When we moved here in January, I set out to educate myself about my new hometown. I read this, that and the other thing, but I always saved room for dessert — the Detroit novels of Elmore Leonard.

Leonard is one of the metro area’s most famous residents, in the way writers are famous; you might see him in the airport, but you wouldn’t necessarily feel the need to go up and say hello. This has never happened to me. I would definitely say hello. Then I might ask to touch the hem of his garment. He’s really that good.

I’d already read them all, but it was wonderful to read them again. I started with “Mr. Paradise” and sort of meandered through the back catalog, re-reading the way I always do, paying special attention to a different aspect of the book than I did the last time, in this case the setting. (I’m a dedicated re-reader. I’m convinced this is what separates readers from writers. Readers read a book once and put it on the shelf. Writers read and re-read, and re-re-read. We want to crack the code. I’m embarrassed to think of how many times I’ve re-read “Gone With the Wind,” one of the world’s greatest bad books. Let me tell you this: You haven’t read GWTW until you’ve read it from a feminist perspective.) I think I covered all the Detroit-based books — “City Primeval,” “Pagan Babies,” “Killshot” (Port Huron, really), “Out of Sight,” “Freaky Deaky,” “Switch,” “Swag,” “Unknown Man #89” and I’m surely forgetting a few more. Then, because that was so much fun, I’m delving into the Florida books. This week: “Riding the Rap.”

I’d forgotten most of this one, and I’m wondering why. The first chapter is a beautiful self-contained short story; in fact, I think I first read it in a fiction issue of The New Yorker. The rest of it doesn’t disappoint, either. One of the bad guys is a middle-aged screwup, living in his mom’s big oceanfront house and waiting for her to die of Alzheimer’s in her Palm Beach nursing home. There’s a section where the main character, a cop, goes to visit her. She’s out of it, talks about people stealing her piano and how she wants to get out of this place and on and on. A Jamaican nurse moves in and out of the room, filled with pictures of its occupant in the proverbial happier days. Anyone who’s been in a similar situation would recognize every detail. And then, this:

Something’s going on,” the old lady said, “and I think it’s that Victoria who’s behind it. She’s another of the Jamaicans.”

“If she denies it,” Ms. Ganz said, “tell her she’s a lying fucking nigger. That’s what I do.”

Boom, curtain, blackout, smash cut to the next scene. In one sentence, out comes the rug, there’s an ice cube down your back and you see, justlikethat, how the bad son didn’t fall far from the tree. I love that. Other writers would waste a page laying that out, and Leonard gets it done in a sentence.

Every city should have a novelist like this. We’re so, so lucky that this one is ours.

Bonus: Elmore Leonard’s Rules for Writing.

UPDATE: I just swapped out the link above for the version on E.L.’s own website, which is the same but much, much better. Thanks, David, for the tippage.

Richard Cohen’s back from summer vacation and also, like the Dickerson column in the previous item, makes a connection my CNN-clogged brain couldn’t — John Roberts and Katrina. And it’s not what you think. It’s mostly about the uses of failure, what an early face-plant can do for a young man’s world view. Here’s the connection part, and it comes late:

Failure has its uses. Among other things, it can teach us about the human condition. It took a certain kind of cold arrogance to come up with the evacuation plan that New Orleans devised: Get everyone out of town. But what about those who could not get out of town? What about those with no cars or those already living on the streets? In other words, what about the very poor?

If I had a vote in the Senate, I would not deny it to Roberts based on his lack of tough times — nor, for that matter, would I have granted one to Clarence Thomas, who had plenty of them. But when it comes to civil rights, to women’s rights, to workers’ rights, to gay rights and to the plight of the poor, I would prefer that Roberts had had his moment of failure. He will lead one branch of the government. I wish he knew more about all of the people.

I think this is going to be my last word about the news of the past week — at least until my next word — if only because it is making me crazy in ways I can’t quite put my finger on. At least, until today. Brian Dickerson’s column in the Freep today did exactly what a good column should do — it made a point I hadn’t heard made before, and made me say, “Exactly.”

But if the geographic and meteorological particulars of Louisiana’s emergency are outside Michiganders’ experience, its political dynamic is startlingly familiar. The essential ingredients for mayhem — a black underclass isolated by poverty and substandard education; a local leadership void exacerbated by federal neglect; an outmanned police force unable to communicate with itself or its counterparts in neighboring jurisdictions — already have been assembled in Detroit.

What Detroiter watching New Orleans’ freshman mayor could not imagine Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick cast in the same role, raging profanely from exile about the indifference of white Washington bureaucrats?

And I just wrote about five more paragraphs about that, but just deleted them. What’s the point? If it happens under a presidency like this one, or another like it, we’re just screwed.

Also, you should read John Scalzi’s “Being Poor.” If you don’t get it then, well, there’s no hope.

Let’s lighten up.

Did you know there were gay car enthusiasts? I never thought about it. Hey sport — nice bumpers.

A walk down memory lane, in Craaaaazytown in today’s DetNews blogging.

