Lee Barclay, Editor
Book Synopsis
The eighty-eight stories and traditions in New Orleans: What Can't Be Lost are the piano keys in a love song to the city. Alongside Christopher Porché West's alluring black-and-white photographs, New Orleans' culture bearers pay tribute to the city they call home. From Storyville to the Super Bowl, from cover to cover are found Pulitzer Prize-winning writers--four of them gathered on these pages; Creole chefs; float and costume designers; a break-acrobat flipping forward over tourists lying on the pavement like matchsticks across from Jackson Square; Black Mardi Gras Indians; parade captains; musicians; protectors of the city's historic landmarks; writers of its poems and articles and novels and plays; and those who pass down traditions in the performance of New Orleans culture.
'New Orleans: What Can't Be Lost' a must-have book about Hurricane Katrina
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Published: September 5, 2010
Published: September 5, 2010
Book of essays celebrates New Orleans' enduring spirit
At first glance, New Orleans: What Can't Be Lost, a collection of 88 essays published by UL Press, appears to be another Hurricane Katrina retrospective or one more book celebrating how New Orleans differs from the rest of the world.
Although the unique beauty of the city comes across strong and well, New Orleans: What Can't Be Lost digs deeper into the psyche of natives by writers who live there and finds that what makes New Orleans special may not be Mardi Gras and Emeril but "makin' groceries" and yo mama and 'dem.
Leah Chase describes how New Orleanians live to eat, for instance, and not the other way around, but she relates Civil Rights issues solved over a bowl of gumbo. Christian Champagne tries to give reasons why New Orleanians sound like New Yorkers and Kami Patterson offers a pronunciation guide to the city streets. (Yes, Calliope's pronounced Cally-ope.)
Dennis Formento looks at the city's love affair with coffee and coffeehouses, while Patrice Melnick, owner of Casa Azul in Grand Coteau, remembers a rocking zydeco night at the Mid-City Rock 'n' Bowl. The proliferation of saints around the house, particularly during hurricane season, is the subject of Katheryn Krotzer Laborde's essay on the city's love affair with Catholicism.
Summing up the city's attitude is Lloyd Dennis's "Forgive Us if We Make Lemonade and Refuse to Cry," a testament to not only residents' perseverance through disasters, but the ability to find joy in life even during the worst of times.
"So maybe that is why we can dance at funerals, and celebrate Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest with half our city still broke down and missing," he writes, "because wasting a minute of joy must be a sin ... because after all God is good ... all the time."
New Orleans: What Can't Be Lost is edited by Lee Barclay with black and white photographs by the incomparable Christopher Porché West. Proceeds from the book will be donated to Sweet Home New Orleans, a local nonprofit supporting individuals and organizations that perpetuate New Orleans' musical and cultural traditions.
Lee Barclay
P.O. Box 19226
New Orleans, LA 70179
phone: 504-452-6137
fax: 504-324-0195
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