Tag Archives: books

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Panel on New Orleans book, “Unfathomable City”

Friday panel at Tennessee Williams Festival:
Rebecca Snedecker
Garnette Cadogan
Shirley Thompson
Joshua Jelly-Shapiro

RS: it’s true that all 50 writers/researchers had their own experience about working on the book. Can the panelists describe their own experience?

ST: had little idea of what the final book would be. ..pleasantly surprised when it arrived in the mail…
The book invites readers to follow on their own path.
New Orleans has consciously used its place itself as a way to entice others to it, especially after the Civil War. This book chips away at that tourist narrative…

GC: shape of his essay was meant to resemble the shape of the city…

ST: tried to capture the paradox of diametrically opposed ideas. Sugar as a topic is a delightful treat and a commodity.

JJS: what’s interesting is that maps are stories-even narratives-and stories really contain maps. Combining the two is natural.

GC: an essay is a personal voice, a snapshot and is never really finished. Wanted the essay to contain the same sort of reactions (“write it as it felt”) as there is to the subject matter (bounce): joyful and disdainful at the same time, infectious feeling but also to contain the ambivalence that also exists.
(Tried to not use the word infectious, but ended up with it in there anyway.)
An intensely local subject but international at the same time, just like the city itself.
RS: it was important to remember that visuals and text shouldn’t be redundant, just like in cinema.
GC: there are 2 kinds of writers: those who hand in their work and those who have it pulled from their grasp. This project reduced the anxiety of attempting to contain the multitude-ness of the subject since the maps had their own story. It’s like the person who only listens to reggae music doesn’t know reggae music.
And I remembered New Orleans was here before me and will be here after me.
RS: what’s interesting is that the history of bounce music in New Orleans is partly the history of the projects (aka project music) and therefore is really about pre-K New Orleans. the map is one of those that does not physically exist any longer.
ST: Some maps have collapsed history, sugar for example is both the history and the contemporary story of sugar.
ST: I am usually skeptical of mapping. It’s really an act of conquest. Also because they impose a new set of claims on a place and attempt to define every site. Resistance itself is often about not being mapped, about resisting being named in a colonial way.
I bought (editor) Solnit’s SF map book Infinite City and saw that it showed creative resistance and had deep respect and humility for its subjects.
JJS: I also liked how the footprint of the city varies a good deal in the maps and essays.

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“Hating Bourbon Street”

From Rich Campanella’s upcoming book, “Bourbon Street, A History” published this month by Louisiana State University Press. Campanella has long been one of my favorite (quirky) New Orleans historian/writers, as he brings his own flair and point of view to everything he does. He tirelessly walks and bikes and searches for tidbits of history in our city and does much to point out the delicate line between history and lore, while reminding us that sometimes it doesn’t matter which is which.

For all its flamboyance and swagger, Bourbon Street is one of the least pretentious places in town. It’s as utterly uncool as it is wildly successful, and in an era when “cool capital” is increasingly craved and fiscal capital increasingly scarce, there’s something refreshing about a place that flips off coolness and measures success the old-fashioned way: by the millions. And authenticity? Not only does Bourbon Street not try to be authentic, it doesn’t even think about it.

Hating Bourbon Street: Places: Design Observer.

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Dispatches From New Orleans, Vol. 3: A Literary Interlude Starring William Faulkner and Vince Carter – The Triangle Blog – Grantland

An excellent trip through the remaining bookstores of the Quarter and its people and oddities. I’d keep this column as a reference if I were you…Although, his worry about being judged by the booksellers of the Quarter when browsing or buying is entirely unwarranted. If anyone cares less about your preferences than the people of the Quarter, I don’t know who they are.
Rembert Browne (@rembert) is a staff writer for Grantland.

Dispatches From New Orleans, Vol. 3: A Literary Interlude Starring William Faulkner and Vince Carter – The Triangle Blog – Grantland.

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BOOK SIGNING WITH POPPY TOOKER, AUTHOR OF “LOUISIANA EATS!”

On Saturday, December 7, from 2 to 4 p.m., culinary enthusiast, author, and radio host Poppy Tooker will sign copies of her new book Louisiana Eats!: The People, Their Food, and Their Stories (Pelican Publishing Company, August 2013) at The Historic New Orleans Collection’s museum shop, located at 533 Royal Street in the French Quarter.

Book signing with Poppy Tooker, author of Louisiana Eats!: The People, Their Food, and Their Stories
Saturday, December 7
2–4 p.m.
The Shop at The Collection, 533 Royal Street
Free and open to the public. The book retails for $24.95 and will be available for purchase at the event.

As the host of the popular public radio show Louisiana Eats!, Tooker is passionate about food and the people who make it. Her new book gives readers an in-depth, behind the scenes look at Louisiana food producers and personalities interviewed on her show.

The book introduces the reader to stories previously untold with transcripts of 15 interviews with specialists of iconic Louisiana foods, accompanying essays and recipes and portrait photographs by David Spielman of the subjects. Tooker, a native New Orleanian, examines the place that food and race play on Louisiana’s tables and champions the growers and food producers who are preserving endangered indigenous ingredients like Creole cream cheese and mirlitons.

Louisiana Eats! retails for $24.95 and will be available for purchase at the event. In addition to hosting the signing with Tooker, The Shop at The Collection will also be hosting its annual Member Appreciation Day and trunk show with Mignon Faget, Ltd. on December 7, giving readers and shoppers plenty of reasons to visit. More information is available at http://www.hnoc.org or (504) 523-4662.