By John Hood

“New Orleans isn’t a city. It’s a Petrarchan sonnet. There’s no other place on the planet like it.”

So states James Lee Burke in a recent L.A. Times Op-Ed piece heralding the Big Easy’s hard charms. And he’s right. The town is beyond novel, which might account for all the great writing that’s come from and of the place.

But if Petrarch were to now sling a sonnet about the Crescent City, it’s highly unlikely his little song would resemble the Triumphs for which he is perhaps best known. Sure, the master sonneteer would probably stick to the strict rhyme scheme that is the form’s wont, yet there’s no way any “father of Humanism” could possibly adhere to the tradition’s logical structure — not after all the illogical inhumanity that was Katrina.

 

Which is why it’s essential that we have hard-boiled gentlemen scribes like James Lee Burke around to write it all up — these stories not only need to be told, they need to be told well, in the parlance of our day. More, these stories demand to be told truthfully.

 

In both The Tin Roof Blowdown (Simon and Schuster, $26) and Jesus Out to Sea (S&S, $14), the wily wise man words his way right into the eye of the storm — the mount of its fury, the wring of its wrath and the continuing fall of its aftermath — and he does so with a candor seldom seen in contemporary American letters, let alone in the high pulp of which Burke is such a master.

 

As the world by now well knows, Katrina’s a heartbreaking tale, and Blowdown, the 16th in Burke’s Dave Robicheaux spree, takes off where the ache of Pegasus Descending promised he’d begin — with the crushing unthinkable of it all, in both fact and fiction. As lord Jim told NPR: “Besides the characters, there’s nothing made up.” In other words: The mud, the blood, the flood, the beer, it’s all here, in unflinching black and white.

 

But it is through the characters that Burke really gets to the truth of the matter: the junkie priest upon the roof of a drowning church; the gangster kingpin with his floral brutality; the petty thieves and their murderous indoctrination into the big leagues — each morally murkier than the Big Muddy of which they are composed.

 

And, of course, it is through the series’ mainstays that we come closest to the bitter know: Robicheaux, the Quixote-meets-McGee who never met a right he didn’t wanna uphold, and his Sancho Panza, Clete Purcell, who never met a wrong he didn’t wanna right cross.

 

Jesus, in no contrast, is a book of great character, good, bad and — like the most of us — in between. A collection of earlier shorts culled from such sheets as Epoch, Shenandoah and The Southern Review, in addition to more recent forays into Iraq and Katrina, Jesus proves that Burke can be as deep in brief as he is when he goes long. The popularity of its titular story also just so happens to be the reason Esquire is again regularly running fiction.

Still, even these wiles cannot undo the fact that on the eve of Katrina’s second anniversary, New Orleans, unfortunately, still exists at the untender mercy of water, or, as Burke so poetically describes it, “not unlike a saucer floating in a flooded sink.” “Each year a landmass the size of Manhattan Island is eroded away by the tidal influences of the Gulf,” says the man, and, according to the embattled Corps of Engineers, it won’t be till 2011 — if then — that the town will be able to withstand even a 1-in-100 storm.

Considering Katrina was a 1-in-386, that forecast seems less than encouraging.

Yet, hard as it has been hit, the city of “convicts and whores, slaves and mystics, pirates” and gangsters, Dixieland and jazz, remains; a shadow perhaps, but one ever ready to loom again, in our myth and in our soul.

We caught up with the two-time Edgar Award-winning wordslinger whose books have become such an integral part of that myth, and that soul; here’s what he had to say:

 

Can the Crescent City ever regain its former glory?

That question is problematic. The question I have to ask myself is this: Will the same people who have dramatically increased the numbers of the poor and the rich in this country channel large amounts of money into rebuilding the neighborhoods of poor and black people now? Maybe they will. But if that is their intention, I’ve yet to see it.

 

Can it be saved from another catastrophe?

Engineering can do anything. Can San Fran be saved from an earthquake? Or Los Angeles? Or NYC from another terrorist attack? It seems that only New Orleans gets a red line drawn through its name. 

 

What about the Army Corps Task Force Hope’s “Great Wall of Louisiana” —  think that’ll do the trick?

I believe the Corps of Engineers acted bravely in accepting blame for their mistakes. I think the problem of eroding wetlands on the Gulf Coast will have to be addressed, as well as that of rebuilding or strengthening the levee system.

 

Isn’t “Hope” something of a misnomer?

“Hope” and “Purpose” are inextricably linked. New Orleans can come back, just like our country can. But we’ll have to start doing things differently.

 

Have you seen Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke? And? 

I saw it two weeks ago. It’s a very powerful documentary, one that makes you weep.

 

In The Blowdown, you single out the Coast Guard for special heroics during Katrina — what did they do?

The Coast Guard saved perhaps 33,000 people. God bless every man and woman who wears their uniform.

 

Are there any other heroes worth citing?

The people of New Orleans themselves.

 

When you’re in New Orleans, do you still hang at the Café du Monde?

You bet, partner. We attend Mass at St. Louis Cathedral, then walk across Jackson Square to the Café and drink café au lait and eat beignets that only God makes.

 

Where else? 

I love the Quarter in the early morning hours, when the artists are setting up their easels and the air is still cool and smells of damp store and flowers opening in the shade.

 

Might there be perhaps a political rather than a criminal motive behind the intense federal investigations of some of New Orleans’ politicians?

 

Corrupt and dishonest politicians belong on chain gangs. Those who lie and lead their nations into wars that cause suffering for hundreds of thousands of people probably have a special room in hell waiting for them.

 

If Robicheaux were mayor, what would he do (differently)? 

Sell Kennebunkport and use the proceeds to throw a street party from the Lower Ninth Ward to the far side of the Huey Long Bridge.

Hood is online at therealjohnhood.com. Comments? E-mail letters@miamisunpost.com.