I told him what I could, which isn't much, since we get conflicting reports down here in Baton Rouge, just an hour away.
I posted earlier on some of the Crescent City's musicians here and here, and a little about the fate of St. Bernard Parish, where I used to hunt and suffer from hangovers. But I haven't written about New Orleans lately, and I haven't been there in a while.
New Orleans, of course, never needed bloggers from Baton Rouge to tell its story. Some of the best and most original writing ("regional" or otherwise) was created there or inspired by the city in some way. The question asked in this recent piece by Reuters' Jeffrey Jones is whether New Orleans will continue to attract and nurture its writers.
"Quirky characters, raucous music, jazz funerals, a warm climate and plenty of service-industry jobs made New Orleans an ideal base for writers and a rich backdrop for their work.
"But, 16 months after Hurricane Katrina, the southern city that inspired Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams, John Kennedy Toole and Anne Rice risks losing its unique place on the literary landscape. The city's recovery is plodding and many writers remain in exile around the United States."
One writer who stuck around for the worst of it was Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose, who shipped his family out of state and set up a bunker-style newsroom to report on what remained of his city. A collection of those reports (funny, sad, conversational essays) was recently published under the title "1 Dead in Attic," a reference to messages spraypainted on the sides of houses by emergency workers.
I received this small paperback as a gift from friends who lost their home in the storm. I read it in the marble-lined lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Little Rock during a conference I attended in October. I recommend this book if you want to know "what the deal is" with New Orleans and all the people who used to live there. Just don't read it when you're homesick in a strange city.
3 comments:
Ah, John Kennedy Toole, my fellow disfunctional Tulane alumnus. I have always been amazed at how after his suicide, his mother bullied Walker Percy into reading the "Dunce" manuscript and got him to help shop it around
I loved about the first half of that book but it sort of goes on and on like a SNL skit. One of my favorite parts has Ignatius Riley reluctantly traveling to Baton Rouge by bus---both the mode of transportation and the destination abhorrent to him!
Found a quote: "Speeding along in that bus was like hurtling into the abyss."
My home town: the abyss!
Post a Comment