Molly Peterson

Finding Solid Ground

Well, we did it. Eve Troeh and I made a radio documentary about Louisianans’ sense of security in their lives, and we finished it, and it is airing…It aired last weekend on WWNO and WRKF, and will air again on WWNO on Friday.

This project was humbling, to say the least. One of my favorite authors is Julian Barnes. And in an interview with a literary website he had this to say about how he works differently in journalism and in fiction:

When I write a piece of journalism I want it to be completely understood at first reading as all journalism should be. In order to do that, you, of necessity, elucidate and simplify. And so the world appears more comprehensible. When I metaphorically move to the other part of my desk and write fiction, I am aware that my task is to represent complication and the fullness of the world. And to write the book, while certainly comprehensible and I hope enjoyable on first reading, would leave something in the reader’s mind to invite them back. I do keep this distinction firmly in mind. It’s easy, if you are doing both, for them to coalesce in some ways.

New Orleans is an impossibly knotty place. It is at once more American and less than any other city in the United States. To live there right is to love and work your way into the cracks and crevices of complication that line the human soul. So, pretty much, our project is fated to be a disaster from the start. Julian Barnes is right that journalism’s mission is to simplify and explain, and make the world comprehensible. But in many ways I find it impossible to let go of the cracks and crevices and specificity that tell me what’s true.

Now it’s up to listeners in Louisiana and Washington state (so far) (thank you Tacoma!) to tell us how we did.

Eve and I will have more thoughts to share as the show airs, but in the meantime: the reason this project exists is that we read and heard and watched reporters parachute in to Louisiana for two years, as we lived there, as we cheered like hell for Entergy turning on our neighbors’ power, as we watched – and helped – the city struggle back. As we lived there. And we wanted to tell people what it was like to do that.

I’m proud of the people we talked to, for thinking about their lives, and what they value, and why. In the real world, people don’t do that enough.