Interview: Tom Piazza
Ian Weigert
Issue date: 3/13/09 Section: Fine Arts and Culture
Tom Piazza - the New Orleans writer behind the post-Hurricane Katrina manifesto "Why New Orleans Matters" and the fictional account of the storm "City of Refuge"- is back for another teaching gig at Loyola.
Recently, Piazza made time in his busy schedule to speak with The Wolf about his impressions and experiences since he began his teaching career. With an encyclopedic knowledge of early jazz, blues and bluegrass, Piazza sports an ostensibly limitless wealth of knowledge.
Q: When did you first consider coming to Loyola to teach?
A: Loyola first invited me to teach in the fall of 2001. I knew some faculty members here - John Biguenet, Mary McCay, and a few others - and I thought it would be a good thing to do. At that time I was writing my novel, "My Cold War," and I had the time and it just seemed as if it would be a good fit. Then when I got here I realized that I really liked the students at Loyola. I like the fact that the students really seem to want to learn. Most of the students I've encountered here don't take being in college for granted. And I like that there's a service component to the education at Loyola.
Q: What was it about Loyola that drove you to want to teach here?
A: That first time, they had asked me to be what they called the visiting writer in residence. It was intended to be a semester-long appointment, in which a prominent or semi-prominent writer would come to the school to teach a fiction workshop. I did that for the fall semester of 2001. Then it turned out that the writer who was supposed to come the next semester couldn't do it, so I was invited back for the spring. Towards the end of that spring semester, they invited me to stay for the fall of 2002. I was enjoying myself tremendously and ended up staying for four consecutive semesters. I had a ball. I've spent a few years doing other things, and I'm so pleased they invited me to visit again. I had graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and had done a little teaching while I was there, but I had never really wanted to be a teacher. In the fall of 2000, I spent a semester as the Eudora Welty Chair at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. That's where I found that teaching could be really stimulating. And I especially like teaching undergraduates, because they're really ready to learn stuff.
Q: Much of your writing is about music: "Understanding Jazz, "True Adventures With the King of Bluegrass," "Blues Up and Down." Clearly music has been a major part of your life. Is there any one musician in particular that has been especially influential?
A: You'd need the whole length of the article to list the musicians whose work I love and have a tremendous affinity for and, I guess you'd say, who have changed my life. Maybe if I had to pick one, it would be the great saxophonist Charlie Parker. I encountered his music when I was maybe 12 years old, and it was so articulate and at the same time it was so emotional. That combination is what I look for whenever I'm listening to music.
Q: The scope of your writing spans the full range between fiction and nonfiction. Where has your work gone in the past and what are you focusing on now?
A: I've written a fair amount of what, I guess, you could call "creative nonfiction." Which is to say very personally reflective responses either to music, books or circumstances like Hurricane Katrina. Occasionally I do a journalistic piece like the interview I did with a bluegrass musician named Jimmy Martin a few years ago, but more recently I've been mainly a fiction writer. I had a novel come out in August called "City of Refuge," and I've had one other novel and a collection of stories published. Right now I'm putting together a nonfiction collection and working on a new novel as well. I think all fiction writers who write in a naturalistic, or so-called realistic, vein use elements of nonfiction reportage techniques, just as most creative nonfiction writers today probably use some elements of fictional technique. "In City of Refuge," obviously I was writing about a large event, Katrina. The storm's aftermath forms the context for a lot of difficult personal decisions that the characters in the book have to make. So, of necessity, Katrina is experienced in this novel through the decisions, actions and consciousnesses of these characters. In that way, it lends a certain immediacy to narrative elements of the storm that might not be there in a strictly journalistic treatment of the material. And there are also places in the story where I allowed myself the freedom of the 19th century novelists, who allowed themselves to comment on the action and to step back and use that third-person voice to talk in broader terms about what is going on.
Q: What one message would you like to impart to your students?
A: I'd like to think that whatever I'd want them to take away from the class would be the opposite of any kind of capsule "message." I do think that I'd want them to come away from the class understanding that writing, learning to write, learning about writing, is a process. It doesn't stop and it's not dominated by rules. There are goals we set for ourselves, but ultimately it's about process. I couldn't say there's one thing I'd want them to learn, a message like "always tell the truth" or anything like that. I'd want them to come away with an appreciation for reading and an appreciation for what goes in to a meaningful and well crafted piece of writing. And I'd want them to come away with some tools that they could use to gain more control for themselves in shaping what they write.
