1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina

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Chris Rose has written one of the most eloquent love songs for the hard-hit and painfully depressed City of New Orleans. It's like a love song to an embittered lover, but a lover nonetheless. Rose, resident funny man of The Times-Picayune newspaper, is the chief troubadour of the Big Easy. He is the most trusted and read commentator in the city. In his book titled 1 Dead in Attic, you will find some of Mr. Rose's best columns from the Picayune, stories detailing life in an American war zone. Rose waxes poetic with "Refrigerator Town." He writes, "In Refrigerator Town there was a Council full of Clowns...." Well said. At least one of these clowns just made a plea deal with the feds and will be heading to jail. He takes stock in his own life with "Lurching Towards Babylon." He says, "I spend my days like everyone else, lurching from one `episode' to the next, just trying live, just trying to survive, just trying not to crack up and embarrass myself, my family and my newspaper." In the piece he goes on to tell us how he confronts a litterer on the streets of New Orleans (a city full of litter), and what's the reason? IT MATTERS! Dang it, it matters now more than ever. Everything matters in a place like this. In Louisiana after the storm, it matters. Rose is ready to kick tail over litter, to take his risks. The book is like this at every turn. Either Rose is being courageous by simply telling us the truth or he's telling us about someone else's act of courage. The title, 1 Dead in Attic, is pretty much a downer and so is the post-Katrina landscape, but there's a story beneath the story, and Rose gives it to us in little anecdotes and examples of pure human triumph. In addition to the essays, you'll find numerous black and white photographs by Charlie Varley, the kind of pictures that illustrate the gravity of daily life in the City that Care Forgot. For those interested in learning more about Louisiana, the book stands alongside the giants of Louisiana literature and history: All the King's Men (Robert Penn Warren), The Moviegoer (Walker Percy), The Awakening (Kate Chopin), The Earl of Louisiana (A.J. Liebling), Huey Long (T. Harry Williams), Welding with Children (Tim Gautreaux), Modern Baptists (James Wilcox), A Lesson Before Dying (Ernest Gaines), and Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 (John Barry), among others. I highly recommend 1 Dead in Attic for its detailed and passionate glimpse of real life in New Orleans post-Katrina. One might call it the best "post-apocalypse" book on New Orleans yet. Reviewed by Dayne Sherman, Author of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise, a novel about Louisiana

Chris Rose was a Pulitzer nominee for his post-Katrina writing. I was glad to see the Times-Picayune snag some well-deserved Pulitzers, but sad that Nicholas Kristof (however much I like his columns) edged out Rose. In any event, this is a stand-out collection of columns--really, in most cases, very brief essays. When I first read the book, in a small-press edition, it stayed with me for days. No matter what else I was reading or doing, I saw the people Rose writes about, sitting on door stoops, calling him "baby" in grocery stores, struggling to rebuild after the unthinkable, taping up their stinking refrigerators. In his stories about trying to raise children, battling depression, and yes, refrigerators, Rose makes it clear that the hurricane was an event, but Katrina is a condition New Orleans struggles with every day. A year later, this book is now available in a new, expanded edition. One or two essays are a little over-sentimental, but never mind. This is an amazing book. (Read it alongside, or after, "Breach of Faith.") Rose's direct prose and grim, funny, heart-ful imagery make this book essential reading for any caring person, and a must for library collections.

Friends in the New Orleans area recommended this book. I LOVED it. Then I gave it to my husband and my sister and they loved it too. Written by a reporter from the New Orleans Times Picayune newspaper, who was there during those awful early days of the aftermath. I was there 3 months after Katrina and met locals who shared stories similar to his. The book is engrossing and sad but, believe it or not, it's actually funny in some parts. Chris Rose tells his story beautifully. This is a book people from New Orleans will give to their grandchildren to explain what it was really like after Katrina.

I bought this book after hearing Chris Rose talk about it on NPR. I was intrigued by the title and moved by his commentary. As I recall, he either read in its entirety or discussed "Despair," the account of a "New Orleans girl" who married a man from Atlanta who later committed suicide. Mr. Rose says in his introduction that these are most of the columns that he wrote for THE TIMES-PICAYUNE between August 29, 2005 and New Years Day, 2006. Photographs by Charlie Varley are included with the essays. Mr. Rose ably puts a face on the tragedy of Katrina and captures the sorrows but resilience of the locals, creating portraits of people you will not soon forget: the magnet man, an artist who now collects refrigerator magnets to cover his 1994 Chevy Blazer; the cat lady who never left the city and lives with thirty-four cats; Finis Shellnut who supplies fine frozen steaks from a freezer in the abandoned Antoine's to the California National Guard et al. In another corner is Rev. Bill Shanks who apparently believes that "God in his mercy" purged New Orleans of Mardi Gras, "Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion." Mr. Rose reminds the reader (and Reverend Shanks if he read said column) that the French Quarter, where all these abominations took place, was left pretty much intact by Katrina. In every essay both Mr. Rose's love of New Orleans and his humanity shine through. Don't you have to like a man who gets through airport security a satchel full of naked Barbie dolls for his daughter who is staying with relatives in Maryland; who pounces on someone who throws litter out of his truck window; and who under cover of darkness loads up a refrigerator that a yahoo has left on the street corner, fully aware that the dump trucks have already been by, and deposits said frig on the "offender's" front steps? Finally in the last essay in this collection, "Tears, Fears and a New Year," Mr. Rose tells of the first time he went back to a Winn-Dixie after it re-opened, where he had lifted a bottle of mouthwash "during the Days of Horror," when he attempted to explain to the cashier that he wanted to pay for a bottle of mouthwash but leave it in the store. "'I get it, baby,' she [the cashier] said, and she gently took the bottle from my hands and I gathered my groceries and walked sobbing from the store." If Mr. Rose's columns are not now syndicated, we can only hope that they will be soon. He would make a welcome addition to any editorial page.

I myself am not a reader. In the last 17 years the only thing I have read is childrens books to my kids at bedtime, however I do purchase documentaries and bibliographies from time to time for my dad and husband but this one was for me. I was in New Orleans this week and happened into the gift shop at Ochsner Hospital and while checking out noticed the book laying on the counter and curiosity got the best of me. I had some time later that afternoon and decided to skim through the first few pages to see what it was about. I WAS CONSUMED. I literally read the book for 3 hours straight until my eyes were hurting me and I could hardly focus on the words. I went to supper and when I came back, picked it up again and finished it all. Each page made me yearn for more. The reading is easy and the personal passion that he writes with is beyond description. My family too was affected by Hurricane Katrina, nothing like those of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, actually blessed is a more accurate term. Geraldo nor Anderson Cooper can hold a candle to the description and personal stories that Mr Rose shares in his book. If you are even a little bit curious about what the people of New Orleans went through, buy this book. I assure you that you will see the tragedy of New Orleans in a whole new light.