Codrescu Andrei Foreword (3 results)

Quarto, black cloth (hardcover), gilt letters, illus. endpapers, 144 pp. Fine in a Fine dust jacket> From dust jacket: More than 100,000 people visit New Orleans' cemeteries each year to see the arresting aboveground tombs. Sandra Russell Clark's photographs, however, offer a perspective unavailable to the naked eye: her luminous black-and-white duotones register atmosphere and time, as well as the solid substances of chiseled stone, sculpted marble, and wrought iron. The ethereal and the tangible are as one in these images, inviting us into the meeting rounds between the living and the dead. Clark's melancholy and mysterious pictures have been likened to the work of Clarence John Laughlin. A white mausoleum washed in sunlight stands in stark contrast against a blacked sky in apocalyptic freeze-time. Rolling Gulf clouds stampede angel-topped "houses," heralding Judgment Day and the tombs' eruption. A statue of a woman carrying roses in one arm and reaching out with the other casts a reflective shadow on the woman's tomb. Pale hands press against a vault. But broken slabs and weed-filled cracks belie the best intentions of remembrance and permanence. In an engaging opening ramble, the inimitable Andrei Codrescu offers his poet's view of cemeteries generally and of his adopted hometown's in particular, confiding that he has used places of eternal rest as his private coffeehouses since he was a teen. Historian Patricia Brady follows with a fascinating discussion of New Orleans' distinctive burial practices and places over the past two hundred years. Many of the city's historic graveyards, she notes, are modeled on the Pere-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Evocative passages from writers including William Faulkner, Truman Capote, and Tennessee Williams enhance the progression of photographs. A listing of, and a map locating, the twenty cemeteries represented in the collection complete the volume. Louisiana, New Orleans, Photograph, Cemetery Architecture, Burial Practices. yslic.

Hardcover. Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: As New. Ed Lindlof (illustrator). Anniversary Edition. With a new introduction by Andrei Codrescu for this edition, and the original introduction by Walker Percy. A clean, unmarked and unclipped copy in a Mylar jacket cover.

paperback. Condition: New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title!