Louisiana Power & Light - Hardcover

Dufresne, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393036480 ISBN 13: 9780393036480

Publisher: W. W. Norton, 1994

Synopsis

Welcome to Monroe, Louisiana, corrugated paper capital of the North Delta parishes, home of the Louisiana Passion Play and the Christian business weekly Prophet and Loss, a city whose library hosts a dysfunctional Great Books seminar, whose civil theater has produced a musical-comedy version of King Lear, and whose cypress tress have been known to drip snakes.
Folks here have been studying the genetically deficient Fontana family for generations, ever since Peregrine Fontana sloshed his way out of the swamp in 1840. Now it's 1972 and Billy Wayne Fontana is the last survivor of this sorry familial line.
In this hilarious and wholly original tragi-comic romp you'll meet Billy Wayne, who has been raised and groomed for the priesthood but who leaves his spiritual calling for Earlene, a sassy woman who writes country music lyrics at her kitchen table; George Binwaddie, a Pakistani messiah and motel owner who is driven to extraordinary acts of violence; Angelo Candella, a Vietnam hero and State House official who runs his office from a wheelchair; and Moon Pie Fontana, Billy Wayne's offspring, a physically disabled child-star radio evangelist. Hold on, this is a wild and wacky ride through the Louisiana backwaters.
As quirky and imaginative as the best of John Irving, culled with the literary affects of Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, and William Faulkner - all of whom Dufresne was compared to in reviews from his debut collection The Way That Water Enters Stone - this first novel about marriage, politics, friendship, love, and the quest for salvation will break your heart and make you laugh at the same time.

About this title

About the Author

John Dufresne teaches creative writing at Florida International University in Miami.

Reviews

This first novel by the author of a well-received story collection, The Way That Water Enters Stone , is a wacky Southern Gothic set in small-town Louisiana. Billy Wayne Fontana is the sole survivor of his oddball line of marginal folk, legendary in this backwater for being the most-often-executed and sickest white family in the Delta; and when he acquires a priestly vocation it seems likely he will be the last Fontana. While confessing young Earlene deBastrop, however, he is smitten and marries her; unfaithfulness with Tami Lynne follows, then--miraculously--a second marriage and the birth of two boys, one with a rocky heart, the other a cripple. How perplexed Billy Wayne, intending always the best but fatally impulsive, brings disaster upon himself and his little family is the center of the tale, but it is filled out with a host of ribald walk-on characters: George Dinwaddie, Pakistani exile owner of the Palms Motel and would-be assassin; Vietnam vet Angelo Candella, whose route to the statehouse in Baton Rouge is as a vegetable in a wheelchair; and Dencil Currence, who aspires to be Mr. Reddy Kilowatt for the power company. The narrative is oddly schizophrenic, alternating abruptly between farce and elegy, with some peculiar authorial interpolations ("So where are we?" "Now that we've got up a moderate head of narrative steam," etc.). And Dufresne cannot seem to escape an unfortunate edge of condescension toward his characters from time to time. It is a skillful, often lively performance, but one that leaves a disconcerting aftertaste.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In his first novel, Dufresne extends the exploits of the Fontana family, introduced in his highly touted collection of stories, The Way That Water Enters Stone (1991). But devices that might be amusing in a short story do not necessarily have enough weight to sustain a longer work. Billy Wayne, last of the Fontana line, is brought together with other eccentric characters, all of whom live in close proximity to Monroe, La. (pop. 56,000). Billy Wayne was about to enter the priesthood when he met a woman in the hospital and ran off with her. They spend their first night in a field, then move to a decrepit motel sold to a gullible Pakistani. Initially, these miscast outcasts are put forth with true Southern flourish. Except we soon realize Dufresne is rambling on about his characters' lives, never once entering their emotions or examining their motives. Even when the Pakistani loses his motel or is held in jail, his response is glossed over with cold, generic statements such as ``my heart aches.'' Later, when Fox Ledbetter commits suicide, a chapter is devoted to Billy Wayne's last evening with him, but few readers will remember who Fox Ledbetter is (so facile were his previous appearances). This lapse of memory is not surprising: The plot is continually interrupted by narratives about minor characters. Dufresne wastes so much time telling readers he's telling a story and expounding on the art of storytelling that we lose interest in the characters and, thus, in the story. A more daring writer might have been able to handle this text-within-text commentary, and the flitting from character to character, by finding some formal innovations to suit the purpose. But despite a few experimental passages, the writing here is fairly conventional and conventionally boring. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

For Billy Wayne Fontana, guilt is as natural "as gravity," but he hopes to end the curse on his genetically tainted clan by adopting priestly celibacy. Unfortunately, hearing a young woman's confession propels him into an impulsive marriage and sparks a new series of tragic events. The narrative meanders lazily, digresses into anecdotes about earlier unfortunate Fontanas, and then leaps forward with startling revelations. In this first novel, the author of a critically acclaimed story collection (The Way That Water Enters Stone, Norton, 1991) distills high comedy from intense pain, philosophical insight from bayou murkiness. Dufresne enlarges his comedy by using the Monroe Library Great Books discussion group as a perceptive but highly eccentric community chorus and by offering a delightfully acerbic satire of Louisiana politics ("kakistocracy," or "government by the worst") as backdrop. Highly recommended for popular and literary collections alike.
Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookeville
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

It looked for a while like Billy Wayne Fontana might escape the various calamities that haunt his clan, the most executed white family in the history of Louisiana. Flush with a new job at Louisiana Power & Light paying a whopping $6.25 an hour, Billy had his eyes on this little shotgun with a front porch and working shutters on the northside. . . . Pretty soon, six months tops, he'd have a truck, a record player, television maybe. Well, Billy gets all those things and more, but when he starts hearing voices, the Fontana flaw (bad water in the gene pool) takes hold. The calamities crash down like marble-sized raindrops in a Bayou thunderstorm, and they don't stop until, well . . . until there is more than enough heartache to keep country-western songwriter Earlene Fontana, Billy's first wife, in material through the millennium. Dufresne's novel is a beguiling mix of Faulkner and Barry Gifford (see box on p.1921). He takes this nearly surrealistic story of southern-style squalor well beyond parody, making us care about his white-trash cast even though we know our caring will lead to pain. The Fontanas, after all, are just like us only more so. Bill Ott

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393036480
• ISBN 13: 9780393036480
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 306