I picked up 1 Dead in Attic on my backyard porch at my family’s house over Labor Day Weekend and I was struck by irony at the first date chronologically in the book.
9/6/2005.
I had forgotten that five years ago on this date, New Orleans had been wiped out to rank-smelling flooded streets by Hurricane Katrina. How so suddenly, in a matter of hours, the city was swarmed with controversial governmental (in)actions, racism, crime and tragedy.
And ongoing tragedy. We saw our television screens swarmed with image after despondent image of toppled buildings, keeled over streetlights, looters and families alike wading through waist-high water. Cars, appliances, toys, living breathing bodies, dead unmoving bodies, people, their homes and everything they ever owned carried down the hurricane current.
Over 1300 miles away in dry, stable New Hampshire, we could turn the television set off and I think that’s what made the difference. Those images: the mourning people, the destroyed places, the loss, were detached from the rest of America. Sure, we empathized with New Orleaneans, shook our heads at an inadequate federal government, and sighed at the homeless hundreds huddled outside the Superdome, but we could turn those images off. And in the end, the t.v. always got turned off at my house. For the most of us, everyday life moved on uninterrupted.
Five years later, I’m sitting on my backyard porch on Labor Day weekend, the smell of charcoal barbecues, and warm, balmy sun and the post-Katrina devastation seems worlds away as it did in 2005.
Chris Rose brings a post-Katrina New Orleans to readers of his book in a strong, startling way. His memoir, a collection of columns from the Times-Picayune local newspaper, he depicts post-Katrina life in and outside of New Orleans. While his off-kilter humor and accessible down-to-earth personality, makes his columns easy reading even when the material he deals with isn’t, I’m interested in Chris Rose’s frame as a writer.
Frame and fact is something we’ve been talking about in class the question I raised for debate on the class blackboard is this: What is Chris Rose’s frame? How does his life in Uptown versus the more devastated parts of New Orleans? His family is safe and secure in upscale suburban Maryland, his house is intact, his journalist job is still there, and the tragedies of post-Katrina life in the Gulf leave him seemingly unscathed for the most part. How would a man who lost his wife and children, his home, his job, feel about these columns?
How would Thomas Coleman at 2214 St. Roch Avenue in the 8th Ward feel? It seems to me, Chris Rose had it easy.
Two columns that alternatively caught my breath and made me laugh were “Despair” dated 12/6/05 and “The Cat Lady” dated 9/29/05.
“Despair” follows the unfortunate/tragic events of an unnamed New Orleanean girl displaced from home. “She had a nice house in Old Metairie, a nice car, a great job, a good man who loved her, and a wedding date in October. A good life.” The girl fled to Atlanta with her fiancé when the hurricane hit, but came back to rebuild her life in the devastated city. She had lost everything and she eventually lost her fiancé when he committed suicide. I gasped aloud when I read about their suicide pact. But she stayed and willed on. I think it speaks a lot to the resilience of the city and its people. Having lost everything, all anyone would be expected to do is leave the pieces and move on. But not this girl, certainly not a New Orleanean girl.
The column “The Cat Lady” …well, I think the title pretty is self-explanatory. It follows the kooky character Ellen Montgomery and her “babies”: that is, 34 cats. She paints abstracts and floral landscapes. She reads The Journal of Beatrix Potter. She drinks coffee in the morning. Her house is falling into disarray and her 30-something cats were prowling around her house. She has been hiding out from the National Guard for weeks. “I felt like a Confederate spy in enemy territory,” she says. A “Gone-With-the-Wind” belle if I ever heard of one.
I think these two women really embody the resilience we talked about in class. The resilience of the city and it’s people. Scarlett O’Hara ain’t got nothing on these ladies.
9/6/2005.
I had forgotten that five years ago on this date, New Orleans had been wiped out to rank-smelling flooded streets by Hurricane Katrina. How so suddenly, in a matter of hours, the city was swarmed with controversial governmental (in)actions, racism, crime and tragedy.
