[Last month I got to return to my favorite American city for the 2025 MLA Convention. So for this year’s Valentine’s Day series I’ll be offering some love letters to what makes New Orleans so unique, leading up to a special tribute post this weekend!]
On five of
the many books through which we can read New Orleans.
1)
The
Grandissimes (1881): I love George Washington Cable’s
messy and magnificent multi-generational historical novel so much that I featured
it in that hyperlinked post in my very first week of blogging (and made it the
sole focus of the last chapter of my
dissertation/first book to boot). I also don’t know any novel that more
fully captures its setting than does Cable’s for New Orleans, making it doubly a
must-read for anyone who loves the Big Easy.
2)
The
Awakening (1899): Kate Chopin’s masterpiece, which as illustrated by that
hyperlinked post I’ve taught many times and always to great effect, isn’t
necessarily about New Orleans—indeed, I’d argue that Chopin’s story could take
place most anywhere. But at the same time, Chopin was consistently interested
in portraying her Louisiana and Creole communities through local
color writing, and there’s a lot we can learn about them in this novel.
3)
A
Streetcar Named Desire (1947): That hyperlinked post focuses on The
Iceman Cometh, because for whatever reason I haven’t written at length in
this space about Tennessee Williams’s iconic New Orleans-set play.
I also know it less well than I do other Williams works, or even than I do the
film adaptation with Brando’s
famous t-shirt. But we can’t talk literary New Orleans without Williams and
Streetcar!
4)
The
Moviegoer (1961): As I argued in that hyperlinked post, Walker Percy’s unique
and quirky debut novel is profoundly interested in where American society and culture
were in its early 1960s moment, and thus is more interested in portraying and
engaging with the time layer of setting than the place one. But Percy’s protagonist
Binx Bolling spends the whole novel roaming his native New Orleans, making this
book for many readers then and since an iconic
tour guide to that city.
5)
The
Yellow House (2020): Mostly I want to take this last entry
on the list to recommend Sarah Broom’s
multi-generational family memoir as enthusiastically as I can. But it also offers
an excellent book-end to the first post in this week’s series, as I don’t know
any book that captures all the layers of New Orleans and of the America it
reflects better than Broom’s.
Special
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Cities you’d love on?
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