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Sold Down the River

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Judith Jackson Fossett
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Extract

in that city foreign and paradoxical, with its atmosphere at once fatal and languorous, at once feminine and steel-hard

—William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1936)

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans

And miss it each night and day

I know I'm not wrong, the feeling's getting stronger

The longer I stay away

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans

Since that's where you left your heart

(And there's something more)

I miss the one I care for more than I miss New Orleans

—Louis Alter (music) and Eddie DeLange (lyrics),

“Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans” (1946)

BOMBARDED BY THE DISCOURSE OF “TRAGEDY” FROM MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND GOVERNMENTAL OFFICIALS TRYING TO CHARACTERIZE post-Katrina New Orleans, I decided to reread William Faulkner. Ungluing myself from the computer screen, I hoped to distract myself with a literary version of another tragedy of the South. Faulkner's sense of the city's “paradox” and “foreign”-ness—in the case of this hurricane, the fury of climatic events that inexorably led to incomprehensible effects: much of its citizenry's forced migration, dispossession of property, and denial of the right of return as well as ecological catastrophe—was geographically and culturally resonant.

Type
Correspondents at large NEW ORLEANS
Information
PMLA , Volume 122 , Issue 1: Special Topics Cities , January 2007 , pp. 325 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2007

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References

Works Cited

Alter, Louis, composer, and DeLange, Eddie, lyricist. “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans.” Perf. Louis Armstrong. 1956. I Like Jazz: The Essence of Louis Armstrong. Sony, 1991. iTunes Store. 12 Feb. 2007 <http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=726050&selectedItemId=942147>..>Google Scholar
“Death of an American City.” Editorial. New York Times 11 Dec. 2005.Google Scholar
Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom! New York: Vintage, 1986.Google Scholar
Gross, Daniel. “The Katrina Premium: Why the Hurricane May Hurt the Economy More Than 9/11.” Slate .com. 1 Sept. 2005. 29 Jan. 2007 <http://www.slate.com/id/2125474>.Google Scholar
Kelman, Ari. A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans. Berkeley: U of California P, 2003.Google Scholar
Rivlin, Gary. “New Orleans Utility Struggles to Relight City of Darkness.” New York Times 19 Nov. 2005.Google Scholar