The Algiers Motel Incident

I decided to read The Algiers Motel Incident after watching Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit so I could have a more thorough understanding of the extrajudicial killing and torture that took place. Unfortunately the book suffers from a similar problem as Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA: well-researched, poorly written and dreadfully organized rendering it almost indigestible. In spite of good intentions and decent sympathies, it suffers from the same problem of mainstream journalists today—it humanizes the executioners and denigrates the victims. If you are like me and want to read the most undeservedly well respected nonfiction book about that night, then I would suggest that you choose a four consecutive day period when you know that you will have a couple of hours to solely devote to reading without interruption, then grit your teeth, bow your head, then put your shoulder against it and don’t stop pushing until you’re done. Borrow it from your library and don’t buy it. Trust me, you won’t want to keep this book.
Dear writers, if you are writing about a chaotic incident, you are more than simply a transcriber or an amanuensis. Do your best to tell the story in chronological order. Let us get to know all the important players before delving into the story and hurling their names at us without giving us an opportunity to remember them. Assume that one day, people may read your story without knowing about the incident so describe the time and place as well. Don’t rush getting to the pivotal event. Take the information gleaned from various sources then retell the story, not cut and paste from various sources. If you think that there are multiple interpretations because of various sources, I think that it is a good idea to take the Rashomon approach. If you are critical of a version of events or a person, you can include it, but be consistent and offer your thoughts on everyone. Unfortunately John Hershey, the author of The Algiers Motel Incident did none of these things.
The Algiers Motel Incident’s initial chapter just hurls us into that night with no benefit of setting the stage of the place, the surroundings or the people. The abrupt introduction of multiple people ends up leaving the reader floundering regarding whom to relate to and leaves the victims primarily defined by that night, not what came before. It is only later that we get constantly interrupted descriptions of the victims through broken up interviews with family members and friends, who often go on tangents about their own life and many of those descriptions include less than flattering memories. When the author chronicles the witnesses’ testimony, he is innately suspicious and editorializes whether or not he thinks that they should be trusted. The actual description of the incident is broken up in the book so much that I have no idea how Bigelow was able to choreograph her movie because I was left more confused after reading the multiple descriptions of the incident.
When he tells the bad apple cops’ complete biography in their words, in chronological order instead of jumping around or using different sources to describe them, I was incensed. He details the immigration story of their ancestors, their personal life, their interests, the trajectory of their career and interesting vignettes from life on the streets. He never interrupts their narrative with a critical eye even when one cop seemingly opens a door that practically begs to be examined, but the author never walks through it until later in the book then not as salaciously as the two women who were also victims in the incident. One could infer that he writes about them differently because he is unaware that he relates more to the executioners and considers himself an anthropologist in the black community. He even calls himself an outsider. If he treated the bad apples in the same way that he was suspicious of the witnesses, I would have considered him consistent, but the disparate treatment indicates that even though he provides a mini biography to distinguish himself as someone not reared within a system, he still was nurtured by that system.
The most galling aspect of The Algiers Motel Incident may be that the author sincerely believes that he has struck a blow against racism, but if you paraphrased his reasoning, black people end up on two paths: respectability or criminality. Well, um, don’t all people if you view everyone using that reductive classification? He sculpts an uninterrupted narrative for each of the executioners, but decides to single out one victim to focus on since he seemed not to have chosen a path in life at the time of his murde., The fact that he is uninterested in the one that he deems respectable or criminal and wants to find a neutral victim is weird. There are only three victims. I’ve read true crime stories before, and I have no idea why he doesn’t tell the victims story in the same way as the police since he shows that he is capable of doing it before tackling the logistics of the murder and violence. It results in the book up being repetitive and retreading source material already covered earlier.
The Algiers Motel Incident works best when it addresses the judicial handling of the case and all those related to it. Basically everyone except the executioners, even the property owners, had more negative repercussions. If you are attentive, at the beginning and near the end of the book, you get the impression that families and individuals touched by the incident are permanently shattered and unlikely to recover. He also does a good job of tackling myths surrounding the incident, especially that the victims were snipers. It must have been a contemporary concern of the time, which did not survive the passage of time, so I suppose that the author is partially owed a debt of gratitude for debunking the official authorized initial story.
The Algiers Motel Incident was a disappointing and difficult read. He fails at humanizing and telling the full story of the victims and neglects to use his critical eye or challenge the executioners’ first person narrative in the same way that he criticizes other witnesses and victims. I know that it is considered the best account of the time, but that just adds to the tragedy.