Literary New Orleans

I love the Big Easy, but hate the crowds. Reading this book made me feel that I was there--and here I am sitting in my home in New York and dreaming of walking the streets of N.O. with Audubon, Twain, Faulkner, and Codrescu, and the incredibly talented Brenda Marie Osbey. This is an excellent anthology.

I have seen books on New Orleans come and go, but Literary New Orleans is here to stay. Why? Because it combines history, fiction, essays, memoir, and poetry. I grew up here, and I learned things I never knew. For instance, Audubon gave drawing lessons here, Zora Neale Hurston learned Hoo-Doo here, and Walt Whitman worked for a paper here. My favorite is Ishamael Reed's take on Mardi Gras...Priceless.

All the talk of food in this book made me get up and start cooking, but after a meal of shrimp creole, I could not wait to get back in my easy chair and feed my mind by reading this anthology. Armstong, Jefferson, and Capote all in one book. The in-depth biographical entries before each selection taught me much about the authors and New Orleans. Sheila Bosworth is a favorite, and I was happy to see her included. I was also glad to see an earlier work by James Lee Burke included, rather than the expected piece from his Robicheaux novels. Overall, a fine anthology.

I grew up in New Orleans and often awake to find myself wandering the city's streets in my dreams. Literary New Orleans captures the spirit of my beloved hometown with selections ranging from Audubon's journal entries describing his wanderings in the city in 1821 to Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Brenda Marie Osbey's "Faubourg." There are some rare finds here, including Tennessee Williams's poem, "Mornings on Bourbon Street," and Robert Olen Butler's "Relic," about a Vietnamese man in New Orleans who owns one of John Lennon's shoes. I commend Long for including a selection by the late Tom Dent, a writer important to us. Excerpts from memoirs by both Louis Armstrong and Lillian Hellman give the reader a true feel for growing up in the Crescent City. I love this anthology, and reading it made me so hungry for New Orleans that I have booked the next flight down. Galatoire's here I come.

Wow. What a nice book. Just the right presentation of New Orleans. I love everything about New Orleans and have read some other nice books, but many are too academic or are just a few stories, all fiction. By mixng fiction and nonfiction in this many selections you get a real feel for the history and color of the city. Great job. And, I love paperbacks with flaps.