Help me learn about NOLA!

April 24, 2008 4:56 PM

Can you recommend good books and/or movies about New Orleans? I'm about to move there and want to learn about the city before we arrive!

Mr. Luazinha just got a great job in New Orleans, and we're very excited about moving there. I've never visited before, but am looking forward to it (I'm a little apprehensive, too, but think it'll be a great opportunity).

What books should I read to learn more about the history and culture of New Orleans? What movies should I watch that feature the city? Is there anything else I should do to study up before we move?

I'm sure there's a wealth of Katrina-related information out there, and I'm interested in that, but I'm mostly interested in getting a historical and cultural sense of the city beyond that as well.

posted by luazinha to society & culture (18 comments total)

New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City by Andrei Codrescu
posted by otherwordlyglow at 4:57 PM on April 24, 2008

Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole. (One of a zillion recommendations to be sure.)

Gumbo Ya-Ya, by Saxon, Dreyer and Tallant. Finding this may take a little doing, although maybe it's easier in the city itself. This book is magical -- a collection of folk tales, horror stories, and vignettes on ethnic groups both long vanished and still there.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:04 PM on April 24, 2008

Hm. Movies tend to represent New Orleans pretty badly. I'm partial to King Creole and Panic in the Streets, because both were actually shot around the French Quarter and caught a whiff of the character of the town. But both are set in the 60s, so they're interesting mostly from a historical perspective.

As for books, well, I'll start out recommending the one every human on earth would recommend: A Confederacy of Dunces. Not only is it a great introduction to the character of the city, including the Irish Channel and other parts of the city where tourists rarely stray, but it is one of the comic masterpieces of the 20th century. In a similar vein, I would suggest Andrew Fox's Fat White Vampire Blues, which is loosely inspired by Confederacy, but contemporary, supernatural, and very funny.

Herbert Asbury's The French Quarter is a pretty instructive history. Also, DK Publications tourist guide to New Orleans is the best I have read, and was indispensable to me my first few months down there.
posted by Astro Zombie at 5:07 PM on April 24, 2008

Well you didn't ask about websites, but I'd bookmark mardigras.com so you are less confused next year when Mardi Gras comes around. It will answer some of your basic questions about the whole Carnival season (and it's part of NOLA.com, which has news from the local paper, the Times-Picayune.)

Also, Gumbo Pages has a whole list of local terminology and pronunciations. We have really strange slang here and even stranger pronunciations. After living here for a while you may appreciate Wikipedia's entry on the "Yat" accent.

That's all I can think of for now. Welcome to the Big Easy!
posted by radioamy at 5:15 PM on April 24, 2008

Oh, and a quick note: Don't call it N'awlins when you're down there. It immediately marks you as an outsider. It's New Orlee-ans or New Orlins, but I've never heard the "new" abbreviated. And neveer New Orleens, although there is a street in the Quarter called Orleans but pronounced Orleens.

Locals are called yats, because they greet each other by saying "Where y'at." A lot of them sound more like they are from the Bronx than the south. You'll get used to it.

It's impossible to get your bearing in the city, because it follows the winding of the Mississippi River, which carved itself into a pretty impressive crescent along the Quarter. So directions like North, South, East and West are useless. Further up the river is uptown, further down it is downtown, and the city is bordered by the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain, so that's where people will send you, either toward the River or toward the Lake.

Um, dragonflies are called skeeter hawks, Cajun music is not indigenous to the city (neither is Creole), but jazz, funk and rhythm and blues is. People in the suburbs are often afraid of the city, bu the city is wonderful; get out of The Quarter when you can, visit City Park, eat food, drink the native drinks, and acclimate yourself to the fact that people will sometimes show up an hour late to work without explanation, that some places encourage drinking on the job, and that it's humid as a dog's breath in the summer. I know these aren't film or book recommendations, but, frankly, films and books rarely capture the unique qualities of the town. You may hate it, you'll probably love it, and I miss it terribly.
posted by Astro Zombie at 5:18 PM on April 24, 2008 [3 favorites]

Walker Percy's wonderful novel, The Moviegoer.

