Customer Reviews

Louisiana Power and Light

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I found this to be the masculine version of the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Dufresne has written gorgeously flawed characters who sparkle and tarnish themselves on every page. These are the people small towns are made of--or at least, the people we imagine exist through wonderful southern novelists. It's a slow and luxurious read, like a humid summer day, but worth the patience. The ending, despite my predictions, was a surprising and poignant finale.

The story of the folks of the fictional town of Limoges, Louisiana, a place where one family's pre-destined ill fate stirs up drama after drama. The characters DuFresne creates are so true to life in their matter-of-fact emotional extremes and absurdities that we are pulled into each and every one of their lives. With unforgettable characters like Moonpie and the tragic family lineage he has shouldered, the book is the quickest most well-written prose I have read in a long time. Laughing and crying through countless dramatic encounters the story's charactersgo through, I found myself a resident of Limoges for three months after I finished reading the book. One of the best qualities of DuFresne's writing lies in his ability to display humor, being one of the most important and warm human characteristics, as an instinctive defense mechanisms in playful and wonderfully surprising ways. I read this book close to seven months ago but can not get the charcters out of my mind. I would like not to divulge much of the story line since that would detract from your reading experience. Read it and you will remind yourself why you love literature be proud that we have such imaginative literary writers living in America during such turbulent times. Isn't it time all of us picked up a book that was NOT a national bestseller and read it for the sheer enjoyment of the playful words and literary merit? Reminiscent of Nabokov with a dash of John Irving and Tennesse Williams with the surreal literary quality of Paul Auster, "Louisiana Power & Light" should be a most enjoyable read for all of you that still believe in literature and its inherent love of life.

...Billy Wayne Fontana is obsessed with escaping the fate of his ancestors-a quirky, unlucky life, with a rather brutal and bizarre death. Upon giving up the priesthood for marriage, he believes that he can avoid his fate. Its a southern gothic romp with a humorous edge to it. You don't have to read through many pages before you can see the wit that Dufresne is capable of.
I hate to say that a book is an excellent first novel. It should be based on its own merits, but this is a certainly an excellent first novel. I look forward to reading more of his writing.

I think John Dufresne's first work -Louisiana Power and Light- was a fabulous read. I think anyone who doesn't like the book is from the North and doesn't understand it. This book is about people we KNOW down here in the South. It touches on our own family members and that is why it is so poignant. Truly a good book... I found myself laughing out loud several times. Looking forward to reading all Dufresne's works.

Ironic and intriguing twists of fate take this book well out of the ordinary. Superb characterization, and a wonderful sense of place make this book an especially evocative one.

Most writers today have difficulty finding a totally original voice. Many that do merely have several pieces of other writers in them. When looking back over the history of American Literature we see where new movements came from.

Dufresne's writing is new altogether. Not that there aren't others out there with similar styles, but nothing quite like this. Funny (in a disturbing way that I am almost afraid to admit I can relate to), grotesque, depressing, and at the same time enlightening.

If you like Dufresne, I suggest you also read Ed McClanahan (especially Congress of Wonders, My Vita if You Will), another southern writer. Upon first reading Dufresne I wondered if these two may have met in some backwoods revival meeting or moonshine festival.

About a third of the way through this book, you may feel as I did - is this a satire of Southern writing, or is it a genuinely bizarre story about a hapless last descendant of a town's mad family, Bobby Wayne Fontana? The story, set in Monroe, LA, combines Gothic elements of religion, fate, and human failings with a modern setting and a diverse cast of characters, including a Pakistani hotel owner, a naive and simple-minded young woman, and assorted Southern characters out of O'Connor, Faulkner, and the rest. The humor is present throughout, yet it's couched in a kind of pathos that can't help but strike a chord in the least of us who has ever felt at the hands of Fate. Though there are parts that go on a bit longer than they might, this is a fine example of modern Southern fiction. The new South has arrived.

This is a superb book of tremendous depth and painful humor. He's one of the few storytellers around who can make us laugh and cry in the same sentence. Wonderful wonderful work.

Working in the power industry myself, I made the assumption that the utility in the title would play a significant role in the book. I was mistaken. It does provide a touchstone for this novel of birth and death, comedy and tragedy, and love and light in the bayou country of Monroe, LA. Billy Wayne is indeed a tragi-comic figure for that I won't soon forget. He moves with his own internal tides and ebbs and flows among the women in his life (Sister Helen, Earlene, Tami Lynne). None seem to satisfy his search for mother/lover/wife. He makes the commitment, then backs away into his shell, fearful of the Fontana's legendary "curse" to fail. Having had no family to speak of, he is unfamiliar in his role as first, husband to Earlene, then lover and husband to Tami Lynne. Worst of all, in my opinion, is his failing as father to his youngest son Moon Pie. His paternal instinct kicked into overdrive with his first son. But when Moon Pie came along, he could not handle the requirements of family life. The book moves as easily as the bayous that surround Monroe. Subplots that begin to drag are remedied by short chapters and dialogue. Minor characters play out their roles in the sidelights, but they still affect the Fontanas and friends. And yet, if Billy Wayne had turned toward his "real" light in the beginning, as Angelo's eyes did in the end, instead of aspiring to be an LP&L employee, I think this man could still be a part of Dufresne's literary landscape.

In LOUISIANA POWER & LIGHT, Dufresne wields a mostly light touch to examine whether life is inherently arbitrary and tragic or whether choice makes it so. This issue is encapsulated in the life of protagonist Billy Wayne Fontana who, at the start of this novel, is the final descendent in a line of Fontana losers who, much like Thomas Sutpen in ABSALOM, ABSALOM! , emerged from nowhere in the Delta around 1840.

Billy Wayne was raised by nuns and priests in a convent. While he has no personal connection to his ancestors, the people of Monroe, Louisiana tell many stories about the Fontanas, who, by a quirk of nature, are only male and usually meet comically sad deaths. When people in Monroe tell these Fontana stories, "...we're learning about ourselves, about what it's like to be a human being and how that feels. The Fontanas... are just like us, only more so."

Billy Wayne's contribution to this trove of misfortune starts with his decision to forsake his mission in the priesthood and marry Earlene. Through sheer happenstance, they spend their wedding night at a motel, where they encounter George, Dencil, Angelo, and Hazel, who become major characters in the novel. Long story short, Billy Wayne grows bored in marriage, becomes depressed by a death, has an affair, divorces, marries, and becomes a father of two boys. Then, he becomes bored in marriage.... Anyway, you get the picture but Billy Wayne's story, as it develops, becomes increasingly tortured and confused as he second-guesses himself and wonders whether the quietly reassuring rituals of the church are superior to his life, where, as a Fontana, he has a "gene" for dismal and pointless existence.

Here is Dufresne's overview on Billy Wayne's predicament: "...it became the cruel and unavoidable fate of the Fontanas to endure heroically or mindlessly a century or more of misery and affliction and to be ultimately vanquished by this uncompromising and degenerate gene. Or does the responsibility for tragedy rest not with fate and heredity but with a man and his fatal act of will? Perhaps, in the end, it does not matter. A choice is made, a step taken, a stone loosed, the landslide begun."

LP&L is a good novel with minor shortcomings. In its first fifty pages, for example, Dufresne's touch seems somewhat patronizing as he introduces his characters who are, well, trailer trash. Meanwhile, the final twenty pages seem a trifle melodramatic, as Dufresne drops his slightly cartoonish characterizations and Billy Wayne engages with his wives. But in between, this is an involving book, with some great writing, especially when Billy Wayne and his son Duane camp on Davis Island.

Recommended.