After Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana 20 years ago, my wife joined many others in working full-time to help the state recover. She recently gathered in New Orleans with former colleagues from that sad, twisted time to remember what was lost, what was reclaimed, and what still needs to be done two decades after that epic tragedy.
On the morning of the reunion, I spotted a photo in The New York Times of a young man reading “A Confederacy of Dunces,” John Kennedy Toole’s comic novel about oddball Ignatius J. Reilly’s misadventures in the Crescent City. When I first read “Dunces” many years ago, I wondered if people beyond New Orleans would grasp its strange local vibe. But as I came to understand, readers everywhere loved the story because of — not in spite of — its peculiar New Orleans sensibility. Toole knew how the city’s pageant of cultures tends to refract reality a bit, revealing colors not normally visible in other places.
This aspect of New Orleans, quickly felt, though not easily explained, was lost on the cynics who wondered in 2005 whether the city should be rebuilt. There were many practical reasons to bring back New Orleans, but the true value of the city, its vibrant civic identity, defies the dry logic of ledger sheets…