By Caitlin Donohue
Eggers: given the current level of productivity, must be employing 826 Valencia kids as ghostwriters. Photo by Erik Charlton
Post Katrina New Orleans was a fissure unto what a well-meaning country turns into when the laws around civil rights are not made clear in crisis. Did you hear about this? The arrests of suspected looters that were made with little to no hard evidence? The chain link fence insta-jail that was built by maximum security prison inmates outside the city’s Greyhound Station? Guantanamo-like processing for maybe-maybe-not “criminals”?
Dave Eggers’ new book Zeitoun revists this time from the perspective of a man who endured more than most. Abdhulrahman Zeitoun was a father of four with his own construction company when Katrina hit. His decision to stay- during and after the storm- to secure the properties he was working on and help his neighbors led to his disappearance, one that resolved weeks later when it was discovered he’d been arrested and held without charge or access to phone calls.
Perhaps this is giving away too much of the book, but I’m telling you that Eggers’ true account of Zeitoun’s ordeals was one of the most stirring calls to reinforce civil liberties in our country that I’ve heard for awhile. It equals his last effort What is the What for making clear what can happen to good people in times gone bad for lack of other good people doing anything about them. But where What is the What took place in US ignored, civil war torn Sudan and surrounding African countries, Zeitoun could of happened to anyone’s construction worker uncle in New Orleans, USA.
Zeitoun is not furry. Egger’s version of Wild Things is. The logic is clear
So can someone do me a favor and pop on down to Eggers’ signing this afternoon and ask him how the hell he does it? By that I mean, write activist-inspiring novels, head up a national chain of the funnest kids’ writing workshops on the face of the planet, run a publishing company and kick it with Spike Jonze on the screenplay for Where the Wild Things Are?
The man is nuts. Holler at him.
Dave Eggers Book Signing & Chat
Tues/8 1pm, free
Bookshop West Portal
80 West Portal, SF
www.mcsweeneys.net
www.bookshopwestportal.com