Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Why New Orleans Matters first 3 chapters

The book reads almost like a travel guide. Piazza tells the reader where to eat and what areas to look for. He also lists musicians that the city is famous for. For the first three chapters I have learned about what Piazza is in to and have been given glimpses of the roots of the music and food. All of this is interesting and new to me, but it reads in a very biased way. Piazza loves EVERYTHING about New Orleans. There is nothing wrong with the city and everyone is an amazing character with a huge heart. There is no objectivity so the stories he tells come across as fantastic exaggerations. The stories might be completely true, but I have a hard time believing them completely because Piazza seems like he is trying to show how cool New Orleans is and how he is cool enough to know all of the famous people and can get in anywhere. Up to this point a better title for the book might be, Tom Piazza's Incredible Adventures in the Wonder Land of New Orleans. Also, he needs to stop with the long lists. Almost every page seems to have a list of 10 or more things, places, people, etc. It is like he is either showing off all the stuff he knows, or he is being sponsored by the things on the list so he can't leave anything out. I just want fewer lists and less of Piazza.

2 comments:

  1. Rob, I couldn't agree more. This post summarizes exactly how the first few chapters feel as we read through them. While I read, I found that he may seem a bit too painstakingly optimistic about every last characteristic of New Orleans. I mean really, not even one true blemish?

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  2. Connecting this book to a travel guide is a good way of thinking about it, at least the beginning of it. It does get listy and a bit subjective. What do you think Piazza's motive could be for doing this? It will be interesting to see if your opinion changes at the end of the book.

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