I discovered Tom Piazza's work after he was recruited by David Simon to write for Simon's television program "Treme" on HBO. Of the many substantial benefits I've gained from "Treme", Piazza's own fiction and non-fiction has been one of the most satisfying. I sought out and read much of his back catalog in the same way I've sought out and absorbed earlier releases by a new musician I'd discovered. The wealth of this material is profound. Piazza is the rare writer who can weave together a satisfying narrative with compelling emotional content as in his fictional work "Blues and Trouble", "My Cold War" and especially "City of Refuge", and yet can also hold court on such varied topics as jazz, bluegrass, Charlie Chan films, Flaubert, New Orleans culture, Norman Mailer, and cultural evolution. "The Devil Made the Rain" pulls together several of Piazza's shorter non-fiction essays and it's a rich, sumptuous buffet. The scope of the collection is close to stupefying: how can one guy be so plugged into so many different worlds?
One of the last pieces in "Devil" is autobiographical, in which Piazza describes stumbling upon dozens of boxes of 78 LPs at a flea market, and spending a joyful afternoon picking through them for gems with the permission of his patient partner Mary. Besides scoring some rare finds, Piazza's awareness of Mary's graceful tolerance of his collecting 'bug' is the main point of the story, but I also suspect that it says alot about why his writing is so strong. When you collect rare records that can only occasionally be found in random crates in garage sales and flea markets, you have to sift through a ton of muck to find the odd piece of gold. It takes a great deal of passion and perseverance, and not a little stubbornness. I suspect Piazza similarly uses those qualities when he's working on his writing: circle an idea, observe, step back, refine, lean in, refine, refine, rinse and repeat. This collection demonstrates that he's found gold more than a few times.
