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Pure rage on the page: An interview with Sam McPheeters

posted May 9, 2012

What a nice fucking looking young man.

NOTE: SAM MCPHEETERS HAS CANCELED HIS TOUR. READ THE INTERVIEW ANYWAY.

By Clark Allen

Sam McPheeters is best known as the frontman for 90s hardcore bands Born Against and Men’s Recovery Project, and more recently Wrangler Brutes. He has put out a number of cult-classic zines, and in the past few years he has gained prominence as a writer, attracting an audience both familiar and unfamiliar with his prior music projects. He is currently on tour in support of his new novel, The Loom of Ruin, which is not to be confused with his old blog of the same name.

McPheeters will read at McKeown’s Books and Difficult Music (4737 Tchoupitoulas St.) at 5 p.m. on Friday, May 11, and later that evening he will do a spoken word performance with New Orleans zine stalwart John Gerken, at 7 p.m. at the Mudlark Theater (1200 Port St.). Ethan Clark might also make an appearance.

McPheeters spoke with Room 220 last month about his new book, Jonathan Franzen (of course), and other stuff.

Room 220: Except for a handful of short stories, you’ve written mostly journalism. When did this novel come to seed?

Sam McPheeters: I’ve actually been working on fiction for a long time. I had a novel that I started in 1990 that took me almost over 15 years to finish, and it didn’t work. I was so crushed by the experience because I had put so much time into it, including about a year and a half after the last band I was in, Wrangler Brutes, broke up. I had an office job and for that period of time I did nothing but work, come home, take a nap, get up and write for four hours, have dinner, and then go to sleep. I destroyed my health, just totaled it, became a fat piece of shit—which is fine because it was in the service of doing this book—and then the book just didn’t work out. I couldn’t find a buyer for it. It needed some work, I acknowledge that, so I thought, “Well, I need to really, really quickly get back into this, otherwise it’s just gonna be a scene cut and I’m gonna be a sixty-eight year old man who’s just bitter, telling everyone how the publishing industry screwed me.” So then I wrote this book, The Loom of Ruin.

I’d like to write more short stories. I really enjoy it. I’ve collected tons of notes, half-finished pieces. There are a few that will hopefully get published at some point, but they need work. It’s harder to write short fiction than novels in some ways, which maybe sounds weird. You have to be so compact in writing good short fiction. It’s very easy to write bad short fiction.

The other part of that, though, is that it’s so hard to find a market for fiction, whereas it’s pretty easy to find a market for journalism. Especially music journalism, which I’m not great at, but I have people that buy my stuff. So that equals me being more prominent as a non-fiction writer than as a fiction writer for now, which is fine. I’m really proud of that piece I did on Doc Dart. It’s clearly one of the best things I’m ever going to write in my life. So it’s nice to finally, finally, have something that I like to show people, which has not always been the case.

Rm220: I’m curious about the title, The Loom of Ruin, which was the title to the blog you’ve been running for some time. Where did the title come from and what, exactly, is The Loom of Ruin?

SM: The book had a couple of different phases. The first name was Folded Noses, which was going to be a series of ten fanzines, ten chapters each, each with a cliffhanger ending. But it was a stupid idea, because I don’t have the money to do ten fanzines. I would easily have gotten, what, three fanzines in and just gone broke and ended up not being able to do it. So then it changed to this novel.

The novel was The Loom of Ruin until 2007, when I hit a snag with the plot. So I shelved it and used that title for my blog, which was very different in original conception, though it just kind of turned into any other average-Joe blog. When I picked the novel back up and figured out the structural problems, it was called Unleash the Walrus. Then about two weeks before I sent it to the printer, my editor, Jesse Pearson, former editor of VICE, convinced me that The Loom of Ruin was a good book title and that Unleash the Walrus really was not. I needed to forget about what, to me, was a colossal marketing problem—the concern that everyone would think it was my blog, because really, “everyone” in this case is, what, 400 people? I don’t have a massive audience.

McPheeters, as Abe Lincoln, performing with Men's Recovery Project in Hartford, CT, 1998

Rm220: I checked out the three preview chapters of your novel on the VICE website and there seems to be a theme of total disappointment with society, combated with humor—there’s the moment where the cop wants to shove his stupid partner’s face into his cake, there’s the part where the main character calls out another guy for wearing a Kobe Bryant shirt. Is much of this coming out of personal experience? Will we be reading some catalogue of real life cameos?

SM: I think all fiction I think is kind of like that. “You have asshole face on your shirt” is something that was said to my friend—and now publisher, Anthony Berryman—when he wore his Gorbachev shirt into a Russian restaurant in Los Angeles. People just tell you stuff and it works its way into your writing. A lot of times people tell me stuff and I say, “I’m probably going to use that for something, sorry,” and I write it down in front of them. There are lots of little bits of my own life in there that are probably not recognizable to anyone who isn’t married to me or one of my parents. It’s definitely not a book that has anything to do with my experiences with bands or music, because that would be really boring and I don’t have anything to say on the subject that I haven’t said before already.

Rm220: It’s good to see you making a break from that. Pretty much any search for you on the internet lists you as a musician first, which I imagine is to your chagrin a little bit? Is it a good feeling to be separating yourself from your past career?

SM: I’m not looking to separate myself in any way at all. I’m not embarrassed by any of the bands I’ve been in, although I probably should be. The things that I like about certain bands I was in are not things that are confined to the world of bands or music. I wrote a lot of lyrics and made art that I’m not terribly proud of, but in that batch of stuff there are things that I do like a lot, and this is just a continuation of that. There were some Men’s Recovery Project songs that were stories, I did artwork that was in the vein of the cover art I did for this book. I think there’s enough continuity there so that people who liked my past stuff would like this. It doesn’t feel like there’s a huge break to me.

Rm220: You’re putting this novel out through Mugger Books, and when I first started looking for information on the publisher there was no web presence for it yet. How did this come about?

SM: Mugger Books is run by my good friend Anthony Berryman, who is an English and philosophy teacher at Compton High. We’ve known each other for over ten years. I’d been having a really hard time finding a larger publisher for this through my agent, and Anthony really wanted to start his own publishing company. The two things coincided and I’d realized that no matter who published it, I was going to be busting my ass to promote it. I’m really grateful that the person that I have to coordinate with is someone who I admire—and much more importantly, someone that I trust. I’ve had very bad experiences with other small publishers that have resulted in my not getting published, and as a result I have a significant level of distrust for parts of that world.

Rm220: What’s put you off in the past?

SM: I’ve had offers to do other books. I had interest in the first novel I wrote but was subsequently treated with comedic disregard. I don’t want to name names because that would just seem petty and vindictive on my part. I’d rather my punishment for them be that they have to see my novel in airports across the world for the rest of their lives.

McPheeters reads in San Francisco, 2012 (photo: Taylor Keahey)

Rm220: Yeah, good. So you’re going to be busting your ass promoting this, and nowadays there’s a lot of social media involved. It seems like what you post about it is done with a sort of polite disdain. How do you think this affects the promotion of your book?

