Your fascination with extremes - Wall Street in the 1980s, Silicon Valley in the 1990s - seems to be a consistent theme in your work. Why?
Probably because I grew up in New Orleans, which is the complete opposite of these worlds. New Orleans is a stable, unchanging world.
-Michael Lewis in Robert Boynton's book, The New New Journalism, pg. 252.
Creative Nonfiction, like Lewis's Moneyball, and Boynton's New New Journalism may be the next great American literary movement, but the massive displacement of New Orleaneans after Hurricane Katrina could be the beginning of a new Creative Class.
Wherever these creators flock, the city thrives with commerce - Washington, D.C., Boston, San Francisco, Austin. New Orleans was like that. It had "culture" in abundance: museums, jazz clubs, bars, coffee shops, and other quaint establishments where like-minded individuals - writers, artists, etc - got together to converse and create. It was one of those creative epicenters.
Now, its residents are being shuttled to various cities across the nation. Most will most likely return when they can, but many will remember what they have waiting for them back "home." When they are evicted from their make-shift shelters, they have no where to go. They are looking for jobs and trying to get back on their feet in our backyards and playgrounds. They will be competing for jobs and contributing to their new, host cities. Their lifestyles and cultures will follow them and will paint each town a new color.
Bring on this Jazz class. Bring on these poverty-stricken individuals with nothing else to lose. What's to hold them back from re-locating some of New Orleans into the Louisiana border states? We have Chinatowns and Little Mexicos across the country, why not New Orleans? Maybe they'll stay and blend-in and maybe they'll seek out a way to create their own subdivisions or suburbias. Who knows what the next few months will have on them and on us.
I think Michael Lewis may have been wrong about New Orleans, but then, again, he may have been referring to its people rather than the dotted lines on a roadmap.
ed: JH
Article comments
1 - Heloise
Huh? Most of the truly creative, contributing creative people from NOLA left there a long time ago and now live in the creative cities you mention.
The cooks are the one exception, most of them probably stayed behind and will relocate with their cooking which is the best in the world. But as for finding creativity from the majority of the people who left--it was not there when they were there why should they export it now?
I don't see the connection. You must be thinking of some other New Orleans. The creative, I repeat the creative and contributing people of New Orleans left there a long time ago. Including this author.
Now, if cuisine makes for a complete and creative culture in an urban niche as some "little New Orleans" in the corner of LA then maybe that is possible. But is that what you are talking about, or the book?
And remember whatever Creole/French/Cajun culture that is in NOLA was there for a long time and the folks who milked it, are getting something that has already been established--such as the French Quarters, and its singular architecture.
What's left in NOLA is not only poor, black, black people, but lots of Jews who have moved in over the last 10 years and started picking the bones off that town and buying up property. Many middle class blacks were fleeing and there were lots of homes for sale too. Thus most of the "whites" CNN and other networks are showing are in fact transplanted Jews. Why? Because they have arrived there to milk the existing culture.
I use the term white loosely as those who have been there for generations are surely mixed with something other than Anglo-Saxon.
Heloise
2 - Eric Berlin
Heloise -- That's one of the most disturbingly racist diatribes I've read in a long, long time.
BTW -- Thank you for distinguishing the following for us:
- "poor, black" vs. "black people"
- "whites" vs. "Anglo-Saxon" whites
- Jews: The People Who Enjoy "milking" and "picking the bones" of other cultures
I can think of a certain culture where you'd have fit right in, Heloise.
3 - Heloise
I don't subscribe to Political Correctness Weekly as you probably do.
It is not I who makes these distinctions but you, white folks. You know how quickly a white person will correct you and tell you someone is not white? Meaning that they are not white bread, anglo-saxon?
And yes, there is a difference. Despite whatever, blacker skinned black people are more discriminated against than are lighter or mixed people.
Did you hear the latest scammers caught one black one white? Well the FEMA people had given this ugly, black man 200 and something dollars, he had not lived in NOLA for years, and was caught.
Then they showed a skinny ugly white man and he was given a TWO THOUSAND dollar card. He was also caught. He was trying to buy a car with it.
NOw I ask you why did the ugly black guy get only 200 to waste and the ugly white guy get 10X that?
I rest my case.
Heloise
4 - Heloise
If you watched Winton Marsalis take a boat ride through NOLA you
will note that he went down Music street on this boat. He is a
musician and noted Humanity and Music streets. I jumped when he said
Music Street because I know my uncle has a two-story home on Music
street. And sure enough they passed his block which is all under
water now.
I spoke to my cousin who visited California who talked to some of
our evacuated relatives. She and I both had a brother and their
family to leave NOLA. She spoke to her brother, I still have not
reached my brother but know that he is now in California also. What can I say his wife saved HIS life.
Anyway, my cousin said her brother (who happened to have a home in the DRY Garden District) had lots of stories. He even left 30 gallons of spring water and gasoline in cans for his neighbors who would not evacuate when he did. It seems that after getting their families out safely the men of our
family went back to NOLA and collectively must have saved 100
people using cars, boats and trucks.
My brother did not return. In fact it was his wife who saved
him because he did not want to go to Alabama with her and her son.
But she must have convinced him and thus they drove to Alabama and
stayed in a hotel for a while.
This was good news. But my cousin also told me that this same uncle
who had the flooded home on Music street had built a brand new
beautiful home in Pass Christian. I had never heard of this town
until they announced on TV that it was basically wiped out. It seems
that his new home there was still standing among the ruins of the
other homes.
Even though all my relatives who live/d in NOLA have nice homes and are middle class they grew up dirt poor as children. Surviving all fourteen of them on banana sandwiches and the fruit that grew in the yard on Galvez street in the 9th ward, the now ruined 9th ward. The place they began but did not spend their lives in.
Heloise
5 - Rach
I find that racists can be any colour. In the hospital I've noticed that blacks get less care even it seems, from black nurses.
I don't think racism is acceptable even if it is edgy or comes from a person of colour or even if the person writes articulate and interesting things as Heloise does.
For me to think there is a God, I have to think this creator wanted all the colours.
6 - Sam Boogliodemus
Investment tip!
Buy up crack and Cadillac stock. Especially 'triple black'.
7 - Heloise
Nobody said that God did not want all colors. That's really my point. If he did then we would all be cardboard cutouts of each other and reality stripped to its bare naked self.
We would know reality.
Heloise
PS: Black people wised up about crack and did not go after it as much as they would have. They were educated as to its real nature. However, many were sucked in by it and did not have the money to buy the obligatory caddy.