Andrei Codescu actually lives in Baton Rouge and is fine - hosting evacuees,
etc.
Stephen V
Blog: http://stephenvincent.durationpress.com
> Jelly Roll wasn't the only important artist to emerge from New Orleans.
> Not even musicians. There was Ernest J. Bellocq, the photographer,
> whose surreptitious project is his enduring fame, a great documentary of
> the Storyville whorehouses where, according to the article, prostitution
> was legal at the turn of the last century.
>
> http://www.corpse.org/issue_10/gallery/bellocq/
>
> The article--quite lengthy and with some potentially offensive
> photographs--is in Andrei Codrescu's journal, _Exquisite Corpse_.
>
> The terrible irony of the journal's title just struck me. As did this
> question...was _EQ_ still at Tulane, and are Codrescu and the others
> involved okay? The commentators I heard this morning said the full
> horror of last week in New Orleans may not strike home until the bodies
> begin being turned as the waters are drained back into the lake. Nobody
> appears to be arguing with Mayor Nagin's estimate of 10,000 dead.
>
> In the face of such death, art is...what? inconsequetial? secondary?
> what we can keep? It's not unfair to ask how much visual and literary
> work has been and will be lost. Who can know? The fact that Lee
> Friedlander as long ago as 1967 was able to rescue Bellocq's Storyville
> work, printed it from the 8x10 camera glass plates, and exhibit it in
> 1970, is one of the small miracles that float over even a tragedy. They
> are valuable if only as documents of a moment that came, stood still,
> and passed by. It will be a miracle if the whole city does not suffer
> nullification.
>
> Ken
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