The sun rises tomorrow on Spriggy’s 14th birthday. All hail the world’s best little dog, captured here on Sunday, a typical day in his interesting and action-packed life. He doesn’t usually wear his life jacket on boat rides, but this was his first time on the new boat, and we didn’t know how he’d handle sailing’s sometimes sudden changes in pitch — he’s been known to bail out of the kayak when he stopped enjoying himself, and I really didn’t want to go after him with a boathook.

But he was fine. He found a place in the sun, laid down and enjoyed himself. Which is pretty much what he’s been doing all his life.

Why do we love our pets so? It’s not the unconditional love, which isn’t really unconditional — Spriggy’s heart belongs to the person with a handful of crumbled bacon. It’s not the companionship, although that’s a big part of it; there’s nothing more peaceful than working in a quiet room while a good dog snoozes at your feet. It’s not complex, like human love, but I can’t quite explain it. Partly it’s because he’s cuddly and affectionate. Partly it’s because he has a sense of humor and approaches every day like the adventure it is. Mostly it’s just because, for 14 years, he’s been our dog. I remember the time we took him camping, and he woke up in the middle of the night when the coyotes started yipping. I remember when we introduced himself to the newborn Kate by letting him lick her feet. When he got lost, and we found him at a yacht club bloody-mary brunch in the Upper Peninsula — we thought he’d lit out into the wilderness after a deer, but he was cadging cheese nibbles and popcorn from a bunch of ladies who thought he was the cutest thing in boots. When he flunked obedience school for growling at the teacher. When I tried to send him down a groundhog hole, pointing and saying, “Get that groundhog!,” and he jumped straight into the air and bit my finger.

It sounds like I’m writing his obit, and I’m not. He’s still in great shape, and I hope he’ll be around a couple more years, even though by every dog-years calculator, he’s well into AARP territory. When he finally goes to dog heaven, I’ll be able to say we took good care of him and gave him a good life, and he enriched ours in return.

Yes, I’m baking a cake. Some will probably fall on the floor for the birthday boy.

Tomorrow’s my brother’s birthday, too. He’ll get a phone call. He’s enriched my life too, but never laid at my feet while I worked, so our relationship is a bit different. Happy birthday to Uncle Charlie, too.

So, bloggage:

The Free Press ran this story today, about women opting for genital plastic surgery. I’ve mentioned it here before, and ultimately I think it’s not worth worrying about — the number of women who will pay thousands of dollars to have a doctor reshape their ya-yas are probably so small as to be insignificant. There was a long section in the middle of the story, though, that made me despair of editors who, in trying not to offend readers, muddy the waters:

In 1997, she was happily married, the owner of a publishing company and a mother of one with a second child on the way. After giving birth for the second time, her life changed drastically.

…”I think being a mother is the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean I should sacrifice my sexuality or that my anatomy should look prehistoric.”

Just what, precisely, is this woman’s problem? Is her uterus coming through the roof? If so, she has a medical problem, not a cosmetic one. They’re “hanging”? What’s hanging? Look “prehistoric”? What does that mean? More info, please. I mean, if we can get a scrotum in there, we ought to be able to talk about…whatever her problem is.

Finally, more DetNews blogging.

Kate starts school in 11 hours. I’m so happy I could — well, I could get some work done, that’s what. I could get through a morning without having to police piano practice, computer time and the infernal television.

I know, I know: Lighten up. Let her self-police. If only. I believe in moderation, really I do. TV, fast food and a candy counter that consists entirely of various forms of loose, pourable sugar — these are all part of the world Kate lives in, and she’ll have to learn to handle them eventually. I know people who have removed TV from their houses, eat nothing that’s not organically grown, and claim to have children who willingly eat grilled salmon and choose “La Boheme” when offered a pick for the car stereo. Personally, I think these people are hostile, but oh well. I didn’t get one of those kids. I got a normal one. If allowed to eat whatever she wanted from the world’s bounty, she’d exist on Triscuits, popcorn and Baby Bottle Pops. If asked to sing a song, will trill, “Lays, get your smile on” or some other ad jingle.

I try to recall how my mother handled these things, and then I remember: My mother raised her children when kids’ TV was one hour of Romper Room or Captain Kangaroo in the morning. Junk food was potato chips and chocolate bars, not a whole aisle at the supermarket just for the salt and another just for the sugar. No internet, no cable.

Some days I feel like Joseph Stalin. I am Joseph Stalin. Who wants to be Joseph Stalin? One of the neighbor kids watches PG-13 and R-rated movies. She is 7. She says her mother tells her, “I know you won’t use those bad words, so it’s OK.” I should practice saying that, maybe as I pop Xanax like candy. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so much like swearing like an actor in an R-rated movie.

If tomorrow starts the first day of her being someone else’s problem for just a few brief hours, well then, I’m ready.

Yee-ha.

But she’s a good kid. You should hear her play “Go to the Head of the Class” with her friends, many of whom are a year ahead in school. One question asked what country gave us pizza. Her friend, totally serious, said, “Little Caesarland.” Kate, to her credit, both laughed appreciatively and knew the correct answer.

