Review: My New Orleans, Gone Away

My New Orleans, Gone Away

About the Book:

 In this poignant and vivid memoir, Peter M. Wolf, a member of one of New Orleans’s oldest Jewish families, provides an insider’s look at his fabled city and the wider world beyond that he comes to inhabit.

Written with humor and telling detail, My New Orleans contains rare insight about the social structure of New Orleans; student life at Exeter, Tulane and Yale; the thrill of original scholarship; around the world travel before jets; medical school trauma; ingrained southern racism, and anti-Semitism; and American students’ role in anti-Vietnam uprisings in Paris. In the background, he traces the rags to riches rise and fall of his city’s and his family’s engagement in the cotton, sugar and retail trades.

After a year of medical school at Columbia, Wolf returns to New Orleans to work in his father’s cotton brokerage and simultaneously earns a master’s degree at Tulane. Wolf later returns to the Northeast, completes doctoral studies at NYU, and becomes an architectural historian.

Reflecting the yearnings and anxieties of a generation that came of age after World War II, this is the journey of a restless man who leaves the hometown he loves to discover the world, and in so doing, to find himself. My New Orleans offers a penetrating and memorable account of a fading period of America’s evolution, turbulence and possibilities, as unique as the city of Wolf’s memory.

My Comments:

When I first saw the book cover and title I figured this was another "how things are different since Katrina" book.  If you read the above summary, you'll see that  it is not.  Rather, it is the memoir of an old man.  I made it half-way through before calling it quits.  Frankly, if you have no connection with New Orleans, the first half will mean little to you.  Wolf included long lists of people he knew and with whom he associated.  The names mean something to me; being in the legal business, I'm familiar with many of the old New Orleans names.  I know the streets Wolf mentions and the school he attended.  

You might also like it if you want to remember your days at Yale, or if you wonder about life at Yale in the 1950's.  Wolf tells us about his dorm room, joining the student newspaper, and joining exclusive clubs.

Peter Wolf was raised as a non-observant reform Jew in suburban New Orleans.  The biggest social event his parents hosted every year was a Christmas party--the the rabbi was a regular guest.   He talks about his complete lack of religious belief and about how he, as a rich Jewish man, was discriminated against because he was not allowed to join the Carnival Krewes populated by the rich Uptown crowd.

Basically, the book has too much detail about things that are of little interest to me--some would have been interesting but I'd say the book is at least twice as long as it should be and there were a couple of times I think I read basically the same paragraph on different pages.  

Still, if you are looking for a picture of a particular time in New Orleans' history as viewed by a wealthy secular Jew who had deep roots in the community at large, this may be just what you are looking for.

Book Review: Baronne Street

Baronne Street

About the Book:

Love means sometimes having to solve your ex-girlfriend's murder. 

Burleigh Drummond, a fixer, ignores a voice-mail plea for help from his ex-girlfriend Coco Robicheaux. She broke his heart when she dumped him, so why should he care? He goes about his job of manipulating the imbroglios of bluebloods and politicos. Still, Drummond misses Coco and regrets not answering her call.

The next morning he is rousted from bed by two extremely unpleasant homicide detectives with the news that Coco has been raped and bludgeoned to death. The detectives also share they have been instructed to do nothing about the case, but should he provide them with evidence... 

As Drummond investigates he discovers Coco lived a clandestine existence in the city's netherworld and had been drafted as an unwitting pawn in a plot to disrupt the upcoming mayoral election. As often happens with pawns, she was sacrificed. 

When threats cloaked as friendly warnings escalate to an old-fashioned beating, Drummond enlists a reputed mercenary, a black-separatist reporter, and a computer hacker to assist in his investigation and, eventually, revenge. As Drummond negotiates through the maze of deception and he finds himself at odds with his blueblood clients, the police chief, the mayor, and a gay crime syndicate.

My Comments:

On the one hand I'd love to tell you this book was an entertaining read, but highly unrealistic. On the other hand, yet another public official plead guilty this week. Our US Attorney here in New Orleans has made quite a name for himself by convicting public officials who think that the law doesn't really apply to them. 

In short, I loved this book. For someone who has lived in New Orleans for almost 30 years, it was fun to read about local landmarks and watering holes. I could nod my head knowingly as the book talked about the Sazerac bar at the Fairmont, F&M's Patio Bar, 3-for1 at Que Sera or dancing at 4141. When Drummond parked in the 600 block of Baronne (where I used to work) and went to the gay "health club", I knew exactly which door was being discussed. 

You know those detective shows in which the detective is the narrator? That's how this book is written, in the first person, told by Burleigh Drummond, who, as one client said in the book "manipulate[s] delicate situations discreetly and keep[s] the consequences quiet".  His assignments include keeping the grandson of a rich man from doing anything too outrageous (and keeping him from paying the consequences for lesser offenses) and helping the campaign of a reform candidate for mayor (who turns out to be not so different than those who went before--as the rich man said "Why would someone go to all the trouble setting up a Rube Goldberg scheme to blackmail a politician when they're all for sale?"). He is out to find the killer of his ex-girlfriend who he now realizes he really loved, and in the process finds himself in the middle of two other cases he has taken--the rich man's grandson is involved, as is the husband of the woman who paid him to find out what her husband was doing.  

The ending is rather unrealistic, but I can't say I expected much different.  While there are no bedroom scenes in the book, there are plenty of references to those activities, and some of the language is on the crude side, so if those things bother you, this isn't the book for you.  

The book says it is set in 1993, but I found that odd (it wasn't published until 2010).  Burleigh used his cell phone regularly, and not just in his car.  I started my current job in 1993, and my boss had a car phone, and lots of folks had pagers but the omnipresent cell phone was still almost five years away for the early adopters. I'm also trying to wonder when some of those watering holes closed.  4141 was "the" dance club Uptown when I first got here in 1983.  It isn't there anymore, but I don't know when it closed.  Given the short lifespan of that type of place, I find it hard to believe it was still there in 1993, but it might have been--my clubbing days had given way to diapers by then.  

This is one that has been on my Kindle for a long time.  The author, Kent Westmoreland, sent me a review copy almost a  year ago, and there have always been things I thought I wanted to read more.  I ended up really enjoying it and give it a B+.