Matt Bell - Scrapper

Now he thought he knew who he was. Not a name but a task. Not a name but an action. His capacity for distance grew. He carried her a half mile then a mile then five miles. He would carry her forever. She was the one he should have protected. He had promised. He would take her the length of the earth, he would never leave her behind, together they would keep moving until he was exhausted, until his muscles were stopped with salt, until his bones bent beneath their combined weight. Until neither of them could move. Until on their lips they tasted their last words. It would have to be far now. They would have to go so far that when they arrived at the center of the city they would be so exhausted they would not ever be able to make it back. When they arrived at their exhaustion he would kneel down upon the ground of the zone, cradle her in his arms, and press his lips against her ears. He would speak to make her believe he knew who she was. He would whisper her name.

There are more sources that inspired and informed this novel than can possibly be named, but the following deserve special mention:

Thank you to the anonymous photographer behind Detroiturbex.com, whose incredible images and historical research were crucial to the writing of this novel, and whose generous guidance during a final research trip to Detroit in September 2013 was both invaluable and unforgettable.

Similarly, I might never have written Scrapper without Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s short documentary Dismantling Detroit, which appeared online at The New York Times on January 18, 2012. Somewhere in that five and a half minutes of footage was my first glimpse of Kelly, of the world he’d come to inhabit.

I also owe direct debts to Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl , as translated by Keith Gessen; to Yasiin Bey, who subjected himself to the force-feeding techniques used at Guantánamo Bay for a striking video released by the human rights organization Reprieve; to the work of Lars Svendsen and Michael Ignatieff, particularly Svendsen’s A Philosophy of Fear ; to the short film Old Glory by Will Eno and Shevaun Mizrahi; to the Detroit Metro Times article “Kick Out the Demons: Exorcism Detroit-Style” by Detroitblogger John; and to On Boxing by Joyce Carol Oates, which — along with too few boxing lessons with Jodi Coolman and Quincy Russell at JAB Boxing Club in Marquette — helped shape the novel’s depiction of that sport.

Thanks also to my wife, Jessica, whose constant support made this and every other book I’ve written possible; to Northern Michigan University, whose support for my research aided the completion of this novel; to my editors, Mark Doten and Rachel Kowal; and my agent, Kirby Kim; to my copyeditor, Susan Bradanini Betz; to my first readers Jamie Iredell, Amber Sparks, Roy Kesey, and J.A. Tyler; and to Kyle Minor, who — during a meal we shared in Detroit several years ago — asked me when I was going to write a book about my home state.

This novel is my answer.