The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit

by Michael Zadoorian

In The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit Michael Zadoorian follows characters coming to terms with the past and the present in a broken city. Rusty, ornery, and down at the heels, Zadoorian's characters have made the wrong choices, been worn down by bad news, or survived traumatic events, but like the city they live in, they are determined not to let tragedy and rotten luck define them. Rich with detail and brimming with feeling, Zadoorian's deceptively simple stories lead readers into the inner lives of those making the best of their flawed surroundings and their own imperfections.

Zadoorian's stories are drawn from the everyday events that come to define his characters' lives. A woman responsible for putting down animals at a veterinary clinic travels to Mexico to stage a ritual for her victims, a veteran returns a flag stolen from a Japanese soldier he killed in World War II, an elderly couple takes a final road trip to a mystery spot out west, and a man spends his life waiting to inherit his parents' kitschy 1960s furniture but instead sells it all. Characters also find their lives shaped by seemingly random occurrences, like the junk shop owner who must stop the stranger with a vendetta against him, the woman who becomes obsessed with her in-laws' talking dog, and the urban spelunker who finds love and acceptance with a reader of his blog. Their close connection to Detroit also infuses Zadoorian's stories with themes significant to the city, including issues of racial tension, political unease, and economic hardship.

Zadoorian's writing throughout this collection is clear and vivid, never getting in the way of his characters or their stories. The unique but relatable characters and unexpected stories in The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit will appeal to all readers of fiction.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Book Club

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Michael Zadoorian is the author of five works of fiction. His second novel, The Leisure Seeker was recently made into a feature film starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland.

His most recent novel is The Narcissism of Small Differences. Set in bottomed-out 2009 Detroit, it’s the story of Joe Keen and Ana Urbanek, an unmarried Gen X couple with no kids or mortgage, as Midwestern parents seem to require. Now on the cusp of forty, both work at jobs that they’re not sure they believe in anymore, yet with varying returns. Ana is successful, Joe is floundering—both caught somewhere between mainstream and alternative culture, sincerity and irony, achievement and arrested development. The Narcissism of Small Differences tells of an aging creative class, doomed to ask the questions: Is it possible to outgrow irony? Does not having children make you one? Is there even such a thing as selling out anymore? By turns wry and ribald, kitschy and gritty, poignant and thoughtful, The Narcissism of Small Differences is the story of Joe and Ana’s life together, their relationship, their tribes, their work, and their comic quest for a life that is their own and no one else’s.

His third novel was Beautiful Music. Set in 1970’s era Detroit, Beautiful Music is about one young man’s transformation through music. Danny Yzemski is a husky, pop radio–loving loner balancing a dysfunctional home life with the sudden harsh realities of freshman year at a high school marked by racial turbulence. When tragedy strikes the family, Danny’s mother becomes increasingly erratic and angry about the seismic cultural shifts unfolding in her city and the world. As she tries to keep it together with the help of Librium, highballs, and breakfast cereal, Danny finds his own reason to carry on: rock ‘n’ roll. Beautiful Music is a funny and poignant story about the power of music and its ability to save one’s soul.

Zadoorian’s second novel, The Leisure Seeker was an international bestseller and translated into over 20 different languages worldwide. John and Ella, two eighty-somethings, decide to kidnap themselves from the doctors and grown children who run their lives for a final adventure in their ancient Winnebago. In a starred review, Booklist wrote "The Leisure Seeker is pretty much like life itself: joyous, painful, moving, tragic, mysterious, and not to be missed." The L.A. Times said: Zadoorian is true to these geezers. He draws them in their most honest light. I hoped for a book that would make me laugh during these tight times, and I was rewarded." And the Sydney Morning Herald stated: "This is a sad, sweet love letter to a fading America… sharp humour about aging and a quietly shocking ending.”

Michael Zadoorian's first novel, Second Hand is about love and loss for a Detroit-area junk store owner. The New York Times Book Review said “Second Hand may be a gift from the (Tiki) gods” and called it "a romantic adventure that explores what Yeats called 'the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.'" Selected for Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers Program, Second Hand also received the Great Lakes Colleges Association prestigious New Writers Award. Translated into Italian, Portuguese and French, it's still a cult favorite.

His short story collection The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit follows characters coming to terms with the past and the present in a broken city. Lansing Journal called them "…stories that grab you, shake you and slap you upside the head." The Ann Arbor Observer called the stories “sometimes wildly funny and more than a little crazy, yet they have a heart-breaking affection for the battered lives they portray."