Recently, Piazza made time in his busy schedule to speak with The Wolf about his impressions and experiences since he began his teaching career. With an encyclopedic knowledge of early jazz, blues and bluegrass, Piazza sports an ostensibly limitless wealth of knowledge.
Q: When did you first consider coming to Loyola to teach?
A: Loyola first invited me to teach in the fall of 2001. I knew some faculty members here - John Biguenet, Mary McCay, and a few others - and I thought it would be a good thing to do. At that time I was writing my novel, "My Cold War," and I had the time and it just seemed as if it would be a good fit. Then when I got here I realized that I really liked the students at Loyola. I like the fact that the students really seem to want to learn. Most of the students I've encountered here don't take being in college for granted. And I like that there's a service component to the education at Loyola.
Q: What was it about Loyola that drove you to want to teach here?
A: That first time, they had asked me to be what they called the visiting writer in residence. It was intended to be a semester-long appointment, in which a prominent or semi-prominent writer would come to the school to teach a fiction workshop. I did that for the fall semester of 2001. Then it turned out that the writer who was supposed to come the next semester couldn't do it, so I was invited back for the spring. Towards the end of that spring semester, they invited me to stay for the fall of 2002. I was enjoying myself tremendously and ended up staying for four consecutive semesters. I had a ball. I've spent a few years doing other things, and I'm so pleased they invited me to visit again. I had graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and had done a little teaching while I was there, but I had never really wanted to be a teacher. In the fall of 2000, I spent a semester as the Eudora Welty Chair at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. That's where I found that teaching could be really stimulating. And I especially like teaching undergraduates, because they're really ready to learn stuff.
Q: Much of your writing is about music: "Understanding Jazz, "True Adventures With the King of Bluegrass," "Blues Up and Down." Clearly music has been a major part of your life. Is there any one musician in particular that has been especially influential?
A: You'd need the whole length of the article to list the musicians whose work I love and have a tremendous affinity for and, I guess you'd say, who have changed my life. Maybe if I had to pick one, it would be the great saxophonist Charlie Parker. I encountered his music when I was maybe 12 years old, and it was so articulate and at the same time it was so emotional. That combination is what I look for whenever I'm listening to music.
Q: The scope of your writing spans the full range between fiction and nonfiction. Where has your work gone in the past and what are you focusing on now?
A: I've written a fair amount of what, I guess, you could call "creative nonfiction." Which is to say very personally reflective responses either to music, books or circumstances like Hurricane Katrina. Occasionally I do a journalistic piece like the interview I did with a bluegrass musician named Jimmy Martin a few years ago, but more recently I've been mainly a fiction writer. I had a novel come out in August called "City of Refuge," and I've had one other novel and a collection of stories published. Right now I'm putting together a nonfiction collection and working on a new novel as well. I think all fiction writers who write in a naturalistic, or so-called realistic, vein use elements of nonfiction reportage techniques, just as most creative nonfiction writers today probably use some elements of fictional technique. "In City of Refuge," obviously I was writing about a large event, Katrina. The storm's aftermath forms the context for a lot of difficult personal decisions that the characters in the book have to make. So, of necessity, Katrina is experienced in this novel through the decisions, actions and consciousnesses of these characters. In that way, it lends a certain immediacy to narrative elements of the storm that might not be there in a strictly journalistic treatment of the material. And there are also places in the story where I allowed myself the freedom of the 19th century novelists, who allowed themselves to comment on the action and to step back and use that third-person voice to talk in broader terms about what is going on.
Q: What one message would you like to impart to your students?
A: I'd like to think that whatever I'd want them to take away from the class would be the opposite of any kind of capsule "message." I do think that I'd want them to come away from the class understanding that writing, learning to write, learning about writing, is a process. It doesn't stop and it's not dominated by rules. There are goals we set for ourselves, but ultimately it's about process. I couldn't say there's one thing I'd want them to learn, a message like "always tell the truth" or anything like that. I'd want them to come away with an appreciation for reading and an appreciation for what goes in to a meaningful and well crafted piece of writing. And I'd want them to come away with some tools that they could use to gain more control for themselves in shaping what they write.
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