Two hours remain of Labor Day. Yesterday we went down to Hart Plaza, to the Detroit International Jazz Festival. It was a beautiful night, and it was interesting to come upon one detail in particular, a sort of raised disc, adorned with quotes from labor leaders. There’s the expected (“Don’t mourn. Organize.” — Joe Hill) and the less-so (“They can cut off our fingers one by one, but together they make a mighty fist.” — Little Turtle). It’s still bracing to see organized labor lionized, after years of living in a place where it’s often equated with communism. Jimmy Hoffa’s not a punchline here, he’s a guy people knew, and he’s on that monument, too, although I don’t recall what it was. Solidarity forever, anyway. Back to work tomorrow.

Here’s Anne Rice in the New York Times this morning:

But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us “Sin City,” and turned your backs.

To be sure, Ms. Rice, there were millions of Americans sitting in numb horror in their living rooms while last week’s debacle was unfolding. Unfortunately, we didn’t hold the purse strings of the federal treasury, and anyway, we surely wouldn’t have filed the proper paperwork. I like to think voices like this are the fringey minority, but who knows?

I do know I heard a convenience-store clerk expressing outrage, sorta, over Kanye West’s comments on TV the other night. At least I think she was. It was hard to tell; the clerk appeared to be among the ranks of the New Inarticulates:

“So I’m like whoa! I can’t believe he said that. Bush could, like, say like boycott his records and his career would be like so over.”

I’m sure the prez will add that to his to-do list.

I don’t know. I want to be optimistic. Ashley says he’s moving there, whether the house he sorta-bought beforehand is standing or not: To quote Frederick Starr: “I do not intend to give up easily. Why? Because I am absolutely convinced that New Orleanians will not allow their city to become a ghost town. And I intend to be part of the renewal that springs from this determination.”

He also says the baby that’s on its way is a boy. Tentative name: Rey D’Orleans Morris.

I think Americans are basically good people, and will figure out a way to right this terrible wrong. But I also see the early talking points — it was the locals’ screwup first and foremost, etc. It could get ugly before it gets better.

In the midst of all this was some comic relief, if you’re a sicko like me — Geraldo Rivera parachuted in to do a live standup on Hannity & Colmes Friday night that was…bizarre. His un-made up face, which looked roughly used not to much by the weight of his life experience as by a drunken plastic surgeon, kept going in and out of close-up range. He was clearly losing it (you can read Jack Shafer’s take on it here) and seemed to be pulling everything straight out of his ass. He plucks a baby from its mother’s arms, and predictably, it starts to cry, a cue for Geraldo to get a little teary himself. Shafer transcribed his rant thusly:

There’s the freeway here. I tell you what I would have done — what I would still do. I would say, let them walk out of here. Let them walk away from the filth. Let them walk away from the devastation. Let them walk away from the dead bodies in here.

Then he got a grip, gave the baby back (it immediately stopped crying) and moved on to an old lady. Suddenly, he was Talk Show Geraldo again, a little chuckly: “What’s your name? How old are you, dear? Eighty-four? Oh my. We’ll get you out there so your family can see you…”

It was very strange. Although, to be sure, it felt good to laugh again. Thanks, Geraldo. Let these people go! We’ll be back after this.

…comes the distance. More DetNews blogging.

As bad as Tuesday was, Wednesday was worse. As bad as Wednesday was, today was worse. But of course you cannot turn away. Because this is important, because it’s infuriating and heartbreaking and, in tiny glimpses, heartening. And because if you turn away, your eye may fall on the Grosse Pointe News, and see this headline:

INFLUX OF RABBITS ANNOYS GROSSE POINTE GARDENERS

Honestly, after what I’d been watching, it was something of a relief. I read every word. Apparently there’s a product you can buy called Liquid Fence. It’s like that stuff you paint on kids’ thumbs to get them to stop sucking.

Gas here is at $3.17. I”m proud to say the only petroleum product I used today was to cut the grass — we went to the dentist on bicycles today. This is unnecessary halo-polishing; one of the things I like a older cities/inner-ring suburbs like this is the proximity of commerce, and we’re fortunate to be fairly close to our commercial strip. The dentist is maybe 3/4 of a mile away, and we could have walked, if it came to that. A woman in the waiting room was fretting on her cell phone that it might hit $4 by the weekend, “if they have any.” This, also, strikes me as unnecessary, even unseemly to complain too much about this, at least until the misery in the south is eased a bit.

If nothing else, the last few weeks of summer boating will be less crowded. As my friend John says, “One thing about sailing — the wind is free.”

Sort of.

Not much bloggage today — I’m emotionally exhausted. But there’s this, a brand-new blog started by a guy I wrote about once in Fort Wayne. Its premise is this: His wife is en route to Louisiana to find her mother, whom she’s been unable to reach since the storm went through. The punchline, such as it is, is that his wife’s name is…Katrina.

Hence the blog: Katrina vs. Katrina.

One other thing: Would one of you Rush listeners confirm whether he said today that “nobody made those people live in New Orleans”? I’d be interested in hearing the context, if anyone can provide it.

All I know is this: People who live in Palm Beach houses shouldn’t be throwing that particular stone.

…some more DetNews blogging.