Category Archives: books

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Guidebooks to Sin

Join THNOC on Friday, February 3, for the release of Guidebooks to Sin: The Blue Books of Storyville, New Orleans by Pamela D. Arceneaux. Between 1897 and 1917, a legal red-light district thrived at the edge of the French Quarter, helping establish the notorious reputation that adheres to New Orleans today. Though many scholars have written about Storyville, no thorough contemporary study of the blue books–directories of the neighborhood’s prostitutes, featuring advertisements for liquor, brothels, and other goods and services–has been available until now.
Arceneaux’s examination of these rare guides invites readers into a version of Storyville created by its own entrepreneurs. A foreword by the historian Emily Epstein Landau places the blue books in the context of their time, concurrent with the rise of American consumer culture and modern advertising. Illustrated with hundreds of facsimile pages from the blue books in THNOC’s holdings, Guidebooks to Sin illuminates the intersection of race, commerce, and sex in this essential chapter of New Orleans history.
The book, which retails for $50, will be available for purchase at The Shop at The Collection, local independent bookstores, and national online retailers beginning Friday, February 3. The book release event is free and open to the public. Registration is required. Email wrc@hnoc.org or call (504) 523-4662 to make reservations.
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Friday, February 3

5:30 – 6:30 p.m.: Lecture with
Pamela D. Arceneaux, THNOC senior librarian/rare books curator, at the
Queen Anne Ballroom, Hotel Monteleone, 214 Royal Street
6:30 – 8 p.m.: Reception and book signing
The Historic New Orleans Collection
533 Royal Street
Admission is free, but reservations are required. Email wrc@hnoc.org or call (504) 523-4662 to make reservations.
The Historic New Orleans Collection presents
February 4, 2017
Hotel Monteleone, 214 Royal Street
Registration is required to attend the symposium, and early registration is available through Friday, January 13, with rates ranging between $40 and $75. Rates will increase to $50 – $85 on Saturday, January 14, and registration will remain open as long as space is available. Register online or call (504) 523-4662 to register via telephone.
Though the citizens of New Orleans may not have known it at the time, the year 1917 was a pivotal moment in the city’s history. The first jazz recording, “Livery Stable Blues,” was released, and Storyville, the famed red-light district, closed. One hundred years later, the 2017 Williams Research Center Symposium, Storyville and Jazz, 1917: An End and a Beginning, examines the ways in which the neighborhood and the musical movement have shaped perceptions of New Orleans around the world. A schedule of talks is available online. Early registration is available through Friday, January 13.
The 22nd annual Williams Research Center Symposium is presented by The Historic New Orleans Collection with support from Hotel Monteleone and ClearBridge Advisors, Inc. Additional support is provided by St. Denis J. Villere & Co.; Becker Suffern McLanahan, Ltd.; AOS Interior Environments; Baptist Community Ministries; Bywater Woodworks, Inc.; Exterior Designs, Inc.; Milling Benson Woodward, LLP; Waggonner & Ball Architects; New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau; New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation; Premium Parking; and Solaris Garage.
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Interview with editor of N.O Lit: 200 years of New Orleans Literature

Listen to The Anthology of Louisiana Literature‘s 2-part interview with Dr. Nancy Dixon, editor of one of the necessary books for any New Orleans scholar or armchair historian: N.O. Lit: 200 Years of New Orleans Literature. Even if this brilliant woman wasn’t my pal, I’d still be urging you to get a copy. I open it up again and again to read her selections from different authors.

The 560 pages includes a well-curated set of short fiction and plays that reflect the city’s literary history, from Paul Louis LeBlanc de Villeneuve’s 18th-century play The Festival of the Young Corn, or The Heroism of Poucha-Houmma to Fatima Shaik’s 1987 short story “Climbing Monkey Hill.”

Dixon provides informative introductions to each author’s section, placing the works and their creators within the context of the city’s history and the history of its literature, making the anthology both an enjoyable artful artifact and an important academic resource.

Part 1

Part 2

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Crescent City Books moves to 124 Baronne

Spread the word. Crescent City Books will be moving to 124 Baronne St. (across the street from The Roosevelt Hotel/Domenica Restaurant). Will reopen by, if not before, March 1st.

 

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WRBHReadingRadio: The Writer’s Forum: Pope and New Orleans obits

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Lavender Interview 

A perceptive and sensitive interview with New Orleans poet/publisher Bill Lavender.

What’s involved here is the very same bias that Zizek speaks of in “The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape,” his article on the national perception of New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. Or, as Deleuze put it, “If you’re trapped in the dream of the Other, you’re fucked.” We in the South have been trapped in some New Yorker’s dream for some time now. The stereotype has actually gotten worse, I think, in recent times, as the cultural hegemony of New York and California have been eroding and they scramble to bolster the pretense that they still matter…

…The New Orleans scene has waxed and waned since I’ve been involved in it, and the political and generally extra-aesthetic forces that have shaped it would make a very interesting study…. The reason, I think, that MFA programs have flourished to the point of overpopulation of late is that they have attempted to recreate real artistic movements, with the comradery and passion and competitiveness of a real scene but within the artificial environment of the university. MFA programs represent the disneyfication of writing. They are simulacra of real artistic discovery, available only with a paid ticket. It isn’t that nothing good goes on in them (I’ve taught in and directed one myself), but a real movement can only happen outside this system, in the political and economic “real world.”

Source: Lavender Ink Interview | Jacket2