Carnivals & Sideshows, United States - Ethnic & Race Relations, Regional Studies - Southern U.S., Louisiana - State & Local History, Southern State & Local Government, Holidays (Non-Religious) - Social Sciences

New Orleans

Name: New Orleans
Author: Carol Flake
ISBN: 9780802114068

by Carol Flake

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Overview

New Orleans, home of the great American blowout bash - Mardi Gras - is the exotic city on the Bayou that thumbs its nose at the conservative spirit of the rest of the South. And Mardi Gras, that wild, uninhibited, frenzied festival of multiculturalism, music, sex, and the outer limits of debauchery, is the city's annual and legendary celebration of itself. But what really lies behind the masks and myths of a "pagan" festival older than baseball but less purely American than any other celebration? Despite all the glamour and popularity of Mardi Gras, few people know the real New Orleans - a city that is still socially stratified, racially divided, constrained by secrets. A city whose shocking double life was tragically exposed when national headlines publicized a proposal to desegregate the krewes, the quasi-cabalistic organizations that control the carnival and much of the town. Carol Flake returned to New Orleans, after more than a decade away, to chronicle a season of Carnival, to write about the paradox of an enduring rite in a crumbling city. Following the participants as they prepared for the parades and balls that make up the gala season, she found herself on a journey into a unique form of culture where ordinary standards of taste and behavior simply don't apply. She moved from subculture to subculture, from white uptown parlors and high society enclaves to French Quarter retreats, black jazz bars, and gay drag shows. She joined an all-women krewe for a float ride down Canal Street and dressed as a dancing girl in the satirical parade of the Krewe de Vieux. She visited the secret dens of elite traditional clubs and attended the open meetings of an embattled city council. Carnival, for all its rituals and disguises, mirrors New Orleans society, with its peculiar social hierarchies, its pockets of strange tradition, its madcap diversity, its partiality to drama and spectacle. The controversy surrounding Carnival is a war over the heart and soul of the city

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Beneath the surface wildness of New Orleans's Mardi Gras persona lies an urban alchemy that, for over a century, has created and dominated the city's flamboyant character--its politics, high and low society, and economy--according to Flake. New Orleans has brought about the marriage of pagan tradition, Catholic religiosity, black jazz and blue-blood Anglo society, and it has served as a uniquely integrating force for its Creole, black and white communities, gays, transvestites, artists, musicians and businesspeople. But the city has also been a powerful instrument of conflict, segregation and decadence. In Flake's kaleidoscopic vision, layers of secret societies, Carnival clubs and virtual caste structures are laid open. The jousting for dominance among the eccentric characters who run the city and produce its famous Carnival plays against New Orleans's declining fortunes and the now-shifting foundations that made the Mardi Gras synonymous with the city. Flake ( Tarnished Crown ) brings to her account both the affection of an erstwhile resident and the skeptical eye of a reporter. The book is a tour de force worthy of the colorful city she profiles. (Apr.)

Library Journal

The page-turning seduction of this work can be attributed much less to authorial craft than to the sensual genius of the New Orleans carnival tradition. The key problem is that as Flake explores the workings and people of the private clubs, parading ``krewes,'' debutante balls, and multiethnic subcultures that together make the Mardi Gras rituals an annual treasure, she takes up the center of the narrative but withholds meaningful information about herself. There must be an explanation for her affected ambivalence-or is it cynicism?-particularly with regard to the 1992 antidiscrimination ordinance aimed at opening the nuanced hierarchies that permeate New Orleans's extended party, but its revelation is too subtle to register. Indeed, the secrets that Flake claims to expose may excite natives who feast on Mardi Gras, but puzzled outsiders will appreciate the flavors she stylishly serves up and still wish for a solid meal. Recommended for libraries that collect carnivalia and travel literature.-Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., Pa.

Alice Joyce

Flake's original goal was to illuminate for readers the spirited exoticism of Mardi Gras. What she happened upon after arriving in New Orleans was an atmosphere of warring factions preparing for a heated debate on a proposed ordinance aimed at altering the prevailing mores governing carnival festivities. Flake watches as the ordinance divides the city's black majority from the white minority, and she takes a hard look at local politics, economic conditions, and the complex social structure of New Orleans. Interviews with movers and shakers from every strata of the city's life embellish behind-the-scenes glimpses of time-honored traditions of this intriguing community, and its most famous ritual vividly comes to life through the words of Mardi Gras participants--from gender-bending exotic dancers to members of the city's elite families.