FEMA = antichrist?

Zeitoun - Dave Eggers

I think this genre is called "Narrative Fiction." Dave tells me it's a post-modern version of "The New Journalism" of Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson. Either way, it's an account of a real man and his family during Hurricane Katrina. Either way, it's brutal. I know that after 9-11 human rights were kind of thrown out the window in an effort to get a handle on terrorism in this country. I had no idea this went on during the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans; I didn't even know that FEMA became a division of Homeland Security.

This is an unsettling, sad read for an American. Things went on that went beyond the horrific things that were reported during those days about the superdome. And the system is so huge, you can't point a finger at any one person. As much as I did appreciate this book and feel that it is important in its own right, I missed Eggers lively personality as a writer. I read a review of this somewhere that praised it because Eggers kept his "post-modern" sensibilities out of it, but, as a fiction reader, I love those sensibilities.

It's a very good book, but to me, not necessarily a "Dave Eggers" book. Still, definitely worth a read.