SM: There’s sort of this big raging debate on how social media is affecting publishing, and what it’s doing to writing in general. On one hand you have Tao Lin being hailed for carrying conversations in Gchat in his books, and then on the other hand Jonathan Franzen is out giving speeches on how it cripples proper literature. I’m wondering how you fit into it, or if it’s even a concern.

I am one hundred percent grateful that I have all of these options open to me, and I’m embracing all of them. I really don’t like Facebook. I had very serious problems years ago in my life with depression, and Facebook is clearly a depression trigger. I just hate it. But I acknowledge that I have to be on it. I’m on Twitter a lot. I only like Twitter inasmuch that it’s a good writing challenge. If I felt I had the choice to not be on Twitter, I wouldn’t be on it. I really enjoy working on my blog, though I’m on a forced blog hiatus because I’m switching websites right now and there are weird coding issues with blogspot—oh my God what a dull sentence that was. But yeah, I definitely do not fall into the Jonathan Franzen camp, which sounds weird to say, but I don’t think any of this is having a negative impact on the world of literature. I reject that argument. If it ever does seem like I am wary or weary of these things, it’s just the very temporary exhaustion of these last few months seeping out. I do wish I was in a position to have someone help me with the booking of my tour and all the stuff that goes along with that. It’s significant, but that’s an observation, not a complaint. This is what I wanted. I wanted this opportunity and I’ve gotten it and I’m making the best of it, so hopefully, Jesus, I really hope my Twitter account doesn’t convey the impression that I’m being grouchy about all of this, because that’s not how I feel.

Rm220: No, I don’t think it does.

SM: It’s a weird intersection, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about this for a while because it really fascinates me. There’s this world of bands and this world of books. In the world of bands, particularly this micro-micro-subculture that I come from, I’m old, old news. I’m also an old person. But not actually literally an old person, I’m still a pretty young guy. I’m in my early forties and in the world of books that I aspire to enter, I’m a young person. It’s only in those two spheres that the overlap is really glaring. So I’m aware to the people who know me though bands that I am really grouchy, or a curmudgeon. I got called a grouch by VICE maybe two weeks ago, on Twitter! So that’s a weird perception problem, which for other authors could be pretty serious. It’s not serious for me though because I’ve dealt with mammoth perception problems for two decades, so I know that this one will pass in the way that I was completely insane for four or five years in the 90s. When I was in Born Against there was a period of about two years where people who didn’t know me would hear that I was prone to fly into violent rages and punch strangers in the face. In the late 90s I was considered really windy as a writer and would go on and on, and that I was a bore. So being a grouch and a curmudgeon could be a hell of a lot worse. It’s not a schtick, and I’m fine with that. But it’s weird that it’s facilitated by Twitter. If I post anything that seems grouchy, I notice that it’s the thing that will get picked up on, so I keep an eye on that. Man, that was a long winded answer to your question.

Rm220: Totally fine. I think being a grouch in the literary world might be kind of a boon in some ways.

SM: Jonathan Franzen is such a fucking grouch! He just seems like, say he moved in next to you and you think, “Man that guy’s awesome.” But then, aw fuck, he’d come over to complain that your hedges were too high or something.

Rm220: Hahaha. Totally. That about wraps up what I’ve got for you. Unless there’s anything left that you want to say about the book—like what it’s about, y’know?

SM: Haha, the book itself? It’s a hard book to pin down, genre-wise. I can say that The Loom of Ruin is a tale of corporate espionage set in modern day Los Angeles. The story revolves around a man who is neurologically incapable of any emotion except pure rage. The book definitely does not conform to any one genre, and blends satire, thriller horror…

Rm220: Why the “pure rage” protagonist?

SM: I just have notes for stuff and things get sorted out. I’ve had a couple of bosses who were him in many respects, but sometimes you just come up with weird plot device things where you’re in your car and you think of something and you just write it down.

In a way it’s kind of a gross process, because really what you’re doing is capturing this byproduct that people just sort of let go. My job, writing fiction, is to collect those things. It’s like having a big jar you keep your toenail clippings in, but in this case you’re putting them on a spreadsheet and eventually they work themselves out.

There are only three chapters of the book out there, which means there are about one hundred and three more chapters that I can’t really spoil. I will say though that many, many people get beat up in this book and that was a point of contention with several very large publishers.

The Bio of K-Doe: A Secret New Orleans History (reviewed)

posted May 7, 2012

The Historic New Orleans Collection recently published an outstanding biography of Ernie K-Doe, legendary New Orleans musician, by author and historian Ben Sandmel. Sandmel will discuss the decade-long project at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 9, at Maple Street Books’ New Orleans Healing Center branch (2372 St. Claude Ave.).

Ernie K-Doe: The R&B Emperor of New Orleans
By Ben Sandmel
Historic New Orleans Collection Press

Reviewed by Wesley Stokes

“All you can do is just keep the faith in what you are doing. You set your goal line, and don’t let nobody change you. You know what you say when people tell you can’t do something? Fool, shut your mouth up!” —Ernie K-Doe

During his comeback in 1998, Ernie K-Doe declared himself “Emperor of The Universe.” While he may not have been a Caesar recognized internationally, his rule over New Orleans is indisputable. Ben Sandmel’s appropriately named biography Ernie K-Doe: The R&B Emperor of New Orleans, reveals his protagonist’s world like a fairytale. Known for his over-the-top personality and attire (often wearing capes, crowns, and matching big hair-dos with his wife Antoinette), K-Doe proclaimed his 1961 hit “Mother-In-Law” to be one of two songs to stand the test of time (the other being “The Star-Spangled Banner”).

A stream of books have come out in recent years that attempt to document whole grand swaths of New Orleans’ history, and some of them are very good—Ned Sublette’s The World that Made New Orleans, Richard Campanella’s Bienville’s Dilemma, and Lawrence Powell’s The Accidental City are among the best. But more often than not, New Orleans’ identity is defined by individual stories, personal histories, and singular personalities—fictional and real—whose lives reflect the city that shaped them.

Sandmel’s writing is fluid and enjoyable—the mark of a seasoned historian and storyteller who’s done his research. Equally rewarding as Sandmel’s exposition, however, are the decades of amazing archival photographs and oral histories that position Ernie K-Doe as a king—but a king wholly made by his kingdom, New Orleans. This book succeeds foremost as testament to New Orleans’ rich modern culture, as a crisp and enticing glimpse into a world so often misrepresented or ignored.

While New Orleans was celebrating a return of the king in the 90′s with K-Doe’s revamped career, it would seem that it was no different than how Louisiana often operates—outside of the popular American consciousness. John Woo’s 1993 action hit Hard Target featured a Cajun Jean-Claude Van Damme among the typically depicted New Orleans of the era—down and dirty, with slow revolving ceiling fans, an endless track of blues slide guitar, and over-the-top fake Cajun accents. Even comic books echoed these tropes, like the X-Men character Gambit, a Cajun hustler whose weapon of choice was exploding playing cards, and whose hammed-up dialect in Saturday morning cartoons came across as primitive alien speak.

