Essay on New Orleans Corruption
A world rife with corruption and power struggles is the scene that we see in New Orleans in the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina. Stuck in the middle of this chaos are three men from vastly different backgrounds with vastly different goals: a black preacher, Minister Clarence Washington, who wants to revitalize his neighborhood in a project that promises to bring people and jobs to the area; Clint Johnson, a father with a bipolar wife and an autistic daughter to care for who is struggling to make ends meet; and a sleazy, corrupt, and overtly racist real estate broker called Joseph Pacello who wants to use the real estate project to pay off his debt to the mafia. All of this takes place within the context of the revitalization of a poor black neighborhood in New Orleans. This is the story that author Charles Williams tells in his novel Aftermath: Corruption and Intrigue in Post-Katrina New Orleans.
The author has a love and deep understanding of both the surface of New Orleans and the corruption under that surface, as demonstrated through his vivid paintings of the scenery in the city as well as the careful explanations of the political maneuvers under that veneer. Moreover, the author handles the specifics of the real estate project extremely well, proving that he either has a lot of experience on the subject or he was extremely thorough in his research. Though corruption in real estate projects does not seem overly interesting at first glance, the author expertly revealed its hidden depths with his descriptions of the struggles that his characters were involved in and the intricate web of corruption in which they became entangled.
The story was also extremely coherent and easy to follow. However, it did tend to drag on and may have benefitted from a little more time under the red pen for length. It did not suffer from any obvious spelling or grammatical mistakes that I found.
Unfortunately, there was also much that was problematic about this book.
On the technical side, the dialogue often seemed stilted and unrealistic. It felt as if the purpose of the character’s dialogue was not to further the story, but just to give context and exposition instead of showing the reader. Furthermore, this exposition continues in the author’s unfortunate habit of ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing.’ There is even a major plot point in the novel that we are only told happened, rather than the author taking the time to show us the event occurring. Other examples in the very beginning of the book include that instead of showing us Cindy Johnson’s struggles with being diagnosed as bipolar, we are only told that she is bipolar. Instead of showing us that Clint Johnson cares for his family, we are simply told that he is and expected to believe it. This leads to an extremely shallow understanding of the story and a very low amount of immersion for the reader. This also has the effect of leaving the reader confused about the setting where many scenes are taking place. Where the author puts a lot of care into describing the scenery of New Orleans and the city itself, he puts very little effort into describing individual scenes. This even gets to the point where scenes occur where the reader doesn’t know which characters are in the room or what is going on around the main character.
The book also felt extremely emotionally detached, as if no characters had any real care for the situation that they were in or the motivations driving them. Though Clint Johnson’s professed motivation for his actions is his love for his family, there is not a single moment in the book where you feel like he feels any real compassion for them. In fact, outside of a moment where the daughter is sleeping and in a dream sequence, Clint does not spend a single moment with her. He does not think of her outside of the concept of her autism. We learn very little about her outside of her existence on the spectrum. This happens with every character.
Further, the book’s characterization of women and the male main characters’ subsequent treatment of those women is both demeaning and makes the story feel extremely unrealistic. Every woman, except the daughter, in the book is described as ‘attractive’ at least once, and every male character with a point of view represented in the book takes the time to think about those women inappropriately. Not only was this completely unnecessary, but it also made the characters that much less sympathetic to the reader. Furthermore, it did not feel like either of the two married main characters had any remorse about these thoughts. The characterization of every female character not only seemed flat, but the attempts at giving them sympathetic backgrounds came across as both hardly thought out and rushed through so fast that the reader will barely remember that it happened at all.
Another similar problem with the book was the way that the author handled mental illness. Though two significant characters deal with it, in both autism and bipolar disorder, both are painted with a broad, impersonal brush that makes it feel like both of their diagnoses were little more than afterthoughts to the author. The depiction of Cindy Johnson’s bipolarity is particularly troubling, though that might partly be because her character appears much more often than the daughter’s. Though bipolar disorder usually presents itself in long periods (which can last between a few days in length to a few months) of either mania, where the individual feels nearly invincible, or severe depression, the only thing that we saw in Cindy’s character was a constant, unpredictable switching between anger and sadness. This did not feel anything like bipolar disorder to me. Moreover, Mattie’s autism felt shallow and unresearched, as if all of her symptoms came from clinical sites explaining the most common side effects rather than the testimony of individuals on the spectrum.
Similarly, the book’s characterization of the rest of the characters also came across as quite flat. Without any extra scenes for character development, they seemed to only exist within the context of the story.
Altogether, despite the coherent story and the loving picture that the author painted of New Orleans, I would only rate this book 2 out of 4 stars. I believe that this book has a solid foundation, and could certainly be improved by the author with a little more consideration and research. The story was coherent, if long, and the characters were mostly distinct from each other. This meant that it deserved more than one star. However, considering the book’s technical issues, its lack of emotional connections, and its characterization of both women and mental health, I would not suggest that anyone reads this book. Moreover, it did mean that the book did not reach three stars out of four. However, if anyone would still choose to, I would suggest that the target audience of this novel would be men who have an interest in money-based corruption in everyday life. Moreover, this book would certainly be for adults, based on the massive level of profanity (including many instances of racial slurs with the ‘N-word’), which began on page 17 and continued throughout the book, and the overt eroticism in the novel. Many women might not enjoy this book because of the lack of sufficient characterization for its female characters.