Zadoorian is a recipient of a Kresge Artist Fellowship in the Literary Arts, the Columbia University Anahid Literary Award, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, the GLIBA Great Lakes Great Reads award, and two Michigan Notable Book Awards. He lives in the Detroit area.

Reviews

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boy, I enjoyed these stories!

I don't think growing up in Detroit is totally the reason why. Though I was often reminded of places I had been or that I still pass by today. It's more of a kind of a feelilng of having been there. And I think in his stories, Zadoorian even conjures up smells.....like my aunt's house on E. Grand Blvd.

Most readers will find much to connect with or relate to, no matter where they grew up. They will find a character that is just like someone they know. Only Zadoorian grasps the essence of the person until you wonder if maybe you know the same people....or at least been to the same second hand store!

I'm glad I own the book because I know I'd love to read the stories over but also to have around when something occurs that reminds me of one of Zadoorian's stories and I want to find it. I love when that happens!

[Nancy Brady · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars actually, this short story collection has diverse stories, all of them set in Detroit. Written in a literary style, some of the stories were clever, some were sad, and some were just bizarre. It is obvious that the author knows the city inside and out as he addresses all sorts of areas of the city and their residents.

Particularly loved the story about the junk man, Modell, though. A man who learns customer service through the possibility of being hated.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first introduction to Michael Zadoorian and his love for Detroit. None of his books since have been a disappointment. I wrote about him and Bonnie Jo Campbell in a very quick defense of regionalism back in 2009:

https://annarborobserver.com/articles...

[Margherita Dolcevita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zadoorian è sulla buona strada per diventare uno tra i miei preferiti (ed è sicuramente la miglior scoperta del 2010).
Anche in questa raccolta di racconti non mi ha deluso. Certo, come tutte le raccolte ci sono alti e bassi, non tutti i racconti si mantengono sullo stesso livello, ma alcuni sono dei veri e propri gioiellini di ottima letteratura, "Discinesia", "Il mondo delle cose", "Ossa e cuori", "Origliare" e "Speleologia" i migliori, assieme ovviamente ai due making of (come li chiama l'autore) dei due romanzi, "Second hand" e "In viaggio contromano".
C'è qualcosa di morbosamente magico nell'apparente normalità narrata, le cose che più restano impresse sono terribilmente normali e ordinarie, una donna malata, un cane che rimane senza i padroni, la passione per gli oggetti antichi o gli edifici abbandonati, niente di futuristico o di eccezionale. Eppure conquistano, perchè Zadoorian trova quella sfumatura, quella vena particolare che rende tutto interessante e coinvolgente.
E sono sicura che se fossi di Detroit questo libro mi avrebbe detto molto di più.

[Marcia Mcgee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book of short stories is part of the Made in Michigan Writer's Series, which I had never heard of until I came across this book while looking for another author starting with a Z. I don't often read short stories but I read this one in a day. The stories are unrelated except for the fact that they all take place in Detroit.It amazed me how Zadoorian can write in so many voices. I had to keep checking to make sure this wasn't a collection by different authors. Even if you don't live in Detroit, this is a very good read.

[Sean Kottke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of short stories gets better as it goes, with a final set of stories that is simply astonishing. The local color ramps up as the collection goes on, with the final section really capturing the feel of "new" Detroit as it attempts to slough off the detritus of industrial decline without losing hold of what wonders of its past it can recapture or reconstruct. "The Noise of the Heart" is an uncomfortably brilliant portrait of (well-founded) jealousy. Been there, brother ...

[GONZA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tanti racconti, più o meno lunghi a volte incentrati sulle cose, ma molto più spesso sulle persone. Non scrive male Zadoorian, anzi, ma lo stile depressivo non è mai stata la mia passione e siamo comunque lontani da quel grandissimo capolavoro (IMHO) che è "In viaggio contromano" in cui Ella e John diventano e restano a tutt'oggi nel mio immaginario come LA COPPIA PIU' BELLA DEL MONDO.

[Zinta · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Made in Michigan Writers Series showcases some of the state’s best new, or not so new, writers. Michael Zadoorian is one of these writers, not so new, with two novels (The Leisure Seeker and Second Hand) already on the shelf. While the country struggles and just begins to show signs of emerging from economic muck, and more often than not, the national finger is pointed at Detroit as the example of the worst anywhere, dying and in parts already dead… Zadoorian rises from those ashes and finds the grit and pearl of story to tell.

No mistake, these are pearls. Found among junk piles and old photographs, abandoned houses and euthanasia rooms, marriages ravaged by adultery, homeless men turned into exhibitionists—these stories of Detroit, separated into west side, east side and downtown, record a city turning back into dust but with heart stubbornly beating on.

