I’ve read a few of James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux books, and a couple of his standalone novels, but don’t consider myself required to read each one as it comes out. (Nothing personal, I can’t think of any author that I feel compelled to read hot off the presses. Sorry, J.K.) When a friend brought his copy of The Tin Roof Blowdown and suggested it – right as I was finishing another book – I took it and started reading.
I was hooked right away. Robicheaux opens the scene with a recurring Vietnam nightmare, consoling himself:
When I go back to sleep, I once again tell myself that I will never again have to witness the wide-scale suffering of innocent civilians, nor the betrayal and abandonment of our countrymen when they need us most.
But that was before Katrina. That was before a storm with greater impact than the bomb blast that struck Hiroshima peeled the face off southern Louisiana. That was before one of the most beautiful cities in the Western Hemisphere was killed three times, and not just by the forces of nature.
Prose like that tells you that this isn’t a simple mystery, and Burke follows through. The chaos of the storm is only a preview of the chaos that will descend on New Orleans in its wake, and Burke captures slices of that chaos through the eyes of his characters. The mystery portion of the story occasionally submerges beneath the details, and Burke tries to weave perhaps one too many storylines in, but this book is an elegy to a city that, for all its problems, was unique in the world. It is also an indictment of the the slow response of the Bush Administration, the sweetheart contracts, the insurance ripoffs, and the selling of the New Orleans to the highest bidder.
After my own visit to The Big Easy in Summer 2006, I had my doubts that it would ever regain more than the façade it had before the storm. The Tin Roof Blowdown makes me think James Lee Burke has sat up many nights wrestling, and finally succumbing to, those same doubts. The good times have rolled, and they aren’t coming back.
Don’t write us off too soon. People in NOLA are fighting back because we know what a special home we have.
http://ashleymorris.typepad.com/ashley_morris_the_blog/2007/07/friends-like-no.html
Sorry, doc, but I think you’re fighting a lost battle. As one character in the book says something like, “You think they’re going to rebuild a poor city?” Even if the city rebounds, it will never be the old New Orleans – which I visited many times, and loved. Jackson Square already looks pretty much like any suburban mall, and aside from the Bourbon Street girly bars, the roaring mouse will own everything else and turn it into a theme park. I don’t dismiss the special place you have for your home, and I wish you and your neighbors nothing but the best, but there isn’t anyone from DC to Baton Rouge who sees this as anything more than a chance to test their social Darwinist theories.
Much as I’d love to see it come back, I’m extremely pessimistic that the money is ever going to flow to anyone who doesn’t already have it, and I think Burke makes that point as well.
And, truly, this is my own cynical opinion and has nothing to do with the library or the other good people who blog here.