Mysteries - Ditto on Barbara Hambly and James Lee Burke. Would also add both series by Julie Smith, the one with Skip Langdon and the other with the computer focus, I forget the protagonist. D.J. Donaldson has a pretty good series, with a forensic a la Patricia Cornwell style.
Tennessee Williams has several other short stories and plays that take place in, refer to, visit, or were written in New Orleans.
Yellow Jack by John Russell is also good, tied to the early history of photography.
Darn it, delphica, you beat me to it! The Benjamin January series is one of my favorites as well. Long live Barbara Hambly!
I came in specifically to mention A Confederacy of Dunces, which was in the OP. Having read it, I almost feel that I have some understanding of why things turned out the way they did this week.
Another favourite: the movie Tune in Tomorrow, which, although based on a Peruvian book, was set in New Orleans, and worked just perfectly, notwithstanding having Keanu Reeves as the male lead.
Harumph!
The two films I mentioned were not in the list. And Cut Up had been featured on the cover of, and had a two-page spread in, Shot In LA (‘Louisiana’s Film Monthly’) and there was an article on it in The New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1994.
No one is going to mention anything by Anne Rice.
(note that is not a question but a statement)
The Washington Post just covered this today as an appreciation piece. Bravo!
Music? Many many sorts. But for me the greatest live band of all time is New Orleans based Cowboy Mouth. They’re currently on the road and their blog is just bleeding.
This is the band behind the sub-minor late-nineties hit Jenny Says, right? Interesting - I had no idea that they were still around even years ago, much less now. What makes them so great live, out of curiosity?
I have never been to New Orleans, and probably will never be able to go there. From my outsider’s point of view, I thought that the film Pretty Baby had what seemed like an authentic flavor of the city in earlier times.
Jim Jarmusch’s Down by Law probably best encapsulates the New Orleans mystique. Granted, the film has next to nothing to do with the actualities of the city; Jarmusch admits freely that he’d never even been there before they started shooting. Still, he nails the New Orleans that exists in the popular consciousness*.
Also, you can’t really go wrong with Tom Waits, John Lurie, and Roberto Benigni.
The best quote I heard was ‘On a bad night they’ll tear the roof off the house. On a good night they’ll save your soul.’
You simply can’t come out of a Cowboy Mouth show feeling worse than when you went in.
Ugh. I used to see those schmoes in Tuscaloosa, and their shows were the dullest snoozefests I’ve ever attended. YMMV, obviously.
Particularly apropos at the moment, perhaps, would be Panic in the Streets.
Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins is partly set in NO.
Why?
It’s not literature or a movie, but the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this thread title is a song called “Dixie Drug Store” by the band Grant Lee Buffalo (which is no longer together). It’s about a man who wanders into a New Orleans store and unknowingly spends the evening with the ghost of Marie Laveau. I don’t know that it’s the “best” New Orleans-based song I know, but it’s definitely one of my favorites, and since it’s the first one that popped into my mind I figured I’d share.
Side note: I had no idea there was a Doper called Johnny Angel … now that song’s going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day!
Except that Blalron did, in post #16.
You and I have shared our appreciation of Cowboy Mouth in the past, but I’d still forgotten how cool it is to have someone else around here who loves this band as much as I do (and “Take Me Back to New Orleans” ranks right up there with “Dixie Drug Store,” especially now). With the band site down, I’m keeping tabs via Fred’s site/blog.
I could understand not liking their music or their style, but to call their shows “dull snoozefests”? :eek: I think you must have seen some other band masquerading as Cowboy Mouth… 
Oops, it’s just called “New Orleans” … I always make that mistake! :smack:
Somewhere, I have a tribute CD to Anne Rice . While I am not a fans of her’s, I liked the artists. One of them is Sting, preforming a song called “Moon Over Bourbon Street”
Yes you can! We saw Cowboy Mouth a couple years ago when they were touring with Great Big Sea, and after about an hour of them screaming tunelessly, we left. It was giving me a headache.
New Orleans culture is an intangible, though – it’ll be back, it’s just temporarily living somewhere else. Even Preservation Hall survived intact. And there are bars on Bourbon Street that still haven’t closed.
For me, although he’s not particularly known outside New Orleans, I’ll know the city is back up to full swing when there’s a music festival and trombonist Freddy Lonzo sits in on every set with every band all day for three days, no matter what style of music they’re playing.
Damn! I wanted to be first to mention Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January books.
I’ve only read the first two–I really need to catch up.
I always thought The Big Easy with Ellen Barkin and Dennis Quaid just dripped with New Orleans atmosphere.
And surprisingly, so did the comedy Undercover Blues, also with Dennis Quaid and Kathleen Turner.
And don’t forget Chief Wiggum’s short-lived TV show set in New Orleans.