Dimensions
135 x 200 x 20mm
Tom Piazza's brilliance bursts forth with this collection of writings on his passions in desperate times-literature, music, New Orleans, and America itself.
For his first book since his award-winning novel CITY OF REFUGE and his stunning and influential post-Katrina polemic WHY NEW ORLEANS MATTERS , Piazza selects the best of his writings on American roots music and musicians, including his Grammy-winning album notes for Martin Scorsese Presents: The Blues; his classic profile of bluegrass legend Jimmy Martin; essays on Jimmie Rodgers, Charley Patton, and Bob Dylan; and much more. In the book's second half, Piazza turns his attention to literature, politics, and the fate of post-Katrina New Orleans in articles and essays on subjects ranging from Charlie Chan movies to the life and work of Norman Mailer, from the New Orleans housing crisis to the BP oil spill, from Jelly Roll Morton's Library of Congress recordings to the future of books.
The book's final section is a meditation on fiction and its possibilities in our time, pointing the way forward for this protean, always surprising, and absolutely necessary writer.
