Detroit In Books, Part 2—Henry Miller's The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

     Henry Miller's The Air-Conditioned Nightmare contains what is perhaps the most prescient observation ever written about the city of Detroit.  Stopping here in 1940 on a cross-country trip, in an automobile he had only just learned how to drive, Miller wrote: "The capital of the new planet—the one, I mean, which will kill itself off—is of course Detroit.  I realized that the moment I arrived."   To show you just how prescient this was, here's what Metro Times columnist Jack Lessenberry said just a couple of weeks ago about the city a decade after Miller arrived:  "Everyone thought the good times would go on forever. Nobody, but nobody in 1951, could have imagined the picture of sheer urban devastation that is today's Detroit."  Nobody, that is, except maybe those who read Miller's book, which was published in 1945.
    Miller doesn't expound too much on the matter, seemingly because he deems it too obvious, believing  everyone will eventually see what he sees.  He does go on to say:  "You wouldn't suspect that there was such a thing as a soul if you went to Detroit.  Everything is too new, too slick, too bright, too ruthless.  Souls don't grow in factories.  Souls are killed in factories—even the niggardly ones."  Those are some harsh words, written long before all the usual examples given for why Detroit has come to be what it is today.  Miller wasn't predicting freeways to the suburbs, or the rise of the Japanese auto-industry, or the devastating effects of poor race relations.  It was the subjugation of the workforce and the rampant greed he found so abhorrent and stifling. 
    Miller stayed at The Detroiter Hotel on Woodward.  (It is now the sight of  frownhouses, which are frown-inducing townhouses).  He calls the hotel "the Mecca of the futilitarian salesman," and mentions the "swanky haberdashery shop in the lobby," where the salesmen buy silk shirts and "any and everything—just to keep money in circulation."
    After spending the previous decade in Europe, Miller is prepared to complain about nearly everything he sees throughout his trip, it isn't all reserved for Detroit, where he also takes issue with the cold, windy weather and says the "buildings are straight and cruel."  "Detroit isn't the worst place—not by a long shot," he says, "there is no worse or worstest.  The worst is in process of becoming."  Assuming this is still true, maybe we should be thankful that Detroit has dropped out of the process.