Big Gumbo

A book, a movie, and a trip to New Orleans…

Greetings from San Diego!

Well, my lingering COVID cough turned into a bronchial infection that no amount of ginger tea, lemon, and honey could squelch. My doctor ordered antibiotics, an inhaler, and cough syrup and I was laid up for a good part of last week. I was so out of it I pushed back my trip to New Orleans a day. I’m not out of the woods yet but happy to report that I’m on the mend, so let’s get on with it…

Arise and Walk by Barry Gifford

When I was in Ojai last summer I snagged a hardcover copy of this book, the second of Gifford’s Southern Nights series. It’s analogous to the Sailor & Lula series but the difference is that Gifford stopped at Baby Cat-Face, whereas the Sailor & Lula saga kept going and going. (In fact, there’s a subplot that involves Pace Ripley, Sailor and Lula’s son.) But Arise and Walk, despite its religious overtones, might be the most hardcore of the lot, which is really saying something.

It starts with a part of dental salesman anxiously awaiting the escorts they’ve ordered. When they arrive at their hotel suite, the pistol-packing transexuals order the men to strip and suck each other off and then piss in their faces. It’s an audacious start to a book that never really slows down. It’s got escaped cons, disgraced preachers, racist politicians, and a vigilante sect led by a teenage girl who doles out street justice for women who have been mistreated by men.

I brought Gifford along as a spiritual guide to the Crescent City and he did not disappoint.

The Outfit by Graham Moore

Recommended by a regular reader of Message from the Underworld (Hi Josh!), The Outfit is a bit of a throwback. The entire film takes place in a tailor’s shop that is being used by an Irish mob as a drop for payoffs and messages. The star of the film is the tailor, played by Mark Rylance, who must navigate the warring factions within the mob. Throughout the film he expertly wields a pair of shears as he plies his trade and you just know it’s only a matter of time before those shears are put to other uses…

It's a cross between Martin McDonagh and Miller’s Crossing, which was filmed in New Orleans. Normally I’d post the trailer but it gives away too much. If my description intrigues you at all, just watch it. It’s currently on Amazon Prime Video.

New Orleans

Although I had to cut my short trip short, I enjoyed slipping away to New Orleans for the weekend. It’s a place I’ve been to a handful of times but don’t expect I’ll ever truly understand. It’s unlike any other place in America.

Some of you may recall I visited the city in 2006 on the one-year anniversary of Katrina and did a few pieces—one for NPR, the other for the LA Weekly—and felt like a journalist. The highlight of that trip was sitting on the porch of a friend’s house across from City Park with a handful of writers and politicians who helped me make sense of what I’d seen and heard.

It was that same house I visited, along with a few other friends (Hi Pia, John & Dave!) and we drank coffee, watched football, made gumbo, and told stories. To clarify, I didn’t make the gumbo, but I ate a ton of it.

It was the kind of weekend I love, marked by the people I spent time with and not the sights we saw or things we did. That said, on Sunday morning we got coffee and beignets at Cafe Du Monde in the park and strolled around the sculpture garden, looking at the art juxtaposed with the Spanish moss hanging from the live oaks. When I stopped and tried to imagine the forces that brought this particular piece of art to this particular place at this particular moment in time it was like looking into another world.

Make It Stop

Thank you for all the comments and notes about last week’s announcement about my new novel, Make It Stop. I’ll have some information about events soon. In the meantime, the best thing you can do to help me and my book is preorder it. Do it directly through the publisher and get yourself a signed copy.