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Reading New Orleans

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Murray Browne

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Reading New Orleans

Read water tower along the Mississippi River near New Orleans

Last month I was in New Orleans. My literary experience of the city is limited but a couple books about The Crescent City stick in my mind. One of those books is Rebecca Snedeker and Rebecca Solnit’s Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas (2013).

In contrast, I have read a number of Walker Percy novels, including his most well-known work The Moviegoer which edged out Catch-22 for the National Book Award in 1962. One passage I remember is the narrator Binx Bolling speeding down the famous Elysian Fields Avenue in his car.

Baldwin & Company Books

One bookstore I where I spent time and money was Baldwin & Company Books located at 1030 Elysian Fields. Named after the prolific James Baldwin, this bookstore has it all. Yes, there’s a coffee shop and places to lounge, and as expected there is an extensive collection of Baldwin’s works, but there are other fiction-nonfiction books on the shelves as well.

They also have their own podcast studio.

It is my bookshoping and bookselling nature to always purchase something from a bookstore I admire. At Baldwin’s I selected a signed copy of Zadie Smith’s latest book of essays Dead and Alive.

Another tradition/habit I have is that once I have visited a place for any length of time, I extend my visit by reading a book about it. (My partner Denise is responsible for this good idea.)

My daughter Cynthia who was with me in New Orleans gifted me this book and I just finished reading it.

In her book Patina, the anthropologist Shannon Lee Dowdy delves deep into New Orleans’ pastness.

For more details about Patina (2016) see its listing at the University of Chicago Press.

Cover of Patina: A Profane Archeology by Shannon Lee Dowdy

Note: The three books mentioned are listed at my Destination Books online store.

2 responses to “Reading New Orleans”

  1. Jim Adams Avatar
    Jim Adams

    Glad to hear that New Orleans still has some good bookstores that are thriving. Two books that are considered the best novels of New Orleans, are “The Moviegoer” and “Confederacy of Dunces” and “Confederacy” gets my vote as it is one of the few novels I’ve read multiple times. And Percy spent most of his adult years living in Covington, La., which was 20 miles from my hometown of Slidell. I actually bought my first car in Covington, and our family during Mardi Gras, annually drove to Gentilly where the streetcar line started and we made the final trip into the Quarter proudly in costume. So, I have lots of sentimental attachment to “Moviegoer” and particularly to Percy. Hope all is well and let’s get together sometime after the New Year. Jim AdamsBooks Again email: booksagain@bellsouth.net

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    1. Murray Browne Avatar
      Murray Browne

      Yes, I did give some thought to “Confederacy of Dunces” but I remember reading it and liking it, but then I tried to read it again or read something negative, so I was unsure to include plus I try to keep from rambling on in posts. “The Moviegoer” was better the second time I read it not that long ago and it was selected Book of the Year over “Catch-22” which I tried to re-read and thought better of it. Either way I appreciate you mentioning it, Jim. Another book I liked was James G. Hollingsworth’s “The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience During the Civil War” (1995) because while browsing I was intrigued by the story that the free blacks who lived in New Orleans fought as separate unit very early in the war. I Had to search through The Book Shopper archives to find more about that since I purchased it in 2015.

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