Tuesday, September 7, 2010

A Howling in the Wires: An Anthology of Writing from Postdiluvian New Orleans

This afternoon I just received my copy of A Howling in the Wires a collection mostly just-after-or around-Katrina writings edited by Sam Jasper and Mark Folse, published Gallatin & Toulouse Press. As of this posting I'm about a quarter of the way through, and I'm buzzing with the awful vitality of the volume. I learned about the collection from a facebook posting by an old friend, Greg Peters (frenemy? the man can wear the hell out of a leather kilt, but he once told me he hated me when I was funnier than he was, which had to be a tough way for him to live). Greg's got the first two entries, and entries is the right term for the pieces range wildly from literary to journalistic to emergency bulletin style, deliberately unpolished to retain the immediacy of their original expression--that decision was GENIUS, btw. Anyway, the book has my neck hairs rising. I'm serious. So far Howling is both rough and sentimental, sitting somewhere between Robert Smallwood's ragged, good, but is-it-completely-honest? The Five People You Meet in Hell:Surviving Katrina and David Eggars' mournful and smoothly crafted Zeitoun.

Shit, I even like the poetry.

More soon.

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