A short dissertation on James Lee Burke

No spoilers here. This not a review of a novel. This is a review of the author. I discovered James Lee Burke many many years ago. I own, in hardback, the entire oeuvre. I re-read them almost every year. It is a gift I give myself. There are no words rich or deep enough to describe J.L. Burke's writing. His writing goes so far beyond being transcendent and evocative that is impossible for a mere mortal to even begin to come up with a way to describe his writing. I have loved every sentence, every word that wafts through the live oaks, words that spangle like gold on the bayous and estuaries in the setting of the sun. I feel the moist air filled with the scent of spawning fish and barbecue and beignets from Cafe du Monde. I can walk the Quarter and the Desire Project and the decimated Ninth Ward. I can see the pecans on the ground; crushed and green and I can hear the plink plink of them as they hit the tin roofs and galleries of shotgun homes. I stroll the streets of New Orleans and New Iberia and the air, redolent with the tannic smell of lightening in the clouds out on the Gulf invade my senses. I hear, as if they are right in my living room, the harmonica and accordion and warped piano and the deep throated wailing of a saxophone mixed with the sweet voices of young Cajun girls as they all become one in a sad lament for days long gone. I know the grifters, the pickpockets, the hookers, the pimps and the Mobbed up men with slicked back hair and expensive watches. I know Molly and Alafair and Dave and Clete and Tripod and Snuggs as if they we were sitting on a picnic table by the Teche with me and we were drinking long neck beers and Dr. Pepper's slicked with ice. I can taste the fried oyster po'boys and the gumbo and the étouffée. So too, can I envision the fetid jungles and rice paddies of Viet Nam. I can hear the rat-a-tat of machine gun fire from overhead slicks and the screaming of the dead and dying. I, through James Lee Burke's novels, have seen the Hell of war, have smelled the magnolias and the roses and the countless other flowers that climb up and down the intricate railings and balconies of the Garden District homes. I have seen fish feeding on the salt flats and heard the plop plop of their bodies as they jumped to swallow insects and bait and then rolled beneath lilly pads the size of a pie tin. This is who James Lee Burke is; a grand master of his craft. He is a teller of great tales, mysteries, but so much more than that. His writing gives the reader transportation to his world, another realm, a place so filled with the beautiful, the sublime, the evil and the good and the sounds and smells of Louisiana. Once you read his books you will never ever be as you once were. He's that great. His writing is so profound as to alter one's perception of life.