New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City [Deckle Edge] [Paperback]

Andrei Codrescu (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 31, 2006

For two decades NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu has been living in and writing about his adopted city, where, as he puts it, the official language is dreams. How apt that a refugee born in Transylvania found his home in a place where vampires roam the streets and voodoo queens live around the corner; where cemeteries are the most popular picnic spots, the ghosts of poets, prostitutes, and pirates are palpable, and in the French Quarter, no one ever sleeps.

Codrescu's essays have been called "satirical gems," "subversive," "sardonic and stunning," "funny," "gonzo," "wittily poignant," and "perverse"—here is a writer who perfectly mirrors the wild, voluptuous, bohemian character of New Orleans itself. This retrospective follows him from newcomer to near native: first seduced by the lush banana trees in his backyard and the sensual aroma of coffee at the café down the block, Codrescu soon becomes a Window Gang regular at the infamous bar Molly's on Decatur, does a stint as King of Krewe de Vieux Carré at Mardi Gras, befriends artists, musicians, and eccentrics, and exposes the city’s underbelly of corruption, warning presciently about the lack of planning for floods in a city high on its own insouciance. Alas, as we all now know, Paradise is lost.

New Orleans, Mon Amour is an epic love song, a clear-eyed elegy, a cultural celebration, and a thank-you note to New Orleans in its Golden Age.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this lovely collection of very short essays (many two pages long), gravelly voiced NPR commentator Codrescu sketches finely honed portraits of a fabled city and its equally fabled inhabitants. The author, who has called the Big Easy home for two decades, shows how, like some gigantic bohemian magnet, New Orleans attracts some of the world's most talented, self-indulgent freaks. Codrescu finds himself quite at home there. He expertly weaves pages of New Orleans history through his stories of personal discovery and debauchery. The last few essays, written post-Katrina, radiate simultaneous anger and clarity. Full of pride and defensiveness, Codrescu closes the collection ruminating about rebuilding the city and his longing to return to its rhythms and eccentricities. Despite Codrescu's frustrations, this collection is, in the end, gentle and sweet. Readers can't help coming away from reading it without an abiding hope in the ability of ordinary people, under the worst circumstances, rising to whatever challenges they face. (Jan. 6)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The author is a popular NPR commentator who, although Romanian born, has been a New Orleans resident since the early 1980s. The release of this collection of essays about the city that occupies his heart could not be timelier; in fact, he has included a half-dozen pieces about its post-Katrina state. Two-page commentaries frequently give way to longer ruminations, but whether within a brief or long space, his remembrances and testimonies about the Big Easy, from the point when he arrived to the present day, share heartfelt moments and characters and conditions that are only discoverable in this most exotic of American cities. Crime is ever present, he admits, but he is equally adamant about how lovable a city it is, a place where many people call the phone numbers of the dead and fully expect the deceased to answer. Yes, living with alligators is, as he says, "an acquired taste," but on the other hand, St. Charles Avenue "has to be the most charming boulevard in the world." A place of uniqueness in all forms. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books (January 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565125053
• ISBN-13: 978-1565125056
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #376,452 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #18 in Books > Travel > United States > States > Louisiana

More About the Author

Andrei Codrescu (codrescu.com) was born in Sibiu, Transylvania, Romania. His first poetry book "License to Carry a Gun" won the Big Table Poetry award. He founded Exquisite Corpse: a Journal of Books & Ideas (corpse.org), taught literature and poetry at Johns Hopkins University, University of Baltimore, and Louisiana State University where he was MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English. He is a regular commentator on NPR's All Things Considered since 1983, has received a Peabody Award for writing and starring in the film "Road Scholar. In 1989 he returned to his native Romania to cover the fall of the Ceausescu regime for NPR and ABC News, and wrote "The Hole in the Flag: an Exile's Story of Return and Revolution." He is the author of books of poetry, novels, essays; the most recent are "The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess," (2009) "The Poetry Lesson" (2010) and "whatever gets you through the night: a story of sheherezade and the arabian entertainments" (2011), all published by Princeton University Press.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a lovely tribute!, October 25, 2006

By 

Kathleen Valentine "Passionate Writer, Passio... (Gloucester, MA, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City (Paperback)

Sometimes it takes someone from elsewhere to really appreciate a place. I have long been a fan of Andrei Codrescu's NPR commentaries and knew that he lived in New Orleans so when I saw this book I knew it would be good. It is. Codrescu, like so many of us who choose our new "hometown" loves everything about New Orleans and sees it with both loving and honest eyes. Like all great lovers he loves the flaws as much as he loves the beauties.

He writes about his years on carnival krews, about hours spent prowling the French Quarter, about Marie Laveau the legendary voodoo queen and other New Orleans characters, about food and the cemeteries where people meet as if they were parks. He writes about not being able to get out of his hammock --- all with wry humor, grace, and appreciation. And he writes with anger about Katrina and its aftermath.

I have only visited New Orleans but love it and was happy to be transported back there through the words of someone who notices everything and sees it honestly. I particularly appreciated some of his literary references. WARNING: this book can cause you to buy a lot more books. But, if you love New Orleans, you will treasure them, too.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Returning to New Orleans, August 13, 2006

By 

GR (Missouri) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City (Paperback)

I am a true fan of New Orleans. I read everything I can get my hands on about this city. Andrei Codrescu does an amazing job bringing you right back to this great city. You can almost smell the city as you read it. It is hard to put this book down. This is one of the best books I have ever read about New Orleans, My Love.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Meet Blanche DuBois, December 18, 2007

By 

Lynn Hoffman, author:The Short Course in Beer (Philadelphia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City (Paperback)

"New Orleans is Blache DuBois" the essayist tells us and in a few lines, he gives the evidence for something that we may have suspected. Here is a city that brags about its great literature and then begs you not to read it-or at least not take it seriously. Come buy our life, it says, just don't look at all the death.
And so, unlike many other love songs to particular places, Codrescu's is sad. Perhaps some other cities will evoke the same sense of folly and loss- Venice is a likely candidate-but you can't imagine a similar book about New York or Prague or even Rome.
This is a book of essays whose roots in radio are obvious. You can almost hear them spoken aloud. They are also remarkably personal-the author sees America as a displaced Rumanian-turned-American. The perspective is valuable and he doesn't deny the reader its benefits. Read him following the National Guard as it responds to a flood on the Mississippi near Hannibal, Mo. to be undeceived about us. Read his obit for Jim Monaghan, romantically crusty barkeeper to be gently hoodwinked again.
These are stories about a city, but more fundamentally stories about displacement and encountering one's second home town.
All in all, a great and provocative entertainment.

Lynn Hoffman, author ofbang BANG: A Novel which is set in the author's second home town.