Meanwhile, news or K-Doe’s resurgence attracted record collectors from Germany, but for the rest of America, the radio played Stain’d and Missy Elliot. As culture changed, New Orleans became a spring break destination for Mardi Gras and the home of jazz but beyond that, wouldn’t enter into much of the national conversation.

Ernie K-Doe died in 2001. This didn’t stop Antoinette from making public appearances with a dummy made up to look like K-Doe, decked out in his own colorful wardrobe complete with weekly manicures for the mannequin hands. She would often set the K-Doe automaton outside of the Mother-In-Law Lounge with a transmitter hidden inside that played looping K-Doe-isms for all passersby to hear. In any other American city, this kind of post-mortem celebration would be considered odd or distasteful, but not in New Orleans. In a place where all things are celebrated, death is no exception. On Mardi Gras Day 2009, Miss Antionette passed away after closing up the bar. Word spread and the week following was filled with as much celebration of Antionette’s legacy as it was mourned for her loss.

The story of Ernie and Antionette K-Doe is special not just because of the music that K-Doe gave us, but because theirs is a story that could only be made in New Orleans, Louisiana. In a world saturated with perspectives about what a place like New Orleans is and isn’t, Sandmel has documented a fragment of a culture that is unique and often misunderstood. While Ernest Kador, Jr. could have been born anywhere, he wouldn’t have been Ernie K-Doe if it wasn’t for this city. To see this life from the outside would seem surreal or completely made up. One would hope that this book somehow makes its way into a rural high school library in Iowa or South Dakota or New Mexico and spreads the message to an unsuspecting youth: Burn K-Doe Burn!

A New Orleans poet abroad: Paul Killebrew reports from the Delta Mouth Literary Festival

posted May 2, 2012

Paul Killebrew poses in trepidation before his long journey to Baton Rouge and the Delta Mouth Literary Festival

The Delta Mouth Literary Festival took place in Baton Rouge last month, and among its docket of readers that spanned the three-day extravaganza was New Orleans’ own Paul Killebrew, poet extraordinaire and attorney for the Innocence Project. Paul agreed to chronicle his journey and experience for Room 220, and although his descriptions seem to insist that he was the lone uncomfortable poet among a sea of literate revelers, his impressions sound so familiar I can’t help but think he was just less drunk than everyone else. Regardless, there’s clearly a successful festival establishing itself in Baton Rouge, and we look forward to what they do next year.

I’m So Vain: A Report on the 2012 Delta Mouth Literary Festival
Baton Rouge, LA, March 15-17, 2012

By Paul Killebrew

I’m not exactly gung ho about poetry festivals. In 2002, I got myself roped into what was supposed to be the first of many annual St. George Poetry Festivals on Staten Island. As it turned out, there was only the one, but what a one it was: 30 or so readers over 12 hours in a condemned movie palace. The admission was $15 (which seemed outrageous to me at the time), the cavernous theater was like an indoor landfill upholstered in stained velvet, and my job was to make and sell t-shirts of the keepsake, rock-concert variety.

I made individual poet t-shirts. I cut stencils and screen-printed them with my dad. There was one with a donkey with James Tate’s name under it, an outline of the tops of a group of people’s heads over the name Mónica de la Torre, a goofy arrow-hat thing for Dara Wier, and about eight or nine others. I’d only met a few of the people I made shirts for, and it was actually not a terrible way to meet poets. About a third of the way into the poetry festival, a disheveled guy walked up to look at the shirts, stopped at one bearing a picture of Geraldine Ferraro, and said, “Hey, I’m that.” He was looking at the Anselm Berrigan shirt, and there he was, Anselm Berrigan.

That moment of introduction is about the best I’ve ever gotten out of a poetry festival. Yes, there were 30 readers at St. George, including many poets I love, but I remember none of their readings. It’s just too much poetry at once, and that turns out to be what I remember about most of the other poetry festivals I’ve been to: nothing.

Throw in the fact that poets tend to be terrible with logistics and light conversation, and each festival begins to feel like a mockumentary in the making.

So, I’m not gung ho for poetry festivals. But I got invited to read at the Delta Mouth Festival in Baton Rouge, and who was I to say no? It was a three-day festival, but, because my wife and I had a baby a couple of months ago, I had a nice, family-friendly reason for only showing up for the night of my reading, the last night of the festival.

I drove up to Baton Rouge baby- and wifeless, after a day of texting all of my BR friends about whether the venue for the reading, the Red Star, was baby friendly. It is not. It’s one of those infamy-positive, smoking-encouraged places many of us spent the critical last stages of our cognitive development. Sitcoms have taught us that a married man holds such times as driving alone on the highway on the tongue of his existence, like wine in that movie Sideways, but this is yet another area in which television tells a funny story because the true one is a little pathetic.

The Red Star on a non-poetry night

I made my way into the Red Star, which was not particularly smoky or populated yet, walked to the bar, and ordered a stiff glass of water. Earlier that day I had Google-imaged all of my fellow readers while repeating their names seven times in my head so that I wouldn’t come off as a complete ass when I met them. I figured out that the guy a few humans down the bar was Chris Shipman, author of Human-Carrying Flight Technology, a delightful book. I walked over and told him I was looking forward to hearing him read, I’m Paul Killebrew, oh thanks, hey we should trade books . . . and that about exhausted my repertoire. Chris had been in the middle of a conversation with a friend of his, a fellow professor at Baton Rouge Community College, and sensing the end of the rope I’d come to, Chris charitably introduced me to him. The man, whose name I’ve forgotten, was telling me about an interesting abroad program he’s setting up when a tall, thin, and stylish guy tapped me on the shoulder and introduced himself as Adam Atkinson, who, with Kim Vodicka, coordinated this year’s Delta Mouth. Both are getting MFAs at LSU and had done an impressive job getting the word out about the festival. Adam told me that attendance the previous two nights had been insane, more than a hundred people each night. At poetry readings. In Baton Rouge. There had even been a big spread in the local alt-newsweekly, with color photos and everything.

Kim Vodicka and Adam Atkinson, Delta Mouth organizers, know that adorable gets press

Around that time Ben Kopel (someone I know!) walked into the Red Star. I rushed over and gave him a hug that was a little more meaningful than I intended it to be. Ben lives in New Orleans and used to live in Baton Rouge before he left to toil in the poetry mines at U-Mass Amherst and Iowa City. His first book, Victory, recently came out from H_NGM_N Books. Ben told me he’d been staying with his folks in Baton Rouge so that he could go to the whole festival. Doug Kearney (author of The Black Automaton) had torn everyone a new spirit hole the night before, and the night before that had been an evening of Klingon folk songs with Christian Bök (author of Eunoia and Crystallography). I’ve seen Christian read a few times, and it’s always a spectacular show (“uvular” or “glottal” are adjectives that spring to mind), but I’ve never actually talked to him. Ben did after Christian’s reading and had this to report: “It’s like talking to Lil Wayne.”

Like minds Lil Wayne and Christian Bok

Then, the readings began. By this time the Red Star was packed, easily 75 people, probably more. People spilling out onto the street. Poetry reading. Baton Rouge.

