Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans (Crown Journeys) [Hardcover]

Roy Blount Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2005 | Series: Crown Journeys

“Betcha I can tell ya / Where ya / Got them shoooes. / Betchadollar, / Betchadollar, / Where ya / Got them shoooes. / Got your shoes on your feet, / Got your feet on the street, / And the street’s in Noo / Awlins, Loo- / Eez-ee-anna. Where I, for my part, first ate a live oyster and first saw a naked woman with the lights on. . . . Every time I go to New Orleans I am startled by something.”

So writes Roy Blount Jr. in this exuberant, character-filled saunter through a place he has loved almost his entire life—a city “like no other place in America, and yet (or therefore) the cradle of American culture.” Here we experience it all through his eyes, ears, and taste buds: the architecture, music, romance (yes, sex too), historical characters, and all that glorious food.

The book is divided into eight Rambles through different parts of the city. Each closes with lagniappe—a little bit extra, a special treat for the reader: here a brief riff on Gennifer Flowers, there a meditation on naked dancing. Roy Blount knows New Orleans like the inside of an oyster shell and is only too glad to take us to both the famous and the infamous sights. He captures all the wonderful and rich history—culinary, literary, and political—of a city that figured prominently in the lives of Jefferson Davis (who died there), Truman Capote (who was conceived there), Zora Neale Hurston (who studied voodoo there), and countless others, including Andrew Jackson, Lee Harvey Oswald, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Jelly Roll Morton, Napoléon, Walt Whitman, O. Henry, Thomas Wolfe, Earl Long, Randy Newman, Edgar Degas, Lillian Hellman, the Boswell Sisters, and the Dixie Cups.

Above all, though, Feet on the Street is a celebration of friendship and joie de vivre in one of America’s greatest and most colorful cities, written by one of America’s most beloved humorists.

Also available as a Random House AudioBook

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this brief walking tour of New Orleans, Blount (Robert E. Lee; Be Sweet) spins an atmospheric, pleasantly meandering tale about a city he clearly knows and loves. Rather than offer up the standard guidebook-style list of things for tourists to do, Blount divides the book into eight "rambles," because "New Orleans is my favorite place in the world to ramble. Even on those deep-summer days that make a person feel swathed in slowly melting hamfat." Blount's yarns will make readers want to visit the city, soak up the mood and create their own memories. Even something as simple as a rain shower reads like a possible adventure: "It can rain so hard in New Orleans that you expect to see alligators bouncing off the pavement ... Also dramatic in their way are the soft showers of the early evening, sometimes arriving spookily in full sunshine from no clouds at all." Of course, even the most unconventional guide to the Big Easy would be incomplete without a mention of the city's food, and Blount devotes an entire ramble to raw oysters, which he says "give you a coolish inner lining collateral to the sheen that New Orleans humidity gives your skin." Blount's New Orleans isn't sugar-coated; it's at times wistful, melancholy and even dangerous. But all this combines to give the reader the impression that anything can happen in New Orleans, which is precisely the author's point. Those looking for a nontraditional portrait of this unconventional city will be delighted by Blount's colorful, almost tender account.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Blount, a well-known humorist, commentator, and biographer (Robert E. Lee 2003), contributes to the Crown Journeys series of travelogues an example of the best kind of travel-reading experience: when good writers perambulate through and around places they know and understand, and, in Blount's case, that place is the city of New Orleans. His observations and descriptions of interesting places within the city and his reflections on general and specific attitudes to be found there are both celebratory ("the best town for eating in America") and honest ("the city is hardly a model of racial harmony"). He makes several stops in his guided tour, taking time to ponder such topics as the frightening fact that New Orleans lies below sea level, the constant feel of wetness from the persistent rain and humidity, eating raw oysters as a "rite of passage," and, of course, the superabundance of characters--eccentric individuals who seem drawn to the Crescent City like moths to the flame. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Crown; First Edition edition (February 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400046459
• ISBN-13: 978-1400046454
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.9 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #135,791 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The New Orleans I Remember and Love, November 22, 2005

By 

Jason Cooper (Birmingham, AL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans (Crown Journeys) (Hardcover)

This book, a walking tour of the Big Easy, is another installment in the publishers' Crown Journeys. For me, it was a trip back to a city that I love and that means so much to me.

It's all here, from beignets at Cafe du Monde to the street kid who approaches the obvious out-of-towner with this line: "Betcha' I can tell you where you got your shoes?" In between we stroll through the sex and sin of Bourbon Street and the verdant splendor of Audubon Park and the Garden District.

This book will suffer, of course, due to some unbelievably bad timing for the author and the publisher. Still, I found this read to be like visiting with an old friend. The New Orleans depicted in this slim volume is the one I remember and love, the one I believe will soon be again. In spite of the destruction and death of Hurricane Katrina there is fresh hope: Cafe du Monde began serving coffee and chickory again after the longest delay of business in their 150 history. Also, the American Library Association announced days ago that they will go ahead with plans to shop the Crescent City for their annual meeting.

The opening and ending of the book, with its ominous foretelling of the Big One and what it would do to the city wasn't enough to chase me away from the laughs to be found within. I'd tell most anyone to pick this book up.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Glimpse Inside, October 10, 2005

By 

karriela (Pasadena, Ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans (Crown Journeys) (Hardcover)

I love New Orleans, but only know it as an infrequent visitor. I love to read books about New Orleans for more in depth, inside information. That is just what the author offers in this compact book. He offers up the flavor, the mixed history, the impressions you'd get walking down street of one of the most well-known, least understood cities. The author doesn't offer justification or explanation, he just tells it like he has experienced it. I like it that way.

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not For Everyone, March 30, 2005

By 

Michael Lima (Fresno, California USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans (Crown Journeys) (Hardcover)

Roy Blount, Jr. chose a slightly different approach in this latest addition to Crown Journeys' travelogue series. Instead of a straight forward description of New Orleans' attractions, Blount takes the reader on an "emotional" journey by tying various locations to memories of his time spent in the city. When it works, it is very evocative in portraying New Orleans' distinctive character. In those successful passages, one can almost feel the humidity dripping off the page and smell New Orleans' unique scent. However, when it doesn't work (like in the chapter about some of the "friends" Blount remembers), it comes off as self-indulgent drivel. The result is a very uneven book.

For those whose recollections of New Orleans weren't influenced too strongly by alcohol, Feet on the Street will bring back good memories of arguably the most distinct city in the United States. Still, even those who have a familiarity with New Orleans may have trouble relating to some of Blount's musings. Those who have no familiarity with the city will probably not enjoy the book, simply because they won't be able to put a frame of reference to the places Blount mentions. Consequently, readers trying to discover New Orleans' special qualities via the written word should probably pass up Feet on the Street.