My New Orleans, Gone Away: A Memoir of Loss and Renewal

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Written with humor and telling detail, My New Orleans contains rare insight about the social structure of New Orleans; student life at Exeter, Tulane and Yale; the thrill of original scholarship; around the world travel before jets; medical school trauma; ingrained southern racism, and anti-Semitism; and American students' role in anti-Vietnam uprisings in Paris. In the background, he traces the rags to riches rise and fall of his city's and his family's engagement in the cotton, sugar and retail trades. After a year of medical school at Columbia, and continuing his journey of self-discovery, Wolf returns to New Orleans to work in his father's cotton brokerage and simultaneously earns a master's degree at Tulane. In spite of a spicy love affair, his residence in a glorious French Quarter courtyard, his purchase of a dilapidated building he expects to restore, and growing prominence in his community, Wolf returns to the east. He completes doctoral studies at NYU and becomes an architectural historian, a profession in which he earns considerable prominence. The author's complicated and achingly explored romantic life is slammed to a close by a saucy, waspy, ex-pat from Texas whom he meets in Paris during his year as a Fulbright scholar, and subsequently marries. Reflecting the yearnings and anxieties of a generation that came of age after World War II, this is the iconic journey of a restless man who leaves the hometown he loves to discover the world, and in so doing, to find himself. My New Orleans offers a penetrating and memorable account of a fading period of America's evolution, turbulence and possibilities, as unique as the city of Wolf's memory.

Reviews

A fascinating story.--Kirkus Reviews
Charming....[Wolf's] memoir is about his city, its snobby topside and seamy underside, about New Orleans contrasted with the Ivy League, and about how he came to be, of all things, an urban planner when, in this reviewer's opinion, he should have stuck to writing.--Winston Groom, "The Wall Street Journal"
Engaging...delightful....Wolf returns to the Big Easy after a protracted Yankee education at Exeter and Yale, joins his father's firm in the cotton trade, takes up lodgings on Burgundy Street at the edge of the French Quarter and hangs out at places the mere mention of which sends shivers of pleasure down my spine.--Jonathan Yardley, "The Washington Post"
I loved it. It brings back great memories.--Walter Isaacson, author of "Steve Jobs"
Peter Wolf's "My New Orleans, Gone Away" is the triumph of a memorist with the eye of an architect and the heart of a poet. With admiration, and occasionally, awe, I shared the development of his feelings and taste. This may very well be a modest classic of that enchanted city's art, culture, lifestyle and vanishing monuments.--Sidney Offit, author of "Memoir of the Bookie's Son"
Reading this memoir we think about where we live, what these places mean to us, what they meant to our ancestors, and, of course, what they will mean to our progeny.--The East Hampton Star
Wolf's journey from inhibited child to dream-chaser is beautifully told, full of love for New Orleans, tradition, and family, all trumped by the angst-filled awakening that led him forward.--Publisher's Weekly