"The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life..."
posted by dersins at 5:21 PM on April 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Is there anything else I should do to study up before we move?

I don't have a particular book to recommend (a native might step in here), but I think it would be helpful for you to learn all about Mardi Gras as a cultural phenomenon. Most people view it as a debauched week of parades with beads for boobs and lots of drunks -- but that's the French Quarter soundbite MTV version, propagated to the rest of the country. Many of the parades are actually family-oriented, with flashing severely frowned upon. People are often surprised to hear that the parade themes can be negative and politically charged (for example, after Katrina, "the themes of many costumes and floats had more barbed satire than usual, with commentary on the trials and tribulations of living in the devastated city, with references to MREs, Katrina refrigerators and FEMA trailers, along with much mocking of FEMA, local, and national politicians," says Wikipedia). Learning the parade lingo, like roll and throws and riders, will make you feel more local and less touristy next season.

But it's also about far more than the parades. The parades are run by private social and service orgs called krewes, some of which have been operating in NOLA for over 150 years. A lot of the city's political and economic history is tied to these orgs. The courts of the krewes are often a who's who of the movers and shakers in town.

The second line is not just a parade custom, it's also closely linked to the city's African-American community. Learning about how the Social Aide & Pleasure clubs got around the city's strict segregation laws is a snapshot of race relations in the 1960's during the Civil Rights Movement, just as the forced revealing of krewe member lists that were previously private in order to discourage discrimination was in the 90's.

Understanding that Mardi Gras is just the culminating night of a whole long season, called Carnival and which officially begins on January 6 (or Twelfth Night or Three Kings Day or the Epiphany), will help you get a feel for how business calendars will flow in the first quarter. My New Orleans and Baton Rouge clients can hardly be got on the phone or email for the last two weeks of Carnival.

King cakes, how to properly pick up a doubloon from the ground, how much many Mardi Gras brings into the local economy... it's much more than just girls flashing tits for a cheap necklace. You can probably find a surprising lot of this on the internet by Googling. There is a love of pageantry and excess during Carnival that seems to be in the DNA of natives, and I think that understanding who New Orleanians are during Carnival might help you understand who they are year-round.

Yeah, I'm a Gulf Coast girl and a Mardi Gras history buff, but definitely not a native so feel free to call me out if I made a mistake.
posted by pineapple at 5:36 PM on April 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Wait until you walk out of your front door and it is already 85 degrees with 100% humidity at 6 in the morning. Yeah! Your first summer here is going to be tough just getting used to the heat and the humidity but you will get used to it. The high humidity does help your skin and that is how we get our "dewy complexion." :)

Plus, once New Orleans gets into your skin you won't want to leave, and if you do leave you can't wait to come back.

Welcome to New Orleans!
posted by govtdrone at 6:18 PM on April 24, 2008

There are a whole bunch of NOLA-related threads on askme, so I'd recommend doing a search and looking through them. Most are geared towards tourists, but they'll point you towards some good restaurants and points of interest that will help you get acquainted once you're here.

It's probably redundant if you read other NOLA threads I've responded to, but I really recommend going to Mardi Gras World once you are here and settled and have some free time. It's where most of the floats are made. You first watch a little movie on the history of Mardi
Gras and you get to try on some costumes, then you get a big tour of the studio and if you go on a weekday you can see some of the artisans working. It's really neat to see some of the works-in-progress at the studio, then see them finished in all their glory come Carnival
posted by radioamy at 6:54 PM on April 24, 2008

Don't know any books or movies, but the first Gabriel Knight game, whether it's accurate or not, made New Orleans come alive in 256 colours.
posted by turgid dahlia at 7:45 PM on April 24, 2008

New Orleans Nation
posted by mattbucher at 8:08 PM on April 24, 2008

Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole.

