LJ Talks to Patty Friedmann

by Wilda Williams -- Library Journal, 10/25/2005

For five harrowing days after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, New Orleans writer Patty Friedmann (Second Hand Smoke, Eleanor Rushing) hunkered down first alone in her home and then with her sister at a neighbor's house, as the waters from Lake Pontchartrain spilled through the city's broken levees and flooded her uptown neighborhood. Even though she had no electricity, no phone service, and no water, Friedmann continued to write, working on a five-thousand word essay detailing her experience, "The Goldfish on the Lawn", which will be published in Oxford American magazine. Eventually Friedman and her sister, along with her sister's two dogs and a cat belonging to Friedmann's son, were rescued and evacuated to Houston. Now as she prepares to return to New Orleans, Friedmann talks with LJ's Wilda Williams about her experiences and how it has affected her. [Note: This January, Avalon's Shoemaker & Board imprint will publish Friedmann's new novel, Side Effects: A New Orleans Love Story. The only changes made to the book are a new cover and subtitle, and the house is rethinking Friedmann's tour cities.]

Why didn't you evacuate with your son and daughter? Is it because as you once wrote in an essay that "you never evacuate for hurricanes"?

I never evacuate from New Orleans. New Orleans is different, a one of a kind place. That is what is killing me as a person and as a writer is that there is nothing like my city.

When did you start writing your essay?

I started writing the piece during the hurricane. I think when I actually saw that goldfish swimming on the lawn, it came to me. I began writing on a legal pad with a pencil. The pencil sharpener in the house where I was staying still had some battery juice.

Did you find the writing helpful in staying calm during all this chaos?

It made me feel as if I was not wasting my life right then. Otherwise, there is no meaning to being displaced like that. At one point, I had nothing. I evacuated from my house to my sister's house because I knew she had a radio and that was the ultimate luxury. It goes to show you what your priorities become under those circumstances.

After evacuating to Houston, what was your reaction when you heard Hurricane Rita was heading straight for the city?

My sister had told my brother, "okay, the next time a category 5 hurricane is coming at me, I promise to evacuate" and she had to keep her word. My instinct was to stay, but because my sister was leaving and we were renting a house that was sitting on the ground, I felt I had to get out. I went to New York and stayed with a cousin. And now I feel very stupid. I am out $500 and my nail scissors. The airport security took my nail scissors.

Do you think the old New Orleans is gone forever? Do you think it can be rebuilt? Or will the city become a disneyfied "new New Orleans"?

That is what I am worried about. I will tell you my current circumstances as a writer; I was one third of way through a sequel to my novel Eleanor Rushing. It was set in the New Orleans of August 2005. All of a sudden, how can I write a book that conveys the spirit of the city at that time? I am not sure that that spirit with all its complicated interracial, social, and cultural interactions is going to exist any more. That is what made writing in New Orleans so rich. Part of me hopes that all the bad, painful parts of the city don't come back but part of me as a writer says, gee that was my stuff. I certainly can't finish the novel as it is, so I have put it on hold. New Orleans is more than bricks and mortar; it is the people who are not coming back. It's the social structure that is not going to exist anymore.

Your forthcoming novel Side Effects concerns the interracial friendship that develops among three employees of a New Orleans drug store, which sits at an intersection between the poor black Pigeontown neighborhood and the rich white TulaneUniversity section. How has Katrina affected racial relations in the city?

In all honesty as I sat in the dark I was concerned that my publisher would not want to bring the book out because I did think the black-white friendships portrayed would become anachronistic. And yet my relationships as a white person with my black friends from there (we talk to each other on cell phones) are still strong; I think those relationships from that time will still endure, but unfortunately I believe such friendships would not be created now. I am hoping that whatever is rebuilt is not going to leave such a big chasm between the races in New Orleans. It will destroy me if the city is not racially mixed the way it was before. That was the beauty and character of New Orleans.

When do you expect to return to your home?

As soon as I get back from the International Women's Writing Guild workshop in New York (Oct. 22- 23), I am throwing my stuff in the car and heading home, even though my house still doesn't have water or electricity. I'll have to get a new refrigerator, air conditioner, washer-dryer, hot-water heater, and all that kind of stuff, but it will be good to go back. Susan Larson, the book editor at the New Orleans Times Picayune, emailed me: "Just want you to know, Walgreen's is open on Tchoupitoulas Street." A drug store is all I need!

How has this experience changed you as a writer?

On one hand as a fiction writer, I am paralyzed. But I never thought I could write that much nonfiction, but suddenly in a week I wrote from deep inside myself a huge piece of nonfiction. And that is may where I have to turn for a while. Because all my fiction comes from a place that doesn't exist anymore.