So Many Books About 9/11; So Few About Katrina

(The New Republic)  Chloe Schama is the assistant managing editor of The New Republic.

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Since 2001, fiction based on September 11 has become almost de rigueur among major novelists writing in English. In the aftermath of the attacks on the Word Trade Center, many of the most famous authors of our time have weighed in on the attacks, depicting the ways large and small in which they altered people's lives. Some hypothesized possible motivations behind the terrorists' actions: John Updike in Terrorist (2006) and Martin Amis in the short story "The Last Days of Muhammad Atta" (2006). Others used the events as narrative bookends: Don DeLillo's Falling Man (2007) and Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children (2006) are two examples. Some novels commented more indirectly: At the start of Ian McEwan's Saturday (2005), the protagonist sees a plane flying low and fears a terrorist attack, while, in Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), the main character's quest to unravel a personal mystery is motivated by his father's death in the World Trade Center.

Meanwhile, the literary response to Hurricane Katrina, the other great American disaster of the last decade, has been almost nonexistent. In the five years since Katrina, almost no major literary figure has similarly illustrated the effects of the hurricane. There have been some works: notably, Dave Eggers's sparse and affecting Zeitoun (2009)-not a novel, but a literary work nonetheless; Josh Neufeld's well-received comic book, A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge, which traces the experience of seven characters navigating the city during and after Katrina; and Tom Piazza's 2008 novel, City of Refuge, which takes place in New Orleans pre- and post-Katrina and chronicles the lives of two families confronting the storm. But that's about it-which raises the obvious question of why.

September 11 and Hurricane Katrina are not equivalent events, of course, but both led to unprecedented and unanticipated horrors that jolted people from their ordinary lives and created innumerable individual tragedies-ripe material for literature. So what is it about Katrina that has left novelists uninspired?

There are some obvious reasons for the disparate literary output. It has been only five years since the hurricane and nine since September 11. New York City is a major population center, as well as a writers' town; consequently, more novelists had first-hand experience with September 11 than with Katrina. While the total number of people who died as a result of Katrina is still somewhat obscure-Louisiana officially recognizes 1,464 victims-the immediate death toll of September 11 was more severe: the State Department says it was approximately 3,000. By that straightforward measure, the tragic ramifications of the attacks were greater.

There are more abstract and philosophical reasons that could also explain the difference. A Manichean dynamic is more readily apparent with September 11; identifiable humans caused the attacks and murdered innocents, while Katrina and its aftershocks were the result of nature and mismanagement. These latter two forces have longstanding precedents and, in the case of mismanagement, dull bureaucratic justifications. Although the consequences of September 11 were lingering and wide-ranging, the tragedy was immediately apparent, taking place on one terrible morning. Katrina, on the other hand, unfolded over the course of several days that dragged into weeks and months. Perhaps single-blow tragedies capture the imagination with greater force.

But the lack of a strong literary response to the hurricane appears to have consequences. "Five years later, Katrina's legacy seems less tangible than I'd imagined it would be," Josh Levin, a New Orleans native, recently wrote in Slate. Perhaps, in part, this is because our novelists have not yet turned to it. For centuries, novels have done the important job of making devastation more concrete for people by examining individual experience, real or fictional, with that devastation. The importance of novels, in this respect, is far too large to scrutinize here, but it has clearly persisted not only in the past but in our own time as well. Indeed, in addition to motivating the many authors who've written about September 11, this imperative has influenced the few who have written about Katrina. At the end of Zeitoun, Eggers notes that he wrote the book in orderto give a story that had been briefly covered in a McSweeney's anthology the space it deserved. Neufeld told The New York Times that he adapted the real-life stories he discovered into a comic book in order to "make the emotional truth of the stories much clearer." And Tom Piazza says that he wrote City of Refuge because he "wanted readers to have an actual experience. … You can't understand the kind of experience that people in New Orleans went through from an air-conditioned [tour] bus. You need to get the mud and the water and the blood all over you."

