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Tricentennial Reading List With Larry Powell (Part 1)

  • The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans, by Lawrence N. Powell
  • Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke’s Louisiana, by Lawrence N. Powell

Susan Larson: One of the great New Orleans books, Larry, is The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans. How did you come to write that book?

Larry Powell: It was accidental.

[laughter]

Larry Powell: No, really.

Susan Larson: There are so many things are.

Larry Powell: While I was working on a reconstruction book that was on the back burner for years, and finally had cleared the deck of other things that were occupying my attention, and then Katrina hit. That cost like for me is for a lot of people do have serious reassessment of what's important, and when power brokers, and evangelist, and other malefactors of ill will said this place should be flattened rather than rebuilt, I said, well, I think I should write about New Orleans.

Susan Larson: Absolutely.

Larry Powell: That was always on the back of my mind because I had been teaching about the state and the city for years of my service course at Tulane. That's how I kind of stumbled into it.

Susan Larson: It's one of the great New Orleans books, Larry.

Larry Powell: Well, you could have knocked me over the feather of because when I turned it over to the publisher, because the original idea I was going to do the whole 300 years in one, and I said what people really want to read about the founding and first 100 years of New Orleans. I think the timing was right because as Jed Horne mentioned to me when I told him I was a bit baffled at the popularity of the book. He says, well, "I think people want to read about the past now because they believe New Orleans has a future." It was really pure luck.

Susan Larson: People read the book with such great delight because it was so wonderfully written, Larry.

Larry Powell: Well, thank you.

Susan Larson: Don't sell that shot. [laughs]

Larry Powell: Well, thank you.

['Chaye!' by the New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars]

Susan Larson: Now, your other great book is Troubled memory: Anne Levy the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana, and that was really a labor of love. I first met you then when you were working on that book.

Larry Powell: It was a wrenching book to write, to sell the story of why this woman was-- She's a very definite and a diminutive woman, confronting David Duke about why you said this never happened and became a new mission in life for her. To quite understand it, I realized I had to place that story against the backdrop of this great world-historical tragedy, and see the arc of a Jewish family saga that is played out against that backdrop. That means you really had to do a deep dive into some pretty dark places.

Susan Larson: You took that small human moment and just created this great canvas around it, which was such an amazing achievement.

Larry Powell: Well, it only just-- I don't know why-- how it came about, but it almost wrote itself. I started teaching about the Holocaust, and again, I kind of got out of my field.

Susan Larson: It changed your life.

Larry Powell: Yes, it really did.

Susan Larson: In a lot of ways.

Larry Powell: Because my union card says I should be teaching civil war and reconstruction, but I kept wandering off the reservation. I think that's a factor of living in New Orleans. It's a place that seemed forever to be where history was happening to historians.

Susan Larson: It drives you where you're meant to go, I think, really many times.

['Avalon' by Harry Connick, Jr.]

Susan Larson: We've been talking with Tulane University, Professor Emeritus, Larry Powell, about New Orleans history books for the tricentennial reading list. The reading live tricentennial reading list is sponsored by the LS Foundation, the John Burton Harter Trust, and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. For the ever-growing tricentennial reading list and other episodes, check out www.no.org.

The Reading Life in 2010, Susan Larson was the book editor for The New Orleans Times-Picayune from 1988-2009. She has served on the boards of the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival and the New Orleans Public Library. She is the founder of the New Orleans chapter of the Women's National Book Association, which presents the annual Diana Pinckley Prizes for Crime Fiction.. In 2007, she received the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities lifetime achievement award for her contributions to the literary community. She is also the author of The Booklover's Guide to New Orleans. If you run into her in a local bookstore or library, she'll be happy to suggest something you should read. She thinks New Orleans is the best literary town in the world, and she reads about a book a day.

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