Chris Shipman read first, easing us into the experience with poems that had a highly functional sense of humor, and he was followed by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram (author of But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise), who read her politico-scientific poems with precise musicality. It was all just so enjoyable. As Lillian-Yvonne read, a thought nudged its head out of the groundcover in my mind: as soon as she’s done, this crowd is going to get really bored. I’d brought along just one poem to read, a longish poem that takes about 17 minutes to get through. I took more gulps of water and tried to pay attention to the rest of Lillian-Yvonne’s reading, but the future was, as it always is, inescapable: Here was a room of heads nodding, mouths open in laughter, and they were about to hear 17 minutes of unfunny nonsense read by the only totally sober person in the bar. Awesome.

Thankfully no one actually fell asleep during my reading—not that I saw, anyway—and even if they did the nap didn’t last long because after me was Jennifer Tamayo (author of Red Mistakes Read Missed Aches Read Mistakes Red Missed Aches), who read through a gold megaphone. And was incredible.

I’m sure after all it was all said and done I probably seemed like the poet positioned most precariously on the autism spectrum, but, given the strength of the other readers, I’m happy to paraphrase Carly Simon and say that song wasn’t about me. After Jennifer was done and the poetry reading began morphing into an afterparty, I made a circle of thank yous, texted my wife that I was leaving, and slipped out the door, a single crosscurrent in the flow of bodies going the other direction. There was an amazing poetry festival happening in Baton Rouge, and everyone seemed to know it. I stopped once on the way home, at the Taco Bell in Gonzales, where I tried my first Cheesy Gordita Crunch. It was awful.

I am a little less afraid of the world because I know you are never more than a phone call away: A conversation between Jackie and Matt Sumell

posted Apr 30, 2012

Little brother, big sister, Matt and Jackie Sumell

I’ve been exchanging emails with Matt and Jackie Sumell for over a month now, hammering out details of the reading Matt will headline this Thursday, May 3, at 7 p.m. at the Antenna Gallery Outdoor Auxiliary (2116 St. Claude Ave.). Matt is coming from Los Angeles, and the idea to bring him out began in a conversation with his sister, Jackie, who is an artist living in New Orleans (you might remember her from her work with prisoner Herman Wallace).

Throughout the course of our correspondence I have begun to gain a slice of perspective on what looks, from my vantage, like an incredible sibling relationship. Theirs is clearly a secret and powerful world, with treacherous and wonderful topography only they can completely see and navigate. It was for this reason that I asked Jackie to do the honor of conducting the Room 220 interview with Matt in advance of his event. I expected something special, and I got it.

Along the way I fielded commentary from both of them on how it was going—they emailed back and forth for a few weeks—and when I received the final transcription, it came along with caveats about what to omit, who thought it should be omitted, and why.

I received an email from Matt that began, “NATE! Not to involve you further in the Sumell mess (and there’s always mess) my only issue with the interview is ONE question …”

He was referring to a question Jackie had asked about their mother, who died of cancer. Matt sometimes references her in his work, such as in the 2009 story he published in NOON, titled “Punching Jackie.” The question Jackie asked was a bit morbid, gallows humor, as was Matt’s response.

“It’s a little too ‘insidey’ of a joke, and dark,” Matt wrote to me about the question. “The dark I don’t mind necessarily, but I don’t want people to be confused, or to confuse author and narrator, which happens a lot.”

I cut the question because he was right—it fell flat and would have been confusing. Toward the end of the interview, when Matt begins asking Jackie questions, their mother comes up again, this time in a more articulate way.

Jackie sent me an email after turning in the transcription, too. It said, “Matt and I have some concerns about the edited version and it being permanently up on the internet forever, so could we see it before you publish it? If you say no, the only thing I can threaten you with is that we both have violent tendencies and will be in the same city.”

Maybe I’m a sucker for neurotic people, but my affection for them—and excitement for the event—increased. Below is the interview, lightly edited, and as of posting it, I haven’t sent it to the Sumells. If there’s a confrontation between the three of us Thursday night, maybe this is why. I hope you’ll be there to witness the spectacle.

—Nathan C. Martin

Jackie Sumell: So, you are answering my questions with a broken hand because you got in an emotional fistfight with a parked car, correct?

Matt Sumell: Correct. But look: There was a lot of celebratory drinking involved and it was a KIA Soul, and who doesn’t want to punch those?

Jackie: Where do you see yourself along the spectrum of asshole to badboy.

Matt: How do you answer this? Three?

Jackie: What’s the nicest thing you’ve done for someone?

Matt: Yeesh. This is a tough one. I do nice things for people all the time. In fact, just yesterday I hosed a bunch of dog vomit off a baby’s play mat for my friend Tricano while he was at work and he thought that was nice. But “nicest” doesn’t really pop out.

One of the nicest things I did wasn’t for a someone but a something. It was when we found that baby bird in the driveway. If you remember, Dad wanted to run it over with the car and put it out of its misery, but I got it in my head to save it. So what I did was mix a cup of cat food with a quarter cup of applesauce, a Tums Smooth Dissolve tablet ground to powder, a hardboiled egg, and some water until the whole thing was the approximate consistency of cooked oatmeal. I did that because that’s what it said to do online. It also said online to cut the end of a straw to make a small scoop, to feed it every fourteen to twenty minutes from sunrise to sunset, that you should never put liquids directly into its mouth or it could drown, to keep it at approximately 90 degrees, and that despite your best efforts, 90 – 95 percent will die, good luck. With luck like that I didn’t name him at first because I didn’t think I could stand losing another thing with a name. When he lasted a week, I called him Gary. I got crazy over him and built him this house thing with crumpled hand towels in a small Easter basket suspended from the handle of a large Easter basket with string. For décor’s and scent’s sake I paper-clamped on some pinecones and twigs, and then fastened a large oak leaf over the whole thing to shade him from the lamp. I’d also bought a large wooden G from the local arts and crafts store and painted it a blue and glued it to the big basket. I did all that because he was helpless and he needed me, and I have a thing in my heart for helpless things that need me.

Jackie: Did he live?

Matt: For a month or so, yeah. But it turned out that he wasn’t a he. If you remember, you’re the one who found out that Gary wasn’t a male sparrow but a female cardinal. I think.

Jackie: Oh yeah, then Dad “birdysat” for him one night, got wasted and stepped on Gary with his prosthetic leg while he was sleeping in the avery you made him/her on the porch—remember?!

Matt: Probable, but unproven. I, for one, want to give Dad the benefit of the doubt. He was trying.

Matt and Jackie Sumell, before they were famous and neurotic

Jackie: Okay, writer question time. What are your ten favorite books?

Matt: When asked this same question, Mary Gaitskill, whose work I admire a lot, answered: “I don’t think I can give an absolute set of ten favorites, because that varies with time; books come forward and fade back in one’s thinking. Some of the books I am going to put on this current list are there because I read them recently, and because they hit the spot right now. A year from now, it could be a quite different list.”