“To Sleep” introduces us to Zadoorian’s talent with a grand entrance on the entire collection. The story’s narrator works in the Euthanasia Room for animals, and if the metaphor of city in its death throes holds, we witness that handling death of the innocent on a daily basis cannot leave one unmoved. Watch the life go out of the eyes of a living creature often enough, and madness seeps into the mind. The executioner becomes ever more eccentric, finally building altars to the dead creatures, performing elaborate ceremonies and dances (Louis Armstrong, Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk apparently create jazz that is perfect for felines) to see them off into the other world. Zadoorian’s writing remains in ours, sharp and haunting:

“That flicker in their eyes just a second after the Pentothal reaches the viscera, that moment, that last hundredth of a second of being as it folds into what comes after. The look in their eyes, during the wiping away of life, burns in on your soul like a klieg light on the retina. You can shift your vision elsewhere, but you still see the shape of the light, an after-image, superimposed on everything you look at—on a stop sign, on the page of the book late at night when you can’t sleep, on your own guilty hand when you hold it before your face.

“But unlike the after-image from a bright light, this one doesn’t go away in a few moments. It’s there for keeps. And after you eradicate a few thousand of God’s living, breathing, sentient creatures like I have, you begin to believe that there’s nothing left to burn. But you’re wrong. There’s always more work to be done, more animals to be put down. Before long, you’re thinking that part of you, the part your parents told you was what made you special, the good girl part, the part that would remain even after you died, is not yours anymore. It’s just a charred, scarred accretion of the ghosted eyes of thousands of animals, the kind of scabby hard stone-cinder that we as children used to call a clinker.”(page 9)

Science has shown with brain scans that certain images, viewed long enough and often enough, do indeed create a chemical burn on our brains and can never be erased. These images change our view of the world around us forever. Zadoorian sends shivers of subtle horror through us as we eye this image of those who must compartmentalize to survive what they do to other living beings. They do not survive intact.

Other stories play in similar fashion with the gradual breakdown in human beings, in relationships, in a city. “Dyskinesia” is the story of a younger man who befriends an older woman who is deteriorating from Parkinson’s disease, but learns to, more or less, manage it by painting wild and colorful canvases through her tremors. The younger man is not necessarily in any better health, although his ills are less physical. The story opens with him standing in a grocery check-out line with his wife. He points out to her a woman’s magazine on the rack with a headline about women who love too much and co-dependency. “That’s you,” he says. She buys the magazine. Reads the article. “You’re right,” she says, and without another word, packs her bags and leaves him, co-dependent no more. So he fails at other attempts at other relationships, finally able to connect only to this ailing older woman, spending ever more time with her to escape his own void. Yet even she, finally, escapes him—into a world where he cannot follow.

“War Marks” is a story of healing and forgiveness, possible only when one human being looks deeply into the eyes of another. War is the ultimate objectifier, and political powers have always understood that to enable one human being to treat another with hatred and disrespect, he must first objectify. This story touches with the meeting of two “enemies” of an old war who cannot but know respect for each other’s humanity when they meet one-on-one.

“Listening Room” is yet another exploration of how the mind and spirit deteriorate over time when the emotional abuse is a constant drip-drip-dripping presence. A boy must listen in the night to the sounds of copulation in the bedroom next door that his parents “loan” to other couples who have come to believe it is a lucky room for getting pregnant. They think nothing of what their son must listen to night after night through a thin wall, how it erodes him and changes him forever.

In “Noise of the Heart” we are almost reminded of Edgar Allen Poe’s “Telltale Heart,” as a man is driven mad by the sound of his own beating heart. It is, of course, not really his physical heart, but his metaphorically symbolic heart that drives him to attempt suicide, as he finds out about his wife’s affair with another man. He hears her tell her lover with glee about what an innocent he is, has no clue, when it is she who can’t see past her own lust—and a lover who is more interested in the competitive edge of stealing someone else’s mate than he is in her—while the cuckolded husband silently absorbs the disrespect of her actions and struggles with that ever beating and louder heart.

“Traffic Reports” explores road rage, as everyday people burst at the seams from stress and randomly shoot each other on Detroit roads. “Spelunkers” brings us into the seedier buildings of downtown Detroit, as if on an archeological dig into another time, recording it all, as Zadoorian himself does in these stories, as an art form of the dead and dying of an American city. Finally, his title story, “The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit,” pulls the collection together with a homeless man on a city bus who insists he will no longer be invisible. The only way he can seem to get other people to see him is by an act of indecency. He drops his pants and exposes himself to everyone’s stunned and immediate attention. One hopes the city itself won’t have to go quite that far.

