17
– Temple Beth El, 7400 Telegraph
Road, Bloomfield Hills, (248) 865-
0611; Wednesday, July 17 – Schuler's
Bookstore,1982 W. Grand River
Avenue, Okemos (616) 942-2561;
and Thursday, July 19 – Barnes &
Noble, 6800 Orchard Lake Road, West
Bloomfield, (248) 626-6804.
tion, the film's star,
Steven Seagal, asked
her if she was Puerto
Rican, and she said
"yes." When filming
began, he asked her
to do her first lines in
Spanish.
Margulies
Margulies said,
"I am a Jew, and
Spanish is not my first language. But
I'm a quick study and got through it.
Anyway, it got me my SAG (union)
card."
Seagal, who was born in Lansing, is
the son of a Jewish father/non-Jewish
mother. He's long been a Buddhist.