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A review of Literary New Orleans

by Judy Long (Editor)

Great writers on the world's most enchanting city.

Reviewed by: Jennifer Santiago
About Jennifer Santiago

Literary New Orleans If you're going to New York or San Francisco or Orlando, perhaps a Lonely Planet or Fodor's guide will suffice to brief you on the city's history, tourist attractions, hotels and eateries. But if New Orleans is on your itinerary, a run-of-the-mill travel guide just won't cut it.

New Orleans is one of the oldest and most storied cities in the United States. It's the birthplace of jazz, the home of Mardi Gras, the seat of unrivaled Cajun cuisine. Visitors can go antiquing on Royal Street, buy souvenirs at the French Market, nosh on beignets and chicory coffee at Café Du Monde, see a jazz wedding wending its way from Saint Louis Cathedral through Jackson Square, ride the street car past St. Charles Avenue's antebellum mansions, visit the tomb of voodoo queen Marie Laveau, and catch hot jazz at Preservation Hall. And that's just on the first day.

"Literary New Orleans" is an anthology of works from renowned writers who, like many travelers before and since, have been inspired by the Crescent City. Unlike most of us, however, authors like William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Tennessee Williams and Walker Percy are able to capture the piquant, smoldering atmosphere of the Big Easy in stories, poems and essays.

No anthology of New Orleans-themed literature would be complete without an except from John Kennedy Toole's masterwork, "A Confederacy of Dunces." Long proves her mettle as an editor by selecting a particularly uproarious chapter in which Ignatius Reilly, the hulking hot dog vendor and anachronistic genius, is assigned to push his wiener cart through the French Quarter, "an area which houses every vice that man has ever conceived in his wildest aberrations, including, I would imagine, several modern variants made possible through the wonders of science."

Other notable inclusions are Tennessee Williams' poem "Mornings on Bourbon Street" (Williams lived in the French Quarter when he wrote "A Streetcar Named Desire"), "A Matter of Prejudice" by long-time New Orleans resident Kate Chopin, "Cherchez la Femme," by O. Henry and Truman Capote's vividly descriptive "New Orleans."

Lafcadio Hearn says it best, however, in "The Glamour of New Orleans": "There are few who can visit her for the first time without delight; and few who can ever leave her without regret; and none who can forget her strange charm when they have once felt its influence. And assuredly those who wander from her may never cease to behold her in their dreams-quaint, beautiful, and sunny as of old-and to feel at long intervals the return of the first charm-the first delicious fascination of the fairest city of the South."

"Literary New Orleans" is a history lesson, a travelogue, a collection of some of the 20th century's most gifted writers, and a love letter to a city like none other. If you have felt New Orleans' charm firsthand, this book will warm your heart like photos of a favorite vacation. And for the uninitiated, the stories here will inspire you to experience New Orleans for yourself. Be warned, however. As Lafcadio Hearn puts it, New Orleans' siren song may ensnare you: "Rest with me. For if thou leavest me, thou must forever remember me with regret."

Click here to buy this book, or read more about it at Amazon.com: Literary New Orleans

Copyright © by Jennifer Santiago, 2003

Reviewed by Jennifer Santiago:
-- The Lovely Bones - by Alice Sebold
-- 30 Minute Meals - by Rachael Ray
-- Raising Blaze - by Debra Ginsberg
-- Backpack - by Emily Barr
-- You Are Not a Stranger Here - by Adam Haslett
-- Bookends - by Jane Green
-- A Confederacy of Dunces - by John Kennedy Toole
-- Ash Wednesday - by Ethan Hawke
-- All Saints' Day - by Brent Benoit
-- The Stepford Wives - by Ira Levin
-- The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating - by David M. Buss
-- Literary New Orleans - by Judy Long (Editor)
-- The Sopranos Family Cookbook - by Allen Rucker; Recipes by Michele Scicolone
-- Atonement - by Ian McEwan
-- The Crimson Petal and the White - by Michel Faber
-- Midnight Bayou - by Nora Roberts
-- The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - by Ann Brashares
-- The Zygote Chronicles - by Suzanne Finnamore
-- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - by J.K. Rowling









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