I think that’s smart and true, and for me that list right now is :

Thom Jones – The Pugilist At Rest
Barry Hannah – Airships
Michael Herr – Dispatches
Leonard Michaels – I Would Have Saved Them If I Could
Mark Richard – The Ice At the Bottom of the World
Frederick Exley – A Fan’s Notes
Geoffrey Wolff – A Day at the Beach
Aimee Bender – The Girl In The Flammable Skirt
Nicholson Baker – Mezzanine
George Saunders – Civilwarland In Bad Decline
Denis Johnson – Jesus’ Son
Michelle Latiolais – Widow

That’s twelve and still not enough. I also love Kurt Vonnetgut, Wells Tower, Leonard Gardner, Edward Hoagland, Patrick DeWitt, J.D. Salinger, Ron Carlson, Charles D’Ambrosio, Junot Diaz, Jim Krusoe, Marisa Matarazzo, Pickney Benedict and holy shit, William Gay, who just died.

Jackie: What percentage of eyebrows are you operating with right now?

Matt: What people need to know here is that I have alopecia areata, this lame autoimmune disease where I occasionally lose a small patch of hair on my head or eyebrows, and then it grows back whenever it feels like it. It’s the stupidest thing. I also have no hair on my legs, except my kneecaps, which is weird but girls are jealous ‘cause I’m so silky smooth. Anyway, I’d estimate I’m operating at 100 percent of my eyebrow capacity, but that’s like 50 percent of your eyebrow capacity, because you’re a hairy girl.

Remember that one time you volunteered to give me a haircut and shaved half my eyebrow off because you were mean and then I had to color it in with a Sharpie every day for months? That sucked.

Jackie: You’re welcome. In the song Yankee Doodle, is he calling the horse or the feather “macaroni”?

Matt: Yankee Doodle went to town riding on a pony. Ponies are different creatures than horses, Jackie. Although similar, horses are bigger.

Jackie: How would you describe your biggest accomplishment in life?

Matt: Well that’s difficult so here’s a few highlights:

- Getting into UC Irvine

- Being published in the Paris Review

- I once bedded a very attractive lady celebrity, and for the first and maybe only time, Dad was truly proud of me.

Jackie: What adjectives would your references use to describe you?

Matt: How would I know? It depends on the references. But if you’re making me guess: Little. Brownish. Dangerous.

Jackie: Who are your heroes?

Matt: I’m not sure who my heroes are now, but growing up I was a Lenny “Nails” Dykstra fan, while A.J. (our younger brother) was a Mookie Wilson fan. Mookie is now one of the most celebrated Mets of all time, widely known for his overall decency, kindness and positivity. Lenny Dykstra is in prison for grand theft auto and assault with a deadly weapon.

My turn. What’s the nicest thing you’ve done for anyone (and you can’t say dedicating your life’s work to bringing attention to Herman Wallace’s plight)?

Jackie: Giving up my child-bearing years to head a campaign on behalf of social justice & wrongful conviction is pretty fucking nice Matt. But nicest? I don’t know. I teach a lot of yoga, which is nice. I am raising a bunch of kids that I didn’t make—also nice. I took a bunch of kids from New Orleans to Ireland and fit the bill, then to Paris. Sometimes I pay people’s tolls unsuspectingly, I give away almost everything I own, bring food to two elderly people at least once a week, still visit the prison twice a month, I help families visit their loved ones who are incarcerated. But maybe the nicest thing I have ever done is play infinite amounts of Words With Friends with Dad—although I actually think asking about the mean things you and I didn’t do would probably source better answers.

Matt: Does he ever beat you at Words With Friends?

Jackie: Yes, often.

Matt: That’s ‘cause he cheats. So this new work of yours—that’s going to be on display at The Salon, 4432 Magazine Street, Opening Reception May 5, from 6 – 9 p.m.—is it scary to completely start over, to work in another medium altogether?

Jackie: Thanks for the plug, bro: Nope not scary at all. It’s totally refreshing, actually. I am an artist—I am not just an artist who makes monumental 10-year projects with wrongfully convicted Black Panthers. I love that this show is simple, and all the work is made through an engine of adjectives related to laughter, pleasure, silliness, joy, happiness, and surprise. I am pumped about it.

Matt: Who are your top five influences as an artist?

Jackie: Miss Piggy, The Anti-Coloring Book, Blondie, The Sprinkle Brigade, and Gabriel Orozco/Katya Bonnenfant (tie).

Matt: What was the last thing mom said to you? You never told me that.

Jackie: She said she was worried the most about me being able to recover from her death because apparently she saw me do a bad job of that when Grandpa Scobby died—and then when Aaron died—and that there was money hidden in the piano.

Matt: There was money in the piano?

Jackie: Yup 2k wrapped in tinfoil—we divided it up, even shared some with Dad (WTF?!). Some of it went to buying your dog Bacon with it.

Matt: Are you proud of me? Because I’m proud of you.

Jackie: You are a giant piece of my heart, Matt—the piece that includes pride and love and the ineffable. Not just because you are a great writer or a handsome younger brother who looks older, but because you are the most fearlessly loyal person I know—and you just happen to be my brother as some consequence for being short and dangerous, I guess. I am a little less afraid of the world because I know you are never more than a phone call away—is that pride?

Another love letter: A review of Constance Adler’s “My Bayou”

posted Apr 29, 2012

Adler's new book, and the author at home in 2010 (photo by Rusty Constanza/The Times-Picayune)

My Bayou: New Orleans Through the Eyes of a Lover
By Constance Adler
Michigan State University Press

Reviewed by Taylor Murrow

Everyone has his or her New Orleans story. There is the college freshman, eager to experience Bourbon Street in all of its neon-lit, to-go-drink glory. There is the vacationer who became transfixed by second lines and Southern hospitality and never left. There is the volunteer, the kind soul who ventured into the wasteland of post-Katrina and cleaned, gutted, and rebuilt. There is the native, a part of generations born and raised in the collective chaos and energy that is New Orleans, the person who knows no other reality—or maybe does, and just thinks the reality of New Orleans is the best. We are all a part of it, and it is an inseparable part of us. Constance Adler shares her own story in her recently released memoir, My Bayou: New Orleans Through the Eyes of a Lover.

Adler is a New Jersey native who came to New Orleans after leaving a life and career in New York as a journalist. She had a dream in which she took a train to New Orleans, and from there it seems her life’s path was set. She eventually made her way here, and like many of us who have stories, fell in love with New Orleans’ intoxicating scent. (Speaking of scent, I feel compelled to mention Adler’s comparison of New Orleans to a woman’s crotch, if New Jersey is considered the “armpit” of the nation: “Both noted for their moist environment, which gives rise to their complex and robust fragrance. Sometimes loved for their gamy nature, sometimes denigrated as filthy, these body parts posses the ability to both arouse and disgust. In the interstices of that attraction and repulsion lie their power and their mystery.”)

