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As a resident of the city Post-Katrina (five years now), I am almost to a point I can legally call myself a "New Orleanian". In so doing I am able to do certain things that tourists arent allowed to: bad-mouth the city, join a krewe, cook authentic dishes, etc. But with all that I will risk it to do the thing you arent allowed to do EVER: put tradition into question. I am going to call bullshit on this book!

Dont get me wrong, a book about New Orleans by a New Orleanian is required by law itself to be nothing but bullshit. It must be written as a collection of outrageous stories, half-truths, quarter-truths (PUN INTENDED) folklore, hyperbole and the like. This book delievers on every account. And if you don't dare to call this book non-fiction, this its actually quite entertaining. Sure the names and dates and places are basically all true, any history book can corroborate that! It is the tale woven around that is so laughably biased towards the fictional, it all seems so believable.

New Orleans: you gotta love it and hate it. Its the greatest city in America and the most god-awful. You could even say "sur le plus beau, sur le plus triste, paysage d'America". My time here may actually be coming to a final end. One I have been shouting since I got here, but this time, for real, I mean it! To prepare myself for this journey, before coming out, I read the second printing of Lyle Saxon's Fabulous New Orleans. If that is the austere version of the tall-tale New Orleans-style, then this is the working class, plebiscite version.

So, I loved and hated this book. The stories are entertaining and rich with the local flavor. On the otherhand, the racism and low-brow, high-wit humor associated the narrative can be ascerbic to some. All this comes along with the terrority. If you cant handle that mixed bag, this may not be the book nor the place for you.