Inventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn Book

The single-most amazing thing about Lafcadio Hearn's writings on New Orleans is how many of them are not only applicable today but startlingly so. I can wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the true spirit of this city - though these missives were penned between 1877 and 1888 they remain vibrant and viable. I want to belabor this point - he arrived one hundred and thirty-five years ago and describes the city as it stands today. This speaks volumes not only about how resistant to change this city is but also Hearn's ability to discern its true nature, to pick out and clean its bones.

Some of the more subtle discussions won't really register to those who haven't spent some time down here. One example: the reader can ingest all the words he or she wants regarding the dampness of our winters - perhaps even imagining that Hearn is exaggerating for effect - and yet not totally understand without having suffered a winter's worth of that wet chill. Still, even with the parts that can't be appreciated without firsthand experience this book serves as an incredible guide to that which makes New Orleans New Orleans.

There are five parts to this book, and I'm offering up a quick tour.

the introduction - skip it, as Starr (the editor) likes to hear himself type. Read it at the end if you're so inclined, but the important thing to understand is that Hearn wasn't from New Orleans originally so what he writes at the beginning is the ritual of the newcomer's infatuation.

I. The Outsider As Insider: Impressions - some 95 pages and the true heart of the book. If you only have time for a little bit, start here and read it all.

When Hearn arrived the city was already old (by the abbreviated American metric) and falling apart:

I have spoken with enthusiasm of the beauty of New Orleans; I must speak with pain of her decay. The city is fading, mouldering, crumbling - slowly but certainly.

Ever wondered what 'creole' really means down here?

It only remains to observe that the Creoles of New Orleans and of Louisiana (whatever right any save Spaniards may have originally had to the name), are all those native-born who can trace back their ancestry to European immigrants or to European colonists of the State [...] But the term is generally understood here as applying to French residents, especially those belonging to old French families, and few others care to claim the name.

There is, however, a very select and cultivated circle of citizens in New Orleans who are especially proud of the name, and who unite all possible effort to make it an honor to those who bear it.

he also goes on to detail what separates a 'creole egg' from an 'American egg', a 'creole tomato' from an 'American tomato', and so forth.

He holds forth on Carnival:

A very considerable number of those who visit New Orleans at Carnival-time do so quite as much for the sake of seeing the city itself as of witnessing the great pageant. But during Mardi Gras the place is disguised by its holiday garb - almost as much so, indeed, as the King of the Carnival; the native picturesquesness of the quainter districts is overlaid and concealed by the artificial picturesquesness of the occasion. [...] The romantic charm of the old city is not readily obtained at such a time; the curious cosmopolitan characteristics that offer themselves to artistic eyes in other seasons are lost in the afflux of American visitors, and true local color is fairly drowned out by the colors of Rex ..."

I have these thoughts every year at Carnival and could not have said it better myself. He even mentions how the parades screw up traffic:

The physician or telegraph messenger who duty summons in an opposite direction at such a time must take to the middle of the street if he hopes to reach his destination.

Regarding the heat, physiology, and our work ethic:

The Northerner who decides to settle in New Orleans will find after the experience of a few summers in the Louisiana climate that he has become more or less physiologically changed by the struggle of his system with those novel atmospheric conditions to which it was obliged to adapt itself.

and a hundred other still-relevant quotes besides.

I have to give special mention to the contemporary reporting in this section regarding The Death of Marie Laveau ("Marie Laveau died yesterday at the advanced age of ninety-seven years") as well as St. John's Eve - Voudouism and The Last of the Voudoos. To read his detailed stories on his encounters with its practitioners is a treat.

The rest of the book is not as essential, though still entertaining.

II. From the Land of Dreams: Sketches - it's a toss-up in this section, but the most rewarding (and sometimes eerily prescient) selection is: Down Among the Dives: A Midnight Sketch, his story about wild and surreal underground celebrations.

III. Of Vices and Virtues - many of these items came directly from the newspapers in which they were published. Highlights include descriptions of just how corrupt and ineffective the New Orleans police force was (and it goes without saying it remains so to this day); an editorial about the city's inaction with regards to shutting down the opium dens that were spreading with alarming rapidity; a suggestion that the fire department be given crime duty, seeings as how they actually got things done; a lament for the number of murder victims in a city where the vast majority of perpetrators got away scott free; a scathing rebuke regarding the police force and hooliganism; and many others besides. One in particular that always gets me is his condemnation of the state of our cemeteries, with weeds growing and mausoleums falling apart - something I myself have photographed just a few years ago. Everything Hearn wrote here 130 years ago just goes to show that the more things change the more they stay the same.

IV. Reports from the Field - the shortest by far, but some great introduction to the real meaning of Creole cuisine as well as a compilation of Creole proverbs.

In case it's not obvious, I love this book. His adoration for this place shines through in every page, even when he's complaining about the myriad problems he faced.

I'll close with what is likely Hearn's most famous quote, one with which I fully agree:

"Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under a lava flood of taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become only a study for archaeologists. Its condition is so bad that when I write about it, as I intend to do soon, nobody will believe I am telling the truth. But it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio."