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.