Overall, the picture Adler paints of New Orleans and Bayou St. John is a romantic one, indeed. She describes her first time in the city, “the sudden trumpeting of the paddleboat horn sounding on the Mississippi River, the dirty white paint on the shop fronts along Decatur Street, the brick side of a house slowly undressing as the aged mortar fell away, the deep hush of the night air, as if the city held its breath when I crossed Rampart Street into the Quarter.” The city is a living, breathing being, pulsing with ingenuity and resourcefulness. The Mississippi River and Bayou St. John are forces of vitality that possess their own dizzying power over the narrator. The spirituality, regeneration, and karmic influence of vodou assumes a prominent role in her personal narrative.

If this all sounds familiar, it’s mostly because My Bayou professes a love and reverence for New Orleans that many of us down here have heard before. For those who have never visited, reading My Bayou might feel akin to reading a fairy tale, or a description of some exotic land. Adler begins with the image of the pelican, a curious looking bird that has come to represent resilience for many New Orleanians: “Whenever the pelicans showed up, they bestowed a surprising air of benediction on the bayou, a visitation from some other world. Clearly they’re not from around here, you say to yourself when you see one of these prehistoric giants floating effortlessly on an updraft, poised in midair against a backdrop of rooftops.”

In addition to characterizing New Orleans, My Bayou is of course a memoir, shaped by Adler’s journey and experience in New Orleans pre and post Katrina. Intimate details of her life are shared, and I wish she had included more of those colorful vignettes. The parts that captivated me the most were the explorations into Adler’s relationship with her parents and, especially, her husband—something that gets somewhat glossed over until the end, even though it felt like a main point of tension the whole time. Katrina ravaged so much more than just buildings and architecture, and I felt disappointed with her marriage when she did. I wanted answers, too. Again, it is her imagery that evokes and keeps the momentum going in the story. After making a startling discovery about her husband, Adler wrote, “My brave man, nimble Sean, had feet of clay after all. And his shoes rained down on my head that night.”

Her story is one that is instantly relatable, and almost too much so. It is her inventive writing and imagery that carries the book’s weight, and not the narrative: “It was as though Katrina had turned the city’s pockets inside out and scattered the linty content into the bayou.” Reading some memoirs is akin to hearing someone describe a vivid dream they had the night before. They may express every savory detail, and you can tell how profoundly the dream affected them. But in the end, it will never impact you in the same way, because it was not your dream. It was not your story.

Adler tells her story of her life in New Orleans, a place that is bizarre and uncommon, a little uncouth at times, but always enamoring, even exhilarating. A place with all of those qualities, so diverse and resilient deserves all the praise and love letters in the world. But how many love letters does it need? To continue to engage in this sort of discourse seems a little self-indulgent. New Orleans is different and beautiful and special. And not just because we say so.

LIVE THOUGHT: Tamler Sommers in conversation with Billy Sothern, plus Pia Z. Ehrhardt and Kristina Robinson

EVENT: Tuesday May 8, 6:00pm - 8:00pm
@ Community Book Center (2523 Bayou Road)

The thinkers, the writers, the poets of our time, all together now at the Community Book Center. Come on. Come on.

Room 220 is pleased to present an evening of Live Thought with philosopher Tamler Sommers in conversation with attorney Billy Sothern at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, May 8, at the Community Book Center (2523 Bayou Road). They will discuss the philosophy of punishment and related topics. Readings by authors Pia Z. Ehrhardt and Kristina Robinson on the theme of criminal justice will precede the interview.

Tamler Sommers’ interviews on philosophy appear in The Believer and the Times Literary Supplement, and have been collected in the book A Very Bad Wizard: Morality Behind the Curtain, published by McSweeney’s . He is a respected figure in the academic field of moral philosophy, yet adeptly presents complex moral ideas in an accessible and often entertaining manner. An assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Houston, Sommers is presently at Tulane on a fellowship studying the philosophy of punishment. His most recent book, Relative Justice: Cultural Diversity, Free Will, and Moral Responsibility, was recently published by Princeton University Press.

Billy Sothern is an anti-death-penalty attorney in New Orleans, as well as a Soros Justice Media Fellow, a frequent contributor to The Nation, and author of Down in New Orleans: Reflections from a Drowned City (University of California Press). His writing has also appeared in The Believer and other publications, and is forthcoming in Immortal City: A New Orleans Atlas, edited by Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Snedecker.

Pia Z. Ehrhardt, author of Famous Fathers and Other Stories, will be unable to attend the event.

Kristina Robinson was born and raised in New Orleans. She is a graduate of Xavier University and presently a candidate for an MFA in poetry from the University of New Orleans. She is currently at work on a collection of essays on race, class, and shape-shifting, and blogs about hip hop, sexual politics, and other topics at Life in High Times.

LIVE PROSE: Matt Sumell, Anne Gisleson, and Yuri Hererra at the Antenna Gallery Outdoor Auxiliary (AOA)

EVENT: Thursday May 3, 7:00pm - 9:00pm
@ Antenna Gallery Outdoor Auxiliary (2116 St. Claude Ave., at Frenchmen Street)

From top: Matt Sumell, Anne Gisleson, and Yuri Hererra (as if gender and ethnicity didn't already give away who's who)

Room 220 is pleased to present an evening of live prose with three outstanding writers on Thursday, May 3, at 7 p.m., at the Antenna Gallery Outdoor Auxiliary (2116 St. Claude Ave., at Frenchmen Street, next door to Melvin’s). Matt Sumell, Anne Gisleson, and Yuri Herrera will read, music will be played, and complimentary libations will be on hand. It’s a party.

Matt Sumell’s story “Toast” is the lead piece of fiction in the current issue of The Paris Review. He was honored at the prestigious—and utterly fresh and renewed!—publication’s annual black-tie fundraiser recently with a warm welcome, and after the event he broke his hand in a fistfight with a parked car. His fiction is similar to that evening—at turns exquisite and sophisticated, absurd, hilarious, and somewhat violent in an oddly endearing way. Electric Literature has featured his work twice, and NOON published a story he wrote about his sister, Jackie Sumell, a New Orleans-based artist. Read an interview between Jackie and Matt here. We are pleased to have Matt out from his home in Los Angeles, where he is finishing his first collection of stories, Making Nice.

Anne Gisleson is a co-founder of Press Street and, although she’s completely reticent to admit it, has probably been its single staunchest driving force throughout the organization’s existence. An accomplished fiction writer in her own right, Gisleson turned exclusively to nonfiction following Hurricane Katrina. She has since published an array of stunning personal essays in The Atlantic, The Believer, Ecotone, and The Oxford American. The latter featured her celebrated rumination on the Saturn Bar, which was later republished in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She is a native New Orleanian and teaches at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts.

Yuri Herrera is widely considered one of the best young writers working in Spanish. His novel Trabajos del reino won the Premio Binacional de Novela Joven and received the Otras voces, otros ámbitos prize for the best novel published in Spain in 2008. His second novel, Señales que precederán al fin del mundo was a finalist for the Rómulo Gallegos Prize. His books have been translated into several languages, and this year Faber and Faber will release Kingdom Cons, an English translation of his first book. A native of Mexico and longtime resident of Mexico City, Herrera’s fiction often explores contemporary issues facing his country, including rampant drug violence and the narcocultura that has emerged with it. He currently teaches as a Mellon Fellow at the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane and lives in New Orleans.