The more pronounced creative response to Katrina has taken place on film. Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009) and David Simon and Eric Overmerer's TV series Treme (2010) are two examples of auteur-driven works, and there have also been a number of well-received documentaries by household-name directors, including a two-part series by Spike Lee. Mainstream television has also looked to New Orleans, hoping to capture (however superficially) some of the poignancy associated with the city's revival. "New Orleans … is coming back and we're hoping our cast members and the series can play a small role in the city's rebirth," said Jon Murray, executive producer of MTV's "The Real World: New Orleans."And why is it that the response to Katrina has occurred largely on screen? Recently, Fresh Air contributor David Bianculli posited that television "brings [Katrina] back the … way we first experienced it." We saw the disaster unfolding in real time on our TV screens, and so it makes sense to go back to them to remember it.

But a film-based response to Katrina is ultimately insufficient. After all, we saw September 11 happen on television, too, yet we've still turned to books to relive it, understand its wide-ranging consequences, and help order the overwhelming emotions it has elicited. Indeed, no amount of documentary footage eliminates the need for novels that would impress the horrors of Katrina upon our collective consciousness.

Novelists have done a commendable job exposing us to the dust and the rubble of September 11. It's time for more of them to churn the mud, water, blood, and decay wrought by Katrina.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
By Chloe Schama:
Reprinted with permission from The New Republic.

[MaryAnnaEvans]

My most recent novel, Floodgates, dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. My editor didn't want me to do the book, arguing that New Orleans had "been done." Perhaps other editors share her opinion, and it is not authors who are to blame for any lack of books on the subject. If the publishing industry is not interested in Katrina-related books, then writers can write thousands of them, but they will never appear on the shelves of your neighborhood bookstore.

My editor and I discussed the reasons I thought my Katrina book would be different from others she'd seen. I pointed out that since I write about an archaeologist, Katrina presents a very rare situation in which an excavation will uncover a layer of history that is only five years old, but it's still history. Just because we remember it doesn't mean it isn't history.

I told her the story was important to me, because I grew up a hundred miles from New Orleans, and I had family there. I also worked offshore during college and spent a good bit of time there then.

The comment that swayed my editor into letting me write the book, though was this: "I don't believe that New Orleans has 'been done' by a licensed engineer who just *might* have something to say about the levee failures."

She let me do the book, but she said she didn't like the title and we'd revisit it after I showed her the first hundred pages. When she saw the backstory I'd created, depicting a civil engineer in the 1800s who witnessed the construction of the engineering marvel that is the New Orleans drainage system, she said she understood where I was going with the title, and I could keep it. FLOODGATES was published in July 2009 to nice reviews in places like NEW ORLEANS LIVING and neworleans.com. It was well-received by publishing industry journals, as well, receiving a starred review from BOOKLIST.

My current work-in-progress was to have been set in Key West, until the BP oil spill happened. Watching the tragedy from the viewpoint of someone with a personal history in the area, and an engineering license, and several years of experience as an environmental consultant, and memories of a summer spent working offshore in the Gulf, I knew that I needed to deal with the spill in my work. I made a research trip to south Louisiana in June that I described in my blog here: http://maryannaevans.blogspot.com/2010/06/matter-of-perspective-novel-writing.html

I'm working now on the oil spill book, PLUNDER, and it will be released in October 2011.

Thanks for an interesting post. Katrina's not behind us yet, and I think we need to remember what happened in New Orleans in 2005.

Mary Anna Evans
http://www.maryannaevans.com

[Idntv]

One, 9-11 - you were at work and had no way of knowing that a plane was going to fly into your building... Two, Katrina - You knew that you lived in a place that was unsafe to life in. Even working at minimum wage, you could have found work someplace else. BUT - YOU are a NOLA.... YOU will not live any place else. YOU would not live any place else. YOU could care less if the place is unsafe, YOU are a NOLA..... So SUFFER!!!

[PatriotPaul]

Maybe because there's so many ignorant Americans like the first commenter we need even more non-fiction books out there before the fiction is produced.

Why do some people who comment continue to perpetuate myths about Katrina? Does it fit some racist agenda? Do they get all their news from Fox "News"? Is the truth simply too painful for them to acknowledge?

About 1/2 of NOLA is actually above sea level while there are many more vulnerable cities in the U.S. that are below sea level and "protected" by vulnerable levees. NOLA was founded in 1718. How long has your city been around?

