Originally appearing at: Voices of New Orleans
In her new book, Antediluvian Tales, New Orleans author Poppy Z. Brite has collected a group of stories written before the events of August 29, 2005. In her foreword, she explains that she did not think she could pair these “pre-K” stories with any that would be written after the flood: “…for better or worse my life, my outlook and, necessarily, my work, has changed forever.” She does include an essay, “The Last Good Day of My Life” which reflects on the two years since the failure of the levees and how that event has affected her. Her words on that score in particular are quite powerful:
“We did not stay, did not die and that haunts me as much as anything; even so the only adventures ahead of me were nightmare ones I’d never chosen.”
The stories themselves, six about the Stubbs family and two about her fictional counterpart Doc Brite, are evidence of the last good days of the author’s writing life. As such they are not only a pleasure to read but a deeply personal literary peek into one more facet of the struggles of New Orleans.
Fans of Brite’s Liquor novels and stories will already be familiar with the family of one of her main characters, G-man. In Antediluvian Tales, various members of the Stubbs clan take front and center, freeing Brite up to write a variety of stories. From a young girl struggling through a mysterious haunting in “The Devil of Delery Street” to a single mother’s decision to reach for a life of her own in “The Feast of St. Rosalie,” Brite visits the Stubbs family in all their conflicted glory, mining for great effect the rich depth of emotions and challenges faced by this thoroughly engaging family.
Young Henry Stubbs has a nerve-wracking (albeit amusing to the reader) encounter with a nun in “Henry Goes Shopping,” and Ricky and G-man play peripheral roles in the other two Stubbs stories, “Four Flies and a Swatter” and “The Working Slob’s Prayer (Being a Night in the History of the Peychaud Grill).” Both of these tales look at life in the kitchens and bars of the sort of restaurants that proliferate in the city and are staffed by the people who keep New Orleans alive (and not coincidentally have largely been unable to return since the flood).
The two Doc Brite stories are of a more melancholy type, finding the city’s fictional coroner enjoying delectable meals while struggling with personal issues of life and love, heaven and hell. The Doc Brite tales always excel when it comes to descriptions of food, and “Crown of Thorns” and “Wound Man and Horned Melon Go to Hell” are no exception. There is a slyness to these stories that is not found elsewhere; a subtlety of humor that is wrapped in age-old weariness. Basically, Brite captures the sensibility that would likely be found in the heart of a New Orleans coroner without requiring a mystery or thriller to carry the plot. The end results are as enjoyable as they are unique.
Taken as a group, the stories of Antediluvian Tales show what Poppy Z. Brite has been quietly doing so well for years — writing about the working class of New Orleans. Her determination to explore living, loving and working in a city that is all too often subject to the most exotic of literary treatments has earned Brite a dedicated fan base while simultaneously leaving her in genre limbo when it comes to her releases from major publishers. The Liquor novels are not mysteries or horror and although Ricky and G-man are in a committed relationship, they are not books that will be favored only by a gay audience. What Brite does — and she does it wonderfully — is write regional literary fiction. Her Liquor stories and novels are full of the sights and sounds of New Orleans and, as Ricky and G-man are chefs, the smells of the city nearly waft off of each turning page. How Brite will tackle writing about post-K New Orleans (and even if she will) is still unknown — as is the question of just what publisher will embrace and encourage her charming books. But for now at least, we do have Antediluvian Tales and the way it was before the storm for characters still living in New Orleans.
“For now, I’ll treasure my antediluvian tales for the things they do not know lie ahead of them, for the relative happiness and mental health of the person who wrote them, and for the city that exists in them, the city that will never exist in that form again, the city where we’re currently trying to build a new life.”
This one is a small treasure that fans of good Southern writing should certainly enjoy and readers who love the city will find irresistible from the very first page.