On the absent Pulitzer: An interview with Susan Larson

posted Apr 23, 2012

Susan Larson and the Pulitzer. Who takes home the unawarded medal? Portrait by Tracie Morris Schaefer.

By Cate Czarnecki

Citing a failure to achieve consensus, the Pulitzer Prize committee declined to award a prize in the category of fiction this year for the first time since 1977. This decision has generated a lively debate within the American literary community over the impact of the prize—on authors as well as publishers—and its significance for contemporary American readers.

Susan Larson, former books editor of the Times-Picayune and host of The Reading Life on WWNO, has twice chaired the independent jury charged with narrowing down the many titles submitted to be considered for a Pulitzer. The jury chooses three nominations to send for judgment to the Pulitzer committee, which selects the year’s winner—or doesn’t.

The three finalist’s for this year’s unawarded Pulitzer were Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, and Train Dreams by Denis Johnson.

Larson spoke with Room 220 recently about her thoughts on the lack of an award this year, as well as her experience working (and reading) as a fiction critic in New Orleans.

Room 220: How did your years as the books editor of the Times-Picayune prepare you for your position on the fiction jury?

Susan Larson: My work at the Times-Picayune gave me incredible discipline as a reader—I’ve read almost a book a day for most of my adult life—as well as a good overview of American fiction, the ability to work under pressure, and of course, it instilled confidence in my choices.

Rm 220: Besides simply working through the sheer volume of fiction submissions, what do you think was the most challenging aspect of the jury process?

SL: I first chaired the fiction jury in 2009, so there were no surprises this time around—except at the end, of course! The great reward of this work is the process, and sharing the experience with my fellow jurors—this year they were Maureen Corrigan, a critic I so admire, and Michael Cunningham, one of my favorite novelists.

Working through the sheer volume of submissions is the most challenging part. What many people don’t realize is that a number of the submissions are self-published books that take up an enormous amount of time and rarely measure up to Pulitzer standards.

Our group hit its stride fairly early. My previous group of jurors—Richard Dillard and Nancy Pearl—worked through email. This time, we worked primarily via conference call. The three of us had one meeting early on, in Washington, D.C., during the National Book Festival. We talked about the first round of submissions we’d read over the summer, as well as our favorite books, so we had a good sense of what we were bringing to the table. As a veteran, one of my biggest contributions was the assurance that yes, it was possible: the books would all get read, and we would come up with three finalists. You really operate with a heightened sense of alertness doing this work—you have to bring your best self to the reading, to the conversation. Our meetings and exchanges were some of the most intense, rewarding and inspiring conversations I have ever had about literature. I will treasure them for the rest of my life.

Rm220: What were the particular qualities or themes you were looking for when approaching a submission, and what do you think distinguished the three novels that the jury ultimately selected?

SL: There’s always that Pulitzer ideal lurking in the back of your mind when you’re doing this reading. It’s directed, devotional, meditative, purposeful reading, because the prize has such history and staying power. But we weren’t looking for themes! All of us were looking for inventive and powerful language, compelling characters, and masterful storytelling—books that crackled with energy and life. These three finalists possess that in abundance. The Pale King, while unfinished, still seems to me an American masterpiece. I believe it was Michael who said, “There’s not a bum line in the book.” Train Dreams is simply an exquisite tale of the American West—there are scenes in that book that will haunt me forever. And Swamplandia!—all I have to do is hear the title and I am immediately transported to that vivid landscape. The three books are so different from one another, such fine representatives of the array of talent in American writing.

Rm220: Was there anything about Swamplandia! that appealed to you personally, given your career as a book editor in the South and the novel’s Southern Gothic style?

SL: Oh, yes. Swamplandia! was one of my favorite novels of the year. I loved its grand ambition—it’s a truly great American tall tale. Ava Bigtree is such an engaging character, and her losses are so real, so total. And yet she has such spirit! The book is marked by such love of landscape—how heartbreaking it is to read “The swamp is writing her own suicide note.” That’s certainly something that speaks to all of us who live in Louisiana, isn’t it? I can’t wait to read what Karen Russell writes next.

Swamplandia!, The Pale King, and Train Dreams were finalists for this year's Pulitzer in fiction. None won.

Rm220: There are some who may interpret the lack of an award as a comment on the state of contemporary American literature. In your opinion, what role does the Pulitzer Prize play in the world of literary fiction and how should the Committee’s decision be viewed by the American reader?

SL: I don’t believe the board was trying to send a message about the state of contemporary American literature. I hope that they were just bound by their own rules and were unable to bend. It’s such an important prize—and usually it means the book has staying power. I loved the conversations I had with readers after the jury I worked with in 2009 selected Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout, for the prize.This year, the conversations about the process have eclipsed the wonder of the books themselves. There are so many book clubs devoted to Pulitzer choices—everyone loves to debate their merits, predict outcomes, and suggest alternate choices. And these days, anything that drives a large readership to a particular book seems nothing short of a miracle. The best possible spin an American reader can put on this decision is that she should read all three books and decide for herself.

One of the things that surprised me the most on Monday was the public’s—and much of the media’s—misapprehension of the way the process works. Many seemed to think that the jury awarded the prize. The jury submits three finalists to the board in an unranked report. The jurors actually find out the result at the same time everyone else does.

Rm220: What other novels would you recommend from 2011 that didn’t make the final three? Were there any New Orleans authors up for consideration?

SL: Due to the confidential nature of the work, I don’t think I should comment on what other books were nominated. Speaking strictly for myself, among the books I admired most last year were Diana Abu-Jaber’s Birds of Paradise, Russell Banks’ The Lost Memory of Skin, Kevin Brockmeier’s The Illumination (a special favorite), Teju Cole’s Open City, Chad Harbach’s Art of Fielding, Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic, Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder, Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers, Hector Tobar’s Barbarian Nurseries, Justin Torres’ We the Animals, Amy Waldman’s The Submission, Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones (one of the remarkable novels inspired by the events of Hurricane Katrina).

Rm220: What are your thoughts on the tradition of literary fiction in New Orleans and do you still see the city as an incubator for literary thought and expression?

SL: It just keeps on coming, doesn’t it? Natives come of age, turn to writing, render their experiences; writers come to town, settle down, stake out a literary neighborhood and bring it to life; other writers drift through, visiting for short or extended stays, and take away something that later comes to light in a surprising way. New Orleans is a kind of True South on the literary compass—its allure remains strong. And in these post-Katrina years, everyone in the city has a sense of story, a hard-won tale of their own. We all have a stake in our urban narrative. That’s a rare quality in a city, to value the shared story, to collaborate in the large sense of public creativity. No end in sight!

