Customer Reviews

Lords of Misrule: Mardi Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After reading this book, I understand that there is much more to New Orleans' Mardi Gras than a drunken good time. Yet I am frustrated because Gill did little more than illuminate many promising lines of inquiry, without satisfying any of them.

I concur with another reviewer ("Temerous erudition") that Gill's organization is totally scattershot. He piles on the interesting tales, but without much of a conceptual scheme. Intriguing starts are made, then snapped off abruptly; and it's on to the next thought, like literary ADD. I knew I was not in the presence of a first-rate book when, in chapter 2, after introducing the Louisiana slave rebellion of 1811, Gill ends the one paragraph devoted to it thus:

"Thus ended the largest slave uprising in the history of the United States; though a failure, it at least encouraged somewhat more liberal treatment of slaves as well as free people of color for most of the antebellum era."

And then we are off to a different subject. The reader is given a tantalizing view of a fascinating incident--the largest slave uprising in US history! But the parade needs to keep moving and the trail is lost in a blur. It feels like the sort of thing you'd hear from a New Orleans tour guide while walking through the French Quarter.

Also, in this (as in many other instances), Gill does not substantiate his statements. What did the 'liberal treatment' consist of? Is the reader simply expected to look up the incident in an encyclopedia? If I had not read other sources, I would not know of the Louisiana "Code Noir" to which Gill is presumably referring. In a work purporting to be serious history, this is an abuse of the reader's time and money. (And when the sentence is deconstructed, does it really have any meaning? 'Somewhat more liberal' treatment for 'most' of the antebellum period? Without specific examples, this sentence simply ups the word count without saying much. It's the sort of thing my university professors would have torn apart with red pen. Ironic, then, that this is a university press book.)

It's not utterly worthless, hence two stars instead of one. If you are a researcher looking to write a really definitive social and cultural history, this book is a decent place to start as a roadmap--if you fleshed out all of the false starts made by Gill, you'd have a really good book on your hands. Everyone else: caveat emptor!

Until I was sixteen, I went to Mardi Gras every year. I was therefore fascinated to read James Gill's account of the twisted and bizarre history of New Orleans' biggest tourism cash cow (albeit one which should not be kept alive through longstanding racist shibboleths), and see what sort of political and social struggles underpinned the history of the old-style Krewes (which, incidentally, I never got to see, my family--and eventually myself--preferring the big flashy ones like Endymion and Bacchus). Gill's accompanying history of New Orleans is even better, yielding many interesting and little known facts. Unfortunately, one gets so wrapped up in stirring episodes like the checkered postbellum career of James Longstreet that the occasional Mardi Gras asides actually get to be irritating (which surely was not the point of the book). Fortunately, Gill's concluding focus on the "battle for Mardi Gras" between Councilwomen Dorothy Mae Taylor and Peggy Wilson brings the story into an exciting present day context which will be unsurprising to anyone familiar with the running circus of lunacy that is Louisiana politics (although it's nice to have confirmation that female politicians can be almost as boorish and intolerant as male politicians). This book, along with John Kennedy Toole's A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES and Jerry Strahan's MANAGING IGNATIUS, is essential reading for anyone looking to learn about New Orleans.

Lords of Misrule is the best history survey of New Orleans I have come across. The idea of using Mardi Gras (Carnival) as the hook for a general history is inspired: the cultural and political history of New Orleans is intimately intertwined with Carnival, and Carnival remains fascinating even when Louisiana politics are repellant. Gill has done his homework, studying promary sources and skeptically drawing his own conclusions, which is absolutely necessary in a place whose history-writing victors have liberally invented romantic myths for 150 years. In serious histories of Louisiana, it's easy to find victims but hard to find heroes, because all sides of each situation are tainted by fluid combinations of racism, violence, and corruption. Lords of Misrule deals with this problem by presenting Mardi Gras as an entity with a life of its own that somehow is able to stand firm on the swampy terrain of Louisiana political and racial history. The writing is quite good, with occasional Oscar Wilde-esque flourishes and frequent ironic double-negative descriptions (e.g. "not unknown" as a way of saying "frequent"). Several of the chapters cover events of the 1990's which Gill witnessed firsthand as a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. These tend to be a bit overly detailed for my taste, but it doesn't bring the book down much. I would be interested in an update chapter, in which Gill discusses the new Krewes (most notably Orpheus, started by Harry Connick Jr) that arose in the mid-90's to replace the ossified old-line Krewes whose feelings were hurt in the tussle over the integration of Carnival. It seems to me that things really worked out for the best, but I haven't lived in New Orleans for over a decade. Doubtless the full story--well told, by a fair and erudite writer like Gill--is much more complicated and much more interesting.

Great read on the history and culture surrounding the mardi GRAS that most people outside of Louisiana have no idea about. Very good read, takes the point of view from current times and mixes in history as backstory. As a an annual purtaker in carnival here in new Orleans I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it to enthusiasts as well as anyone interested in new Orishas history!

This book is jam packed with amazing stories. Unfortuantely Gill's inability to organize information by chronology or theme, and his insistence on using as many big words as possible, as well as paragraphs that never seem to end or make a point, make it really hard to follow. I frequently found myself skipping back several pages to try to figure out who he was talking about and why, and was generally unable to do anything but completely lose track of the loose thread of narative that appears occasionaly throughout chapters with names that seemingly have little to do with their contents. Too bad, because apparently a lot of people died and fought and drank and screwed. In what order, I will have to look elsewhere to find out.

To consider carnival in New Orleans through the prism of each krewe's exclusivity is to miss the point entirely. Despite the author's contention to the contrary, Mardi Gras in New Orleans is the most inclusive celebration in America. Not because anyone can be a member of a specific group, but because any group of people can band together and create their own association. Of course, what most observers omit entirely (for convenience sake) is the fact that staging a carnival parade and ball takes so much effort and money that the people who dream of staging this type of celebration ultimately find it to be too much.

Those of us who trace our membership in the "old-line krewes" four or five generations back have something to be genuinely proud of, critics be damned. We will never erase 150 years of proud parading tradition for the over-sensitive, cheap, rabble rousing politics of a political class that cannot sustain itself except by explicit race baiting and class warfare. Though we have become the whipping boys of the liberal elite, we are unbowed and will be ever so.