The New Orleans of Fiction: A Research Guide

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

The importance of New Orleans in American culture has made the city's place in the American imagination a crucial topic for literary scholars and cultural historians. While databases of bibliographical information on New Orleans-centered fiction are available, they are of little use to scholars researching works written before the 1980s. In The New Orleans of Fiction: A Research Guide, James A. Kaser provides detailed synopses for more than 500 works of fiction significantly set in New Orleans and published between 1836 and 1980. The synopses include plot summaries, names of major characters, and an indication of physical settings. An appendix provides bibliographical information for works dating from 1981 well into the 21st century, while a biographical section provides basic information about the authors, some of whom are obscure and would be difficult to find in other sources. Written to assist researchers in locating works of fiction for analysis, the plot summaries highlight ways in which the works touch on major aspects of social history and cultural studies (i.e., class, ethnicity, gender, immigrant experience, and race). The book is also a useful reader advisory tool for librarians and readers who want to identify materials for leisure reading, particularly since genre, juvenile, and young adult fictionas well as literary fictionare included.

Reviews

Kaser notes in his introduction that choosing titles and authors for this guide was anything but an exact science. His goal was to offer a research guide that includes fiction titles in which the city of New Orleans has a 'strong symbolic role throughout.'Titles included in the 'Annotated Bibliography,' this guides largest section, must have been printed between 1828 and 1980.Each entry contains bibliographic information and a detailed synopsis of the books themes and their relation to New Orleans. . . .Writer biographies make up the second and perhaps most interesting section of this guide. Readers will find Kasers well-written biographies filled with information about long-forgotten but venerable authors. The third section comprises two appendixes. The first includes bibliographic information on titles published after 1980.The second contains a list of included texts in chronological order. Completing a project of this size and scope is an admirable undertaking, and Kaser manages to make this guide readable and informative.Researchers interested in how fiction authors portray New Orleans will find this research guide a valuable resource. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above. * CHOICE *
This research guide provides an annotated bibliography, arranged in alphabetical order by author, of at least 514 novels and short stories of at least eighty pages published between 1828 and 1980 with a connection to New Orleans. The detailed annotations include plot summaries, the names of major characters, thematic information, and more. The second section of the book provides biographies of the authors, some of whom are relatively unknown. Famous publications included are Cornell Woolrichs Rear Window, later an Alfred Hitchcock film starring Grace Kelly and James Stewart, and Leslie Wallers Close Encounters of the Third Kind, later Steven Spielbergs movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind starring Richard Dreyfus. Additional prominent authors' works are Winston Churchill, Frances Parkinson Keyes, and William Faulkner. These main sections are followed by two appendixes. The first appendix supplies bibliographic information on 1,036 fictional works set in New Orleans published after 1980, and the second has a chronological list of the annotated titles, grouped by date, 1828-1890, 1891-1920, 1921-1950, and 1951-1980. An index and a note about the author round out the work. It is pivotal to seekers of New Orleans tales and crucial to academic and public libraries. * American Reference Books Annual *
This guide will help librarians and scholars find novels and short story collections set in New Orleans, which are 80 pages or more and were published before 1981. Entries are alphabetical by author. Detailed annotations are given for works published from 1828 to 1980; bibliographic information is given for works dating from 1981 through 2013 in an appendix. The book also includes about 70 pages of author biographies, plus a chronological list of titles. The book was created by consulting libraries with collections of New Orleans fiction, as well as online and published bibliographies that offer a subject approach to fiction. * protoview.com *

Author Bio

James A. Kaser is professor and archivist at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York. He is the author of The Washington, D.C. of Fiction: A Research Guide (Scarecrow, 2006) and The Chicago of Fiction: A Resource Guide (Scarecrow, 2011).