The Mysterious Walker Percy Successor

Patty Friedmann’s such a popular and respected writer in New Orleans that I temporarily forgot the Internet is international when I mentioned her in the context of Walker Percy’s comment about a Jewish mother  leading the next Southern literary revival.  So for those who wondered who I was talking about, let me first say, rush right out and read her! And then I’ll mention that she’s the author of  eight novels (including a new one, TOO JEWISH, which, it must be disclosed, booksBnimble publishes),  and she’s a funny and wise writer. To further clear up any confusion, I asked to explain herself in her own words:

1. I've heard you say you've lived in New Orleans all your life except for education and natural disasters. Prove your New Orleans "cred."

When the Booklovers Guide to the city came out I had to make a list of any five things I wanted. I chose my favorite smells from childhood: the molasses factory, the Sunbeam bakery from the expressway, the inside of the streetcar, the Lusher school cafeteria on Monday, and the Edgewater Hotel drugstore. You can't beat Proustian senses for ownership of a place.

      2. Proust? I thought you were the new Walker Percy.

I'm not Walker Percy! For Chrissakes, I'm not Catholic. Though I grew up knowing that everybody on the streetcar made the sign of the cross when we passed the statue of Jesus in front of Loyola. That's the kind of Jew I am. Walker probed where he fit in the universe; most Jews I knew probed where they fit in uptown.

      3. Your book's titled Too Jewish. Sounds as if you're not Jewish enough.

As a matter of fact, I once visited my brother in Georgia where he was--get this!--a rabbi. We did a program at his synagogue that we titled "Jew/Counter-Jew." Our dialogue pitted his liturgical approach against my secular one. Afterward his congregants hugged all over me, and quite a few came up and whispered, as if consoling me, "I don't think Rabbi really believes in God."

      4. As a writer, are you at a big juncture with Too Jewish?

It's an e-book! For someone who wrote her first novel on a Selectric II, I have to say I'm glad I kept writing long enough for this possibility. I have eight other books in print, the operant word being "print." My main publisher was a known genius, which meant "deep" (read that in your inner baritone), ambiguous cover images. Crummy shelf appeal. I was proud but I wasn't a zillionaire. This book can go viral, as the cognoscenti say.

       5. Otherwise, is it a typical Patty book?

Uh-uh. I've been a comically dark writer, a contemporary New Orleans writer, the class clown at clown college. After Katrina, I've gone to the past. Sadly, my own life is now part of history--I'm getting up there--so I plumbed my own story. My father's tragedy has been sitting in the part of me that I'm too afraid ever to explore in therapy, and now it's in this novel, fictionalized. Not funny, but I have a feeling you can hear my voice.