Jeff, a Milwaukee native and transplant to Minneapolis, is standing in the Bryant-Lake Bowl, a turn-of-the-20th-century bowling alley converted to include a bar, restaurant and theater. As moderator of a popular and locally-acclaimed reading series, Jeff is working with the technical staff of the theater to wire in a Skype chat with the author of that month's selection.
"Can you hear us?" says Jeff as the 150 person capacity crowd of the theater greets each other and orders drinks around him. ...
Ok, so all of what I just wrote is true. By reporting what I know about Jeff and by attending the July meeting of Books & Bars, I've given an accurate representation of what was happening. I may have embellished a little bit here, tightened up a bit there and put words in Jeff's mouth but at its heart everything I wrote is true to the actual event.
Is it the Truth though? Is what I wrote an absolute representation of the situation? Well, no. I focused on Jeff while cutting out everyone else in the room. I gave one perspective on the event and had that stand in for the whole of the event. As a reader who wasn't there, you would likely assume (correctly I hope) that a perspective highlighting the moderator would be able to be generalized to the lion's share of the people in attendance because taking the time to actually chronicle the entire crowd would be time-consuming and unlikely to shed a great deal more perspective upon the July meeting. So you accept it's a representation of the Truth.
The same is true of "Zeitoun". It's based upon actual events from Zeitoun and Kathy's real lives. But it doesn't purport to be the Truth. It is after all Eggers' name on the front of the book, not Kathy and Zeitoun's names. Eggers is giving a representation of the Truth of their experiences surrounding Hurricane Katrina and using it to stand in as representative of a generalized experience of a person who lived in New Orleans in the aftermath of the storm. We could again try to chronicle the experience and perspective of everyone but at a wont of time and necessity, we don't.
So you might be saying, "So what? Eggers is writing creative non-fiction. Welcome to the world of early 21st century publishing." And I agree with that, especially because the popularity of Eggers and his own deliberate efforts have pushed contemporary publishing in that direction. Did anyone see that 16-year-old Justin Bieber is writing his memoirs? Speak of a wont of time and necessity...
This is why I think it's important. One of the three things which stuck out about "Zeitoun" (along with how it romanticizes the post-storm anarchy and how poorly Kathy comes off) is the frequent references to how difficult it is to be a Muslim in post-9/11 America. It stuck out to me because 1.) it's kind of tangential if Zeitoun is taking the place of the Everyman and 2.) it's like duuuuuhhhhhhh. It's not even something which we can limit to happening prior to January 20th, 2009 either as the stupid "WTC mosque" controversy has proven. Though it's been almost ten years since 9/11, our continued military presence in Muslim countries makes for a constant backdrop to living in the United States right now. Anyone alive and aware in America knows it's difficult to be a Muslim in our culture.
The only people whom that wouldn't be readily obvious for is people who don't live in our culture. Since America is a cultural hegemony (just try to find a foreign film in the top 100 grossing films of 2009) and because we're willing to live with our warts, that's not an idea which is remote to anyone living in a free society on the planet. Which means the people whom need to be told of that reality are for the most part people who are either too young to remember or haven't been born yet. Eggers has to be aware his celebrity and influence means his books will be read not just by contemporary audiences. They will also be read by people who wouldn't know offhand how difficult it is to be Muslim right now.
It matters because for many people who will be looking back on this era, this will be their perspective and representation of this era in the same way Kerouac's "On the Road" is for those of us who were not old enough or even alive in the 1950s. (Notice that I said Kerouac and "On The Road", not Halberstam and "The Fifties" or C. Wright Mills and "The Power Elite".) But it would be ludicrous to suggest "On the Road" is the Truth about the 1950s, no matter how beloved our friend Kerouac is. "On the Road" is creative non-fiction which is meant to represent a generalization of post-WWII America in the way "Zeitoun" represents our current moment. Hell, the focus in each is even on the main character's transportation.
So my impression while reading "Zeitoun" was an awareness that what I was reading was true but not the Truth. I don't think you can hand someone a copy of the book and say "This is what it was like to live in New Orleans in the days after Hurricane Katrina," any more than you can hand them "On the Road" and show them the 1950s. To get closer to the Truth, you have to keep on looking and I hope, being an open-minded individual who believes in the freedom of religion, that the future readers of "Zeitoun" keep looking. Our era is much too complex to summarize in 325 pages and in the experience of only one man.
