The first book in my backlog is New Orleans, Mon Amour by Andrei Codrescu. Codrescu is a poet and the ringleader of the slightly baffling Exquisite Corpse journal. He’s also a frequent commentator on NPR. This book is not a Hurricane Katrina book, per se, but it is a nice contribution to the growing New Orleans nostalgia genre.

Codrescu Mon Amour Cover

New Orleans, Mon Amour is a collection of Codrescu’s writing about the City of New Orleans in the twenty years preceding the hurricane, as well as a handful of pieces from after the hurricane. What’s weird is that the chronologically arranged book begins almost simultaneously with my departure for college. I didn’t know at the time that I would come back for a few summers and then slowly become a weekend and holiday visitor to my home town. It’s nice to imagine that Codrescu has been there to feed me reports on day-to-day life in my absence.

The book is a collection of very short (2-3 page) slice-of-life vignettes of Codrescu’s life in New Orleans, transforming himself from a new comer to an in-the-know insider and adopted son. Being a poet, it appears, is great work if you can get it. When not actively writing, you’re free to collect “experiences” partying, going to music clubs into the small hours, and hanging out with New Orleans’ none-to-few bar stool philosophers.

The pieces collected in the book are a mixed bag. Some seemingly have no point other than as a sort of diary entry in Codrescu’s life. Others have gained considerable weight and poignancy given the disaster that would follow. In more than one entry, Codrescu notes in passing that the city is well and screwed if the levee ever breaks. He freaks out early in the book when he sees a ship passing on the river that is well over his head. One of the big surprises in the book for me was learning that a high school class mate has become the owner of a bar in the Marigny and a poet in his own right. Crazy.

The book takes its name from an article that Walker Percy, New Orleans Pulitzer-winning author, wrote for Harpers in 1968. I have to confess that I haven’t yet read that article, but I can’t leave that kind of thing open-ended. I had my research assistant do some leg work, and a Percy collection that contains the article in question was located at the library and is in my mitts as we speak.

Tonight I’m going to immerse myself further in my city’s culture by going to see Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint at the Chastain Amphitheatre. If you haven’t heard the album that the two have recorded together, I highly recommend it. Also: if anyone wants to read this book, I have an extra copy. Shoot me an e-mail, and I’ll send it along.

A word of warning: if my rambling about New Orleans at every available opportunity is getting tiresome, it is going to get worse before it gets better. I’m reading seemingly all of the bumper crop of New Orleans books. I have a friend who has been reading them all for his own professional need to get a handle on NOLA, and he has been slipping the books that I don’t have already. Govern yourself accordingly.