Also -- Managing Ignatius: The Lunacy of Lucky Dogs and Life in New Orleans by Jerry Strahan.
posted by ericb at 9:40 PM on April 24, 2008

The Big Easy with Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin
posted by HotPatatta at 9:48 PM on April 24, 2008

These are all great suggestions! I'm looking forward to reading up, and can't believe I didn't think of the movie "The Big Easy" right away. And I'm excited to see Mardi Gras from the inside -- the whole Bourbon Street, drunken, boob-flashing thing sounds like my idea of hell... but the rest of it, away from that, sounds really wonderful. And, yes, I'm also interested in relevant websites! Thanks everyone for making me even more excited about the move. We should arrive at the end of June -- just in time for the beautiful summer weather, eh?
posted by luazinha at 5:43 AM on April 25, 2008

Just to add to the pile, A Confederacy of Dunces is the single greatest exploration of New Orleans life and attitude to ever grace the printed page. I've never seen a New Orleans film or TV show that didn't get everything completely and totally wrong.

Oh, and just so you know: the road is pronounced "Chop-it-TOO-lus". And Calliope Street is pronounced CAL-ee-ope. And Carondelet is NOT pronounced Carondelay. It's pronounced CarondeLET.

(None of this makes sense now, but it will, I promise.)

People only call it New Or-LEENS in music (for rhyming purposes, you see), and only visitors call it N'awlins. These people are mocked.

It's New Orleans, as in, NewORlins. Local accent renders it NewAWlins. That said, the Parish is pronounced Or-LEENS Parish.

And that's just the beginning. Still interested? :-)
posted by rentalkarma at 6:30 AM on April 25, 2008

Not to be Debbie Downer, but I'd also read Chris Rose's 1 Dead in Attic, a collection of his columns from the Times-Pic about Katrina and its aftermath. And listen to the TAL piece "The Thin Gray Line."
posted by liketitanic at 8:07 AM on April 25, 2008

I can't think of any movies that capture the city fairly or accurately. I can't think of any books that would actually prepare you for the city, though I do love the Moviegoer, mentioned above, and Confederacy of Dunces will give you an idea of how things operate a little differently down here, and that there are some odd ducks running around, or possibly odd women with a family of ducks following her around. Ultimately, it'll be like looking at a tapestry through a straw. A mangy, kind of moldy tapestry.

It'll only take you a month in the city to realize all that. It'll take you a couple months to get those pronunciations down, but don't sweat it when you get it wrong, folks will laugh and correct you. You'll figure out pretty quickly come Carnival season that Mardi Gras isn't anything like what you thought it was, and it's only one in a series of parties this place finds an excuse to throw at least every other weekend. It'd take you a lifetime, I would imagine, to start figuring the goddamn town out, and even then I'd imagine you'd be lacking, but that'll fine.

I suppose you could listen to some music to prepare. That'd capture things best. Some brass bands, I'd say. But even then, the CD will be nothing like going to a show and hearing it for four hours straight, and that's what New Orleans is like, one of those shows. Because it's sweaty, and people bump into you but people the people are good, and you'll dance with strangers and get into conversations with folks you swear you've never met but they'll treat you like an old friend, and the floor is a god awful mess and the building looks like it's about to fall apart, and you can't tell when one song stops and another starts, and your brain will give you a million excuses to leave, but you aren't ever going to want to leave, not once you get going.

I swear, there's no place like it. Enjoy.
posted by gordie at 8:18 AM on April 25, 2008

And I'm excited to see Mardi Gras from the inside -- the whole Bourbon Street, drunken, boob-flashing thing sounds like my idea of hell... but the rest of it, away from that, sounds really wonderful.

Yeah, steer clear of that; Bourbon Street is mostly for tourists anyway. But see the parades, none of which (but for the pedestrial Krewe de Vieux) takes place in the Quarter. Otherwise it's a pretty family friendly event. Definately see both the Rex and Zulu parades on Mardi Gras. They're unbelievable.
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:49 AM on April 25, 2008