The Bluesiana Snake Festival Book

“. . . Probably many a road scholar would testify this place makes good leavin’ and better comin’ back to . . . Place puts a hold on your soul, man, these streets call you like an old song . . .”
So starts The Bluesiana Snake Festival as Hidden Dave Crossway, a New Orleans street sweeper, celebrates the city in its pre-Katrina skin. With the night of the “snake moon” as the backdrop, we experience the lives, languages, and rhythms of the French Quarter, an unexpected urban idyll.
“Yeah . . . Way down river, heart of a swamp, she’s a city made of music, down soft ground between memory and dream . . .”
Through a blend of voices — Big Jim Bullshit, Shushubaby, and Brooklyn Bob, to name a few — the musical voice of New Orleans is revealed in its varied dialects, grooves reminiscent of ragtime, jazz, and blues. The result is a look into who these folks are, their ways and beliefs, their senses of truth, and of existence itself. A novel about the joy and beauty of life in the depths, the momentum and narrative heart isn’t driven by a plot — it’s about the trance.

Publishers Weekly

Written in a thick, at times impenetrable, bayou patois, this debut novel from a former blue-collar New Orleanian is more about evoking the lived-in experience of French Quarter inhabitants than pursuing a dramatic narrative. Covering a single (pre-Katrina) night, Bart's story finds a full moon rising over a population busting at the seams; colorful characters such as Hidden Davey Crossway, Shushubaby, and Big Jim Bullshit, all city street sweepers, act as lenses through which readers explore the Big Easy's late-night backstreets in vivid, urine-stained detail. Bart's familiarity with the quarter shines despite challenging prose, a mix of New Orleans jive and a peculiar, poetic sensibility: “Place called Myrti's, St. Louis upto Burgundy: battened creole in spanish stucco, cornerfront french doors; red light outside, lowlight inside. Drag scene. Soul.” Matters of clarity aren't helped by characters like Leo Dazzolini, “the fastfood of lifestory”: “Ahm twenny yeath dithablt 'coun' ah almoth died. Ah tolya bot dat feeba ah caught dat time?” Those with the patience to decipher Bart's prose should find this an absorbing tour. (May)