Red Wine MoanJeri Cain Rossi
Manic D Press (US), paperback, 138 pages
Review by Hassni Malik (2001)
Jeri Cain Rossi is perhaps best known for her film work as part of the American ‘Cinema of Transgression’ movement, but while her contemporaries took an increasingly confrontational delight in the violent imagery they saw around them, Rossi saw a greater beauty in her surroundings. And so with her written work. This, her second book, collects the title novella and seven (very) short stories that tell tales of life on the poorer side of New Orleans where hearts are broken and solace is found at the bottom of a bottle of cheap red wine.
In the ‘Red Wine Moan’ novella, young lovers Iris and Jack inhabit the trashy, low rent end of a decayed New Orleans where failed artists, defeated barflies and lost street punks litter the backdrop of their doomed relationship. As the physically oppressive humidity of Louisiana wears down the motivation of all those around her, budding writer Iris continues to be inspired by her heroic love for Jack, the good looker with the wandering eye. Her touching belief in ‘true love’ remains strong no matter how many times she’s proved wrong. When moments of desolation emerge she comforts herself not in the arms of the unfaithful Jack, but by cradling a glass of red wine.
It would be easy to confuse Rossi’s writings with that other alcohol scented writer, Charles Bukowski, in that they are semi-autobiographical and there’s always a glass at hand, but Rossi’s thrift store world is more an expression of beauty and love, no matter how wretched the surroundings. The internal dialogue of her emotionally flawed characters is melancholy and touching in their naive insistence that there is such a thing as a ‘true love’. Whereas Iris’ internal dialogue is full of this beauty, it’s countered by a dead-eyed non-communication from the people she lives with.
The inevitable burn out of love that leads to disenchantment causes the characters in her other short stories to contemplate turning their back on it all. Perhaps through death (‘Be Careful What You Wish For’) or by walking away (‘Leaving New Orleans’), but these isolated people never can leave. They remain because this is their only world – the bars, the streets, the worn out love. They may delude themselves that they can live without it all, that there is a highway out of here, but soon realize that everything they are is dependent on the broken people that they see on the streets. Hell is other people, but that’s all they’ve got.
Red Wine Moan thankfully veers away from any need for density or endless back story, opting instead for more effective, snappy chapters of stillness and minor changes. In the Big Easy nothing drastic happens, it’s too hot to do much else but dwell on relationships eroded by time and disappointment (‘The Last Dance’). Rossi’s book is as sultry and beguiling as the grand city it’s set in.