If Detroit can produce such literary talent as Zadoorian, however, it may just thrive again. These stories awaken, alarm, grieve, giggle a bit, but mostly observe what we may wish to toss away, yet should first look directly in the eye—so that we can understand something more of our own condition.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Likes:
- The locations in the stories spanned Detroit and its suburbs, so they were familiar to me and I could picture a lot of the areas that were mentioned. That was pretty cool since I don’t read a lot of books set in metro Detroit.
- The stories all covered different subject matter but were surprisingly specific. It made me wonder how the author knew all that information and which parts were based on personal experience.

Dislikes:
- The stories were a bit mundane, which maybe was the point. But I found it hard to stay engaged and it took me a long time to finish the book.
- Not a criticism, but I personally couldn’t finish the first story because it was centered around cat euthanasia. I think I was a bit wary of the rest of the stories, but I’m glad I read them.

[Linda Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cozy walkabout the neighborhoods of southeast Michigan. There are a couple stories that step outside the comfort zone, but a couple others make us feel at home again. Downtown, the 3rd section is my favorite, although noise of the heart made me sad while I was laughing. Reading Zadoorian is like coming home after an exhausting day.

An interesting coincidence: there is a character named Trish the Dish in one of the stories. One of the characters in my 2008 novel is Trish the Dish. I borrowed the name from a woman my sister worked with. Wonder if Zadoorian knew of the same person?

[Bob · Rating 1 out of 5]

Spoiler: This isn't a book about Detroit Tiki. It's a collection of short stories. Even the one story that is about Detroit Tiki palaces of the 60s isn't about Tiki. It's about blight, and homelessness, and gentrification. Which is fine...just not what you're hoping for with the book's title.

I've liked some of the authors full length novels, which is why I picked this up. But this feels like a collection of early stories that just aren't up to scratch.

[Toast · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very much built off the national media image of Detroit in 2009, this is a collective of short stories with an extremely loose narrative tie of being set in or with characters of the city. All were fairly attention keeping but none attention grabbing. Quick read with more value if you are from Metropolitan Detroit

[Martin Maenza · Rating 2 out of 5]

I preferred the author's novel work to his short story offerings. A few of these ideas folded into later novels, so reading them here seemed like a rehash or a revisit. Others were either too short to be really meaty or just not very engaging to me as a reader.

[Kasey Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

some of the stories were redundant because they were from second hand and leisure seeker. I really enjoyed the other stories.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting and quirky characters in these stories that became more interesting the farther I read.

[Mary Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael Zadoorian shares a collections of his short stories, some as painful as a kitten’s death (To Sleep).
A divorced man living with his parents works as a grip in the film industry and has beers with a woman with Parkinson’s. A World War II veteran tries to return a flag he took off a dead Japanese soldier over fifty years ago. A man loses his mother, but keeps her 60’s keepsakes. Holding onto items like an electric bun warmer,Zadoorian says is a way of not letting go of the people. Our pasts are memories of things we accumulated and used. Letting go seems like such a simple act, but it is not easy.
Other stories follow. A junk dealer is tormented by hate messages spray painted on his truck and back door. A man stops outside a wig shop and imagines himself in the wigs. An old dog speaks the word, “Grandma.”
As I read Zadoorian my own memories flood my mind. His characters seem like people I have known all my life. The fads, the appliances, the junk we all collect. The pets we loved and lost.
An elderly couple goes on a road trip.
Some stories are reminiscent of Zadoorians’s earlier books, “Leisure Seeker” and “Second Hand,” but these stories are worth revisiting. A family allows couples to use their guest room with the “lucky bed.” A man eavesdrops on his wife’s phone conversations.
There is often humor in the details. The child narrator does not understand the purpose of the lucky bed. The jealous husband wonders if his wife and lover take a cheese tray to bed? A man who just missed being shot, sees a bumper sticker on the car in front of him. It reads “WHITMAN CADILLAC;” he mistakenly reads, “HITMAN CADILLAC.”
But beneath that humor is a kind of deep emotional pain that throbs through the stories.
A semi tractor spills barrels of cooking grease on the streets of downtown Detroit. Someone fires a bullet at a man’s car as he drives a Detroit freeway. A photographer goes into the basement of his home to make copies of family pictures while his wife and adult son sip tea upstairs. A woman wants to explore abandoned buildings in Detroit and contacts someone who does it regularly. Of course they have to be careful as this practice is illegal. They explore an abandoned theater and then explore a relationship with each other.
A homeless man gets on the Woodward bus and claims to be invisible. Among the places the bus passes is the ghost of Polynesian restaurant from Detroit in the days just after the riots.
Detroit residents tell their history by referring to before or after the riots happened.
You can learn a lot about Detroit here. Zadoorian’s one liners often perfectly nail the freeways and suburban towns like Birmingham and Westland.
People work in Westland and Ferndale; they shop in Royal Oak and they drive Mercedes in Birmingham
 These are people caught in the human condition. Zadoorian is as good a guide as one can find to living broken worlds with remnants of the past.

[stacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book's a sneaker.

My first read-through: I was blown away by a few stories, ho-hummed through a few because of their fatty sentences. Had I stopped there, I'd have given the collection a 3.5 for the difference.

Then I read it again. The slow parts fit more snugly, the racy parts ran faster and harder, and the climaxes and resolutions satisfied in a way that that awesome sex does: erases your mind for a while, then rebuilds it with all kinds of possibilities.

Zadoorian's an author with a unique (read: signature) style. And THAT's saying something in these times of rip-offs (scuze me--"homage" and "borrowing").

A final vote of 5 because this book made me laugh out loud (once) and cry out loud (once) when I was reading out loud.

My review of this book is at The Collagist (www.thecollagist.com).

[Ellice · Rating 3 out of 5]

These short stories sneak up on you. There were some I liked better than others, and some I wasn't sure I liked at all. But by the time I finished the book, all the stories really came together into one seamless collection. The characters in them are neither normal nor oddball--instead, they're normal people with a good dose of oddball thrown in, as most "normal" people have. And the flavor of metropolitan Detroit is strong throughout--not just with liberal sprinklings of city, street, business, and landmark names (though those are there), but with the thoughts, attitudes, and characters of southeast Michigan. Worth a read for those who live here, and for those who don't but are interested in the area.

[Chris Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for the March selection of the Michigan Beer & Book Club. I'm a fan of short stories with interesting characters and in most cases, this book had them. I especially liked "The World of Things", "The Problem with Modell", and "Spelunkers." There were a couple of short stories that didn't grab or keep me, but I didn't hate them. This is the type of book that you can pick up and enjoy a quick read when you have a convenient moment (aka "good bathroom reading material").

[Genevieve · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up because I thought it was a book of short stories about Detroit. This is a book of short stories about Detroit, but all the characters are pretty crazy and the stories do not flow. It's supposed to be separated by the different areas of the city, but apparently I don't know the city as well as I thought.

[Barb · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories are models of authenticity, in terms of the feel of the city and the emotional lives of its denizens. I'm sending a copy to my friend who grew up in Detroit, and will reread it soon myself.

[Alessandro Margheriti · Rating 2 out of 5]

Una raccolta di racconti "metropolitani", un po' album dei ricordi e un po' mappa geografica degli USA. Manca però decisamente la brillantezza di "In viaggio contromano" e un pizzico di originalità in più non avrebbe guastato. Senza infamia né lode.

[Barb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quirky, sometimes whimsical, sometimes just kind of weird, short stories by a local Detroit author.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book of short stories revolving around Detroit! It gives new meaning to "one man's junk is another man's treasure." To some Detroit is junk, and to other it's treasure!

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, great collection of stories about an area and people I know all too well. Hope to read more from the author.

[Melanie H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome slice of life selection of short stories. Want to know what it's like to live in Michigan - this is it.

[Siszurpicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating views of Detroit, 'now' and 'then'. These short stories are so right. Must read for anyone with memory or current interest in the city.

[Sean Eddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection of short stories, with the exception being the first story. Skip it and enjoy the rest.

[Melva · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the most interesting collection of short stories I have read in a long time.

[Bobparr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probabilmente Z. ha pochi emuli nel parlare e descrivere il mondo dei vecchi, e delle cose andate, e la maturita'. Ricordo qualcosa di simile in un vecchio libro di Sandra Petrignani, Vecchi, e nell'intramontabile Diario di Jane Somers, di Doris Lessing. Qui, Discinesia è qualcosa. Nonche' il racconto che da' il titolo all'edizione originale. Altri pezzi sono invece superati dai due romanzi lunghi, giustappunto insuperati. Ci sono comunque gioie di scritti che Carver e sopratutto Brautigan non riescono ad eguagliare. Qui un amplissimo estratto dell'edizione originale http://tinyurl.com/y8m7vly