Since someone will probably bring up the flooded busses as well I'll address that. Of those 100 flooded buses only about 1/2 were operable. Assuming then that those were used it would have made a small dent, relocating about 5,000 of 50,000 people. And who was going to drive those? The drivers had almost all evacuated with their own families.

And most are still unaware the Airport, Amtrak, and Greyhound all shut down a day before the mandatory evacuation. Many of us could not get out in time. Still, evacuation experts rate the 85-90% evacuation rate as one of the highest ever.

The supposed rapes and murders at the Superdome and the shooting of helicopters outside the Dome. Authorities could not substantiate any, but it sure can demonize a City when the media perpetuates these rumors.

And finally, yes Katrina did obliterate many communities along the MS Gulf Coast, but for New Orleans it was the failed Army Corps of Engineers' levees that caused most of the death and destruction in the City.

Paul Harris
Author, "Diary From the Dome, Reflections on Fear and Privilege During Katrina"

[shazbat34]

Racist agenda? How can you expect to be taken seriously with such drivel?

[tsigili]

A book about Katrina? What? How tens of thousands of fools ignored warnings to evacuate, and how the state and the city, failed in their own actions to force those people to evacuate, where they knew full well, there was a very high risk?

I doubt anyone is in need of the facts.......we were deluged with them in the media, and they are well known. You can't save foolish people from themselves.

[snpaul63]

Unfortunately, this attitude is exactly why books reflecting the experiences of those impacted by Katrina are needed. The misperception that thousands of "fools" chose not to evacuate is one that needs to be addrssed. The majority of those stranded were not there by choice but by economics.

Imagine you're one of the millions of working poor in this country, one of those invisible souls who attempts to raise their family on minimum wage or less. Imagine that you work every day but yours is a hand to mouth struggle for survival. Imagine that after you pay your rent, keep your utilities going and buy diapers you might have $20 left. Now imagine someone tells you that you have to leave your home. Today. You don't even have a bank account let alone savings. You don't have a car and your extended family is in the same finanacial circumstance that you are. Airplanes and buses cost money which you don't have. You're stranded. But your story is not the one that is told. Neither is the story of families that chose to stay because leaving in governemnt provided transportation meant that they would be separated with loved ones taken to an unknown destination. In fact it took several months for some families to be reunited, and in some cases members were taken to different states. Imagine you're airlifted to TX, and you don't even know where you're going until you land. Imagine that the daughter you've been separated from is diabetic. Now imagine it takes you a month to learn she was sent to UT and another 2 months to work of the logistics of being reunited. I don't think that Americans were deluged with these kinds of 'facts'.

In my personal and humble opinion I believe we don't see much about Katrina in serious literature because whether we admit it or not America is stratified by class and many see the loss of life Katrina wrought as the result of poor decisions by poor people who deserved what they got because they're poor. After all if they were smarter they wouldn't be poor, right?

[Rekaya]

I think there are fewer books about Katrina than 9-11, but not few. The last post pointed some out already. The last chapter in my book, "The Food Temptress," is about Hurricane Katrina. The sequel, "The Food Enchantress," picks up with my character being rescued from her rooftop after the storm. Since I was living there at the time, I give details about Katrina and the conditions. Though fiction, it touched a nerve with some of my readers from New Orleans.

[askagain]

Just look at the topics. One is about a hurricane, a natural disaster, and the other is about ongoing world terrorism, a man-made occurance. Terrorism has become a daily event which has us involved in two wars. It seems natural that there would be more interest in writing about an ongoing problem such as terrorism than an occurance of nature. Just my opinion.

[CherieClaire]

I'm a book reviewer who specializes in Louisiana books (www.LouisianaBookNews.com) and think you have missed some wonderful novels. Here are several fictional works written about Katrina:

The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke
Recovering Charles by Jason F. Wright
Tubby Meets Katrina by Tony Dunbar
A Little Bit Ruined by Patty Friedman
After the Floods by Bruce Henricksen
Last Known Victim by Erica Spindler
Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes (for young readers)

And two outstanding novels that deal with previous floods with obvious nods to Katrina:
The Sound of Building Coffins by Louis Maistros
The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish by Elise Blackwell