The political philosophy of a man-made disaster: A review of THE NEOLIBERAL DELUGE

posted Apr 23, 2012

The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism, and the Remaking of New Orleans
Cedric Johnson (ed.)
University of Minnesota Press

Reviewed by Andy Cook

New Orleanians understand what is meant by the assertion that Hurricane Katrina was a man-made disaster. Sure, a hurricane is a force of nature, but the extent of its damage wouldn’t have been as great if the canal walls were stronger, the evacuation wasn’t bungled, and the MRGO didn’t exist. At first glance, all of these factors seem unfortunate, but largely unrelated. If one can draw any connection between the problems that led to Katrina being such a nightmare, it might simply be a worldview that values profit and expediency over a collective responsibility for the common good. This is where The Neoliberal Deluge begins.

The Neoliberal Deluge is not a book for everyone. It’s something like a more academic, more New Orleans-centric version of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, which is not exactly a page turner. After reading a random paragraph from Deluge over dinner, an artist friend of mine dropped the book on the table and sighed “I can’t believe you do this to yourself.” That is to say, Deluge is a dense read. Added to the fact that the collection of essays—ranging from political theory to media criticism to race studies—focuses on the problems of New Orleans’ post-Katrina recovery, and you have a book that the average reader probably won’t take to the beach. If, however, you have a keen interest in the socio-political examination of our fair city’s recovery process, Deluge should be on your list.

I’ll state at the outset that while studies of the New Orleans recovery process do interest me, I’m not a scholar of political science. As evidence of this, my first step upon picking up this book was to look up the definition of “neoliberal.” This is what I found on Wikipedia:

Neoliberalism is a contemporary political movement advocating economic liberalizations, free trade and open markets. Neoliberalism supports the privatization of nationalized industries, deregulation, and enhancing the role of the private sector in modern society. The term neoliberal today is often used as a general condemnation of economic liberalization policies and advocates.

Kind of what I figured, but nice to have it spelled out. Essentially, the state of affairs in the world today.

In this book, Johnson and his team of contributors attempt to illustrate how neoliberal policies both set the stage for the scale of Katrina’s devastation and shaped almost every aspect of the recovery process. As you may guess, their conclusions are quite damning.

That Katrina was mostly a man-made disaster, and that post-Katrina New Orleans is a very different place than it was before the storm, should not surprise anyone who’s paying attention. But the explanations of why have ranged widely over the last several years. Many point fingers at systemic racism, an indifferent government, and/or coastal degradation at the hands of the oil industry. Johnson et al. address these issues, but place them all under the umbrella of the neoliberal agenda. They argue that that nearly every failure in the Katrina story can be traced to the government’s abdication of responsibility for the common good into the hands of the private sector.

Johnson comes out swinging in his introduction, targeting the Bush administration for its decision to cut $641 billion from the Army Corps of Engineers budget in 2001, hobbling Louisiana Flood Control efforts in the following years. His point is not to blame Bush specifically, but to illustrate an example of how neoliberal downsizing of government limits our ability to act preventatively when it comes to disasters. In the following chapters, the contributing writers critically employ this lens on myriad aspects of the recovery process, breaking their subjects into four categories: Governance, Urbanity, Planning, and Inequality.

In the Governance portion, contributors Chris Russell and Chad Lavin zero in on pop-sociologist Malcolm Gladwell’s concept of the “tipping point” and how it has been effectively used by the neoliberal establishment as a sort of “get out of jail free” card. They cite former FEMA director Michael Brown’s use of the concept in his September 2005 congressional testimony, in which he explained what went wrong during the disaster response. In his testimony, Brown lists a number of extenuating circumstances surrounding the response, claiming, ala Gladwell’s metaphor, that the circumstances brought about tipping point, and afterward the whole thing went topsy-turvy, out of his control. Brown concludes, therefore, that FEMA was helpless to do anything about it. After all, who can argue with a tipping point? I read the book and thought it was a great idea!

Of course, the trouble with Brown’s argument is that FEMA’s job is to prepare for those tipping points and limit their fallout. According to Russell and Lavin, the neoliberal philosophy encouraged FEMA (and other governmental organizations like it) to set that point extremely low. By hollowing out its resources and limiting its scope of responsibilities, FEMA purposely shifted the purview of disaster response away from itself and into the hands of private organizations and charities. Enter Brad Pitt.

In the Planning portion of the book, Johnson himself takes a look at the Make It Right Foundation’s rebuilding efforts in the Lower Ninth Ward. After taking a moment to acknowledge the legitimately good work MIR has accomplished in the Lower Ninth (they have, after all, built some pretty cool houses for people to live in), he goes on to lament the essentially suburban nature of the neighborhood’s design (single family units, lots of grass, ample parking). This may at first come across as New Urbanist snobbery, if not for the context in which he places it: an era of “de-concentrating poverty.”

The last decade has seen countless public housing projects demolished in cities all across America. The proponents of these demolitions (typically developers and city officials) use the term “de-concentrating poverty” as a rationale for why this must happen. If we don’t let the poor people live so close together, they won’t behave so badly, is the idea. Johnson and a handful of other Deluge contributors argue that this rationale skirts the real issues of poverty (job loss, failing public education, addiction) in favor of a quick fix. But this rationale is, of course, popular with neoliberals, as it suggests that poverty can be “solved” by private developers instead of a government willing to invest in jobs and education.

Now Johnson’s MIR critique becomes clearer. When New Orleans lost nearly all of its public housing after Katrina (addressed further in another chapter of Deluge), many New Orleanians got the message that they were not welcome back. In the Lower Ninth rebuild, MIR had the opportunity to create a functional, dense, and diverse neighborhood that could have welcomed many, many more people back home. Instead, by deferring to an out-dated notion of ‘the American dream’ and a dubious notion of poverty de-concentration, they created a thinly populated and amenity-deficient architectural fantasyland.

Other chapters in Deluge cover issues like school choice in the Recovery School District, the Superdome as a tool in the prison-industrial complex, and what neoliberals really mean when they claim to be “colorblind.” With the exception of one chapter that deals with Sri Lanka, the book stays devotedly local (though I noticed that none of its contributors actually live in New Orleans). It sacrifices depth in any particular subject for breadth in order to depict the reach of neoliberalism’s insidious tentacles. For this reason, experts, particularly local ones, may find holes in the specifics of the writers’ assertions. Hopefully this won’t distract from the broader goal of the book: to use New Orleans’ recovery as a case study for the impact of the neoliberal philosophy on a beleaguered American city.

The Antenna Gallery Outdoor Auxiliary (AOA)

posted Apr 19, 2012

The Antenna Gallery Outdoor Auxiliary (Photo: Sophie Lvoff)

The Antenna Gallery Outdoor Auxiliary (AOA) is a multi-purpose reclaimed urban cultural space that functions at the intersection of blight and art, offering an ideal collaborative event venue for the burgeoning St. Claude Arts District…

Aw, who am I kidding? It’s a fucking concrete slab with some crumbling brick walls around it. This is what Press Street will be reduced to at the end of April, when our landlord kicks us out of the Antenna Gallery so she can move in her yoga studio. But it’s our concrete slab, goddammit, and we’re going to do great things with it, as long as the weather holds up. Stay tuned.

And thanks, Sophie Lvoff, for the pretty picture.

The AOA is located conveniently at 2116 St. Claude Avenue, within short walking distance of Melvin’s, Gene’s, and Walgreen’s.

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