BOOK REVIEW-Why New Orleans Matters

WHY NEW ORLEANS MATTERS by Tom Piazza (HarperPerennial 2005)

In the months following the evacuation of New Orleans due to the wrath of Hurricane Katrina, author Tom Piazza wrote a tiny masterpiece of tribute to his beleaguered city. Piazza, who has lived in New Orleans since 1994, had relocated temporarily to Missouri, where he got to work on this extended essay while the fate of the city was still unknown. In the absence of having fully processed the feelings of loss associated with such a trauma, Piazza's recounting of the experience reads like a diary, as he attempts to digest day by day the enormity of what has just happened.

I first encountered Piazza's writing as a music journalist in his Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz, after having the privilege of hearing him lecture at the Williams College Jazz Festival in 1999 on roughly the same topic. Piazza's enthusiasm for the music was infectious, the lecture setting feeling more like a group of old friends listening to records together. An old soul where music is concerned, Piazza's preferences fall pretty squarely in the years 1920 to 1970, that which he refers to as "in the tradition" like another New Orleanean, one Wynton Marsalis. It's easy to see how such a man would be drawn to the culture and values that define New Orleans, his passion for the life of the city beyond Bourbon Street, of the music, the cuisine, the architecture, and perhaps most importantly the attitude that says we will survive all this. Still, within these pages are moments of fear and doubt over the city's ability to recover given other forces at work, such as corrupt and inept government, big money development interests, racism, crime and economic disparity. Piazza doesn't hold back when taking on the villians of Katrina, speaking directly to the callousness of Barbara Bush, the ineptitude of mayor Ray Nagin, and the system failure spelled FEMA. His anger is cathartic however, and he always returns to an attitude of hopefulness that pervades throughout the book. The afterword that was updated in 2008 takes inventory of what has demonstrably changed in the three years since the levees broke, and what still needs to be done. Piazza leaves us with reason to believe that New Orleans is surviving, and that those intangible attributes that make it unique will indeed prevail.

(this review previously appeared in the Brattleboro Reformer)