I stayed up till 3am last night reading Zeitoun, almost finishing it 3 days into reading it. The first thing I did this morning was to read the last few pages. Kim also happened to get a Katrina-related documentary that we watched tonight, about a 24 y/o girl’s experience during and after the storm in the 9th ward. It’s got me a bit burnt on reality. We’ve been thinking of buying a house and this really puts some perspective on decision making.
So Zeitoun is a book by Dave Eggers about a Syrian-American man’s expience staying in the city for Katrina – and the hell he and his family went through after. It’s entirely a work of non-fiction. Kim and I went to see Dave Eggers speak at NOCCA recently and were surprised to see the Zeitouns were there with him. After speaking for a bit about Where the Wild Things Are (the book and movie…) he invited Zeitoun and Kathy, his wife, out onto the stage to talk about their experience and the process of writing the book. It was odd for me, though, to “meet” them first and read about them second. I’m glad, though, that I had faces to put with their names, knowing that this was the real story of these real people that I was reading.
The book was definitely riveting. Dave Egger’s writing… I’m a big fan of his and this level of involvement in the community and across the country. But sometimes his writing gets a bit too… simple. He tends to create these little gimmicks that he relies on throughout his books: in What is the What, the way Achak continues telling his story as if he’s speaking directly to a passing character in the novel, needing that character to understand; in You Shall Know Our Velocity Will has conversations with others inside of his head, using their words to counter his logic; and in Zietoun he tends to repeat things a lot. It feels sometimes like he’s really trying to make a point obvious – overly so. But the great thing about his writing is the way that he really captures how you would react to a situation. Even in the title Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which when you first hear it you think it’s being zealous, pompous, or just too clever for its own good. But you learn that what he’s really talking about is the ideas you have when you’re young of doing great things, creating astonishing creative works. It’s something you strive for, even though you think you’re going to come up short, but they’re all ideas that you can relate to. They’re big ideas and you feel like you’ve had big ideas like that too.
All of this Katrina stuff though, is a lot for my brain to handle. I’ve been looking at real estate online a lot lately. We haven’t gotten as far as talking to a mortgage broker yet, but we’re considering options, etc. But it’s hard not to question making a large scale decision like that HERE. One thing that I do know about myself, as much as I like to take my time making decisions, I can be persuaded by my own stupid sentimentality or wishful thinking into doing things that I want because I want to believe it’s the right decision. We all find ways to justify the things that we want. At the same time, though, I don’t want to be overly cautious all the time either. The one thing that I DO want, if I’m going to live in Louisiana, is to LIVE here. I want to enjoy it.
But I also don’t want to be afraid of it.