My Photo

  • I'm a writer, journalist, and the editor of The Gambit, the alt-weekly newspaper in New Orleans.

    Journalism: My work has appeared in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Globe & Mail (Canada), The Times- Picayune (New Orleans), The Oregonian, and Willamette Week, as well as in magazines including Details, Vogue, Publishers Weekly, and Portland Monthly.

    Publishing: Tight Shot, my first novel, was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. Its sequel, Hot Shot, was roundly ignored by everyone, but was a far better book. I'm also a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

    Stage: I was a member of the Groundlings and Circle Repertory West in Los Angeles, and am a playwright (see "Stage" in the right-hand rail).

CONTACT

  • View Kevin Allman's profile on LinkedIn

« The Washington Post thinks that what Valerie Plame is wearing is very, very important | Main | On the road »

March 18, 2007

Writers to be grateful for: Patty Friedmann

One of New Orleans' best writers, Patty Friedmann, is back with a new book: A Little Bit Ruined, the sequel to her second-most-wonderful book, Eleanor Rushing. (Friedmann_pattyEleanor was #1 until Patty published Side Effects last year and blew her previous works out of the water...or "out da box," as we say.)

A Little Bit Ruined is also one of the first big pieces of fiction to examine the city post-Katrina. As Patty says on her website:

Except for education and natural disasters, I’ve always lived in New Orleans. That’s the only part of my bio anyone needs to know. As a writer, I need to be here to hear the voices on the streets—and, yes, in my head. My work is darkly comical, and New Orleans is an engaging old lady in every story, a beauty past her prime who still looks in mirrors, unaware that she’s ravaged, even now, too preoccupied with her looks ever to have taken care of her goofy children....

The storm lifted the board and showed the termites underneath here, but I’m still not sure anybody gets us. We’re the only city in the world with a collective sense of humor and irony, and that’s all anyone needs to know when reading one of my books.

Yes, yes, yes, and true dat.

Years ago, Patty and I both had short plays in the wonderful omnibus series Native Tongues. Mine was about a convenience-store clerk in the French Quarter; Patty's was about one of the city's ubiquitous meter maids, complaining about her job, her family, her hyperactive kid. The woman was running short on the boy's medication, and was trying to decide how to ration out the last Ritalin -- should she give it to him before school, or when he got home? -- which spawned a line that made me crack up every time I heard it: "What's the use of him being good if I'm not home to see it?"

A Little Bit Ruined is, today, at #297,657 at Amazon.com. In a perfect world, Patty would be jousting with J.K. Rowling for #1 and the woman who wrote The Secret would be gathering trash alongside the I-10. But that's life.

(Oh, and Patty now has a blog, and that's pretty funny, too.)

04:16 PM in Fiction, New Orleans, Reading |

|

Comments

Rabbit

I remember the meter maid piece. That was a wonderful piece of writing.

Posted by: Rabbit | March 21, 2007 at 02:42 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

RECENT ARTICLES

BOOKS


  • Booklist:
    "A worthy successor to Tight Shot, Allman's insider view of the seamier side of Hollywood is not only hip and entertaining but also has something serious to say about our insatiable hunger for tabloid thrills."

    Washington Post:
    "Barbed, breezy and often pretty funny...sharp and entertaining. Allman can be very funny, and Hot Shot complements nicely the less forgiving takes on Los Angeles as the future of us all. "

    ----------


  • EDGAR AWARD NOMINEE
    BEST FIRST NOVEL
    MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA

    Booklist:
    "Allman turns a very sardonic pen loose on Hollywood's glitz-and-glamour crowd in this entertaining first novel... An impressive debut and an almost sure thing for a sequel."

    New Orleans Times-Picayune:
    "Allman clearly knows those of whom he writes. He's got L.A. nailed."

    Publishers Weekly:
    "Snappy debut... Readers will look for a sequel."

STAGE

  • BOO AND THE SHREVEPORT BABY
    A French Quarter convenience-store clerk has a hilariously traumatic encounter with a pair of Shreveport tourists. Part of Native Tongues 3 (Le Chat Noir, New Orleans; 2001; Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago; 2006).
  • BACKBONES
    An upper-class black caterer finds comeuppance and redemption. Part of Native Tongues 4 (Le Chat Noir, New Orleans; 2005).
  • MY-O-MY
    A recreation of an evening at the notorious New Orleans 1950s female-impersonator nightclub My-O-My (Le Chat Noir, New Orleans; 2005).
  • THE LOVE GIFT
    A lonely man discovers purpose when he intercepts a televangelist's letters from his neighbor's mailbox. Part of the Dramarama New Plays Festival (Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; 2004).
  • BABYDADDY
    A black father discovers that no good deed goes unpunished when he helps his white neighbor bail her son out of Orleans Parish Prison. (Le Chat Noir, New Orleans; 2004; Walker Percy Southern Playwrights Festival, Covington; 2007).
  • TWO IN THE BUSH
    An evening of comedies. In The Stud Mule, the world's richest woman arranges to be impregnated by a doltish escort; in Snatching Victory, an earnest college student runs afoul of her lecherous professor and the dour head of a women's-studies department (Le Chat Noir, New Orleans; 2003).

NEW ORLEANS READING

  • Patty Friedmann: <i>A Little Bit Ruined</i>

    Patty Friedmann: A Little Bit Ruined
    One of the first post-Katrina novels, and probably destined to be one of the best. Friedmann's sequel to Eleanor Rushing finds her crazy heroine still holding everything together after the storm (after a fashion), until she has to leave New Orleans and she falls apart physically as well as mentally. Mordantly, morbidly funny.

  • Tom Piazza: <i>Why New Orleans Matters</i>

    Tom Piazza: Why New Orleans Matters
    The best post-Katrina book I've read. In 150 small pages, Piazza explicates the New Orleans experience simply and beautifully. I'll be passing this one on to anyone who wonders "But why would anyone want to live there?".

Archives

More...

Categories

SUBSCRIBE

  • Add to Technorati Favorites
  • Add to Google
  • BlogBurst.com
  • View Kevin Allman's profile on LinkedIn
Blog powered by Typepad