And ongoing tragedy. We saw our television screens swarmed with image after despondent image of toppled buildings, keeled over streetlights, looters and families alike wading through waist-high water. Cars, appliances, toys, living breathing bodies, dead unmoving bodies, people, their homes and everything they ever owned carried down the hurricane current.
Over 1300 miles away in dry, stable New Hampshire, we could turn the television set off and I think that’s what made the difference. Those images: the mourning people, the destroyed places, the loss, were detached from the rest of America. Sure, we empathized with New Orleaneans, shook our heads at an inadequate federal government, and sighed at the homeless hundreds huddled outside the Superdome, but we could turn those images off. And in the end, the t.v. always got turned off at my house. For the most of us, everyday life moved on uninterrupted.
Five years later, I’m sitting on my backyard porch on Labor Day weekend, the smell of charcoal barbecues, and warm, balmy sun and the post-Katrina devastation seems worlds away as it did in 2005.
Chris Rose brings a post-Katrina New Orleans to readers of his book in a strong, startling way. His memoir, a collection of columns from the Times-Picayune local newspaper, he depicts post-Katrina life in and outside of New Orleans. While his off-kilter humor and accessible down-to-earth personality, makes his columns easy reading even when the material he deals with isn’t, I’m interested in Chris Rose’s frame as a writer.
Frame and fact is something we’ve been talking about in class the question I raised for debate on the class blackboard is this: What is Chris Rose’s frame? How does his life in Uptown versus the more devastated parts of New Orleans? His family is safe and secure in upscale suburban Maryland, his house is intact, his journalist job is still there, and the tragedies of post-Katrina life in the Gulf leave him seemingly unscathed for the most part. How would a man who lost his wife and children, his home, his job, feel about these columns?
How would Thomas Coleman at 2214 St. Roch Avenue in the 8th Ward feel? It seems to me, Chris Rose had it easy.
Two columns that alternatively caught my breath and made me laugh were “Despair” dated 12/6/05 and “The Cat Lady” dated 9/29/05.
“Despair” follows the unfortunate/tragic events of an unnamed New Orleanean girl displaced from home. “She had a nice house in Old Metairie, a nice car, a great job, a good man who loved her, and a wedding date in October. A good life.” The girl fled to Atlanta with her fiancé when the hurricane hit, but came back to rebuild her life in the devastated city. She had lost everything and she eventually lost her fiancé when he committed suicide. I gasped aloud when I read about their suicide pact. But she stayed and willed on. I think it speaks a lot to the resilience of the city and its people. Having lost everything, all anyone would be expected to do is leave the pieces and move on. But not this girl, certainly not a New Orleanean girl.
The column “The Cat Lady” …well, I think the title pretty is self-explanatory. It follows the kooky character Ellen Montgomery and her “babies”: that is, 34 cats. She paints abstracts and floral landscapes. She reads The Journal of Beatrix Potter. She drinks coffee in the morning. Her house is falling into disarray and her 30-something cats were prowling around her house. She has been hiding out from the National Guard for weeks. “I felt like a Confederate spy in enemy territory,” she says. A “Gone-With-the-Wind” belle if I ever heard of one.
I think these two women really embody the resilience we talked about in class. The resilience of the city and it’s people. Scarlett O’Hara ain’t got nothing on these ladies.
Wow, you put some serious thought into this. Mine pales in comparison! However I did think similarly that the "Crazy Cat Lady" well-embodied the resilience of New Orleans natives. So many of the people he encounters in his journalizing are just dyed in the wool New Orleansians (is that a word?) that love their home so much that nothing short of the the land falling into the ocean (permanantly) could incite them to leave. They are a very stubborn group of people, and I admire their strength.
ReplyDeleteI love the picture of Scarlett O'Hara, Allie! I got a chance to see Gone With the Wind in Concord this summer, and I feel like I learn something new every time I watch it. I was drawn to your comments about Southern womanhood, and it strikes me that Rose's book could be read in conversation with other texts on the South. He does portray several strong female characters. hmmm, now you've got me thinking about putting together a class on Southern literature.
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