the last book I ever read (Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through a Country's Hidden Past, excerpt one)

from Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through a Country's Hidden Past by Giles Tremlett:

The night chosen for killing the three women fell a few days after Christmas and just two before New Year’s Eve. A small crowd had formed as the Falangists prepared to carry out their work. There was no lack of volunteers. Only one man, a future Civil Guard officer called Miguel Suárez, protested at what was about to happen. He pulled a young cousin of his out of the crowd and dragged him out of the square, but he could not stop the rest.

The man in charge was Ángel Vadillo. Later to be known by the nickname Quinientos Uno, literally ‘Five hundred and one’, he was the leader of the local Falange, the Spanish Phalanx. This party of the extreme right had gathered just 45,000 votes around Spain (and no seat in the Madrid parliament, Las Cortes) in national elections ten months before. But, as the only party approved by General Francisco Franco, it was growing rapidly in the areas conquered since the military rebellion against the Republic had erupted in July. Vadillo boasted that he had killed 501 rojos – thus gaining a nickname which, by most accounts, he was proud of.

the last book I ever read (The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War, excerpt eleven)

from The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War by Manuel Rivas:

He realized that everything he was saying had a wounding double meaning. Doctor Da Barca made no reply, as if all he could hear were the din of the train taking him further away from the warm, perfumed embrace of woman. The lieutenant had told him to take a seat in his carriage. After all, he was also in charge of the expedition. They had things to talk about.

Leaving behind the large tunnel that blotted out the urban horizon, the train entered the green and blue watercolour of the Burgo estuary. Doctor Da Barca blinked as if the beauty hurt his eyes. From their boats, with long rakes, the fishermen combed the bottom of the sea for shellfish. One of them stopped working and looked in the direction of the train, his hand shielding his face, erect on the sea’s swaying surface. Doctor Da Barca recalled his friend the painter. He used to like painting scenes of work in the fields and at sea, but not according to the traditional clichés, which turned them into pretty, bucolic pictures. On his friend the painter’s canvases, people were shown merging into the earth and the sea. Their faces seemed furrowed by the very plough that clove the earth. The fishermen were captives of the very nets that seized the fish. It reached the point where their bodies fragmented. Sickle arms. Sea eyes. Face stones. Doctor Da Barca empathized with the fisherman standing erect on his boat, looking at the train. He may have wondered where it was going and what it was taking there. The distance and the din of the engine would prevent him from hearing the terrible litany of coughing ringing out in the squalor of the cattle trucks like skin tambourines soaked in blood. The panorama brought to mind a fable: with its cries, the cormorant flying over the fisherman was telegraphing the truth about the train. He remembered the bitterness his friend the painter felt when he stopped receiving the avant-garde art magazines he was sent from Germany: the worst illness that can strike is the suspension of conscience. Doctor Da Barca opened his case and pulled out a brief treatise with worn covers, The Biological Roots of Aesthetic Feeling, by Doctor Roberto Nóvoa Santos.

the last book I ever read (The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War, excerpt ten)

from The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War by Manuel Rivas:

The clock at Coruña railway station had always stopped at five minutes to ten. The boy selling newspapers sometimes had the impression that the minute hand, the longer of the two, trembled slightly before giving up again, unable to cope with its weight, like the wing of a hen. The boy thought that, deep down, the clock was right and that eternal malfunction was a stand in favour of realism. He would also like to have stopped, not at five minutes to ten, but four hours earlier, at the exact time his father was waking him in the hovel that was their home in Eirís. In winter and summer alike, a cloud of mist would settle there, compact damp that seemed gradually to be shrinking the house year after year, weighing down the roof, opening cracks in the walls. The boy was sure that, at night, one of its tentacles came down the chimney and stuck to the ceiling with its huge suckers, leaving behind those circular stains like the images of craters from a grey planet. The first waking landscape. The boy had to cross the city to Porta Real, where he would pick up the copies of La Voz de Galicia. Sometimes, in winter, he would run to chase away the cold from his feet. His father had made him some soles with pieces of car tyre. When he ran, the boy went vroom vroom vrooooom to clear a way through the mist.

the last book I ever read (The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War, excerpt nine)

from The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War by Manuel Rivas:

“The wrath of God exists! It was God’s victory!”

His voice was drowned out by the coughing, no longer the delicate clearing of the throat at the opera but the undertow of a surging sea. The prison governor, assailed by looks from the authorities, decided to go over to him and mutter in his ear that he should cut it short, today was Victory Day and if things carried on as they were they would be celebrating it with a massacre.

The chaplain’s flushed face turned pale, undone by the frenzy of men coughing as if with silicosis. He went quiet, scanned the rows with disconcerted eyes, as if coming to, and mumbled some Latin under his breath.

the last book I ever read (The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War, excerpt eight)

from The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War by Manuel Rivas:

In the room his sister had given him, there was a bicycle hanging on the wall. It was a bicycle that no-one used, the tyres so clean they looked as if they had never been placed on the ground. The tin mudguards gleamed like sheets of German silver. Before going to sleep, he would sit on the bed in front of the bicycle. As a child he had dreamt of something similar. Or had he? Perhaps it was a dream he dreamt he had dreamed. Suddenly, he felt cheated. All he could remember having dreamt, the dream that displaced all his dreams, was that girl, that young woman, that woman, called Marisa Mallo. There she was, on the wall, like a statue of the Blessed Virgin on the altar.

the last book I ever read (The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War, excerpt seven)

from The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War by Manuel Rivas:

“It was nothing out of this world. What suggested the sea was the lighthouse, Hercules Tower. The sea was the shadows. I didn’t want to paint it. I wanted it to be heard like a litany. The sea is impossible to paint. A painter in his right mind, for all the realism he would like to introduce, knows that you cannot transfer the sea on to a canvas. There was one, an Englishman–Turner he was called–who did it very well. His shipwreck of a slave traders’ boat is the most astonishing image of the sea that exists. In it, you can hear the sea. In the shout of the slaves. Slaves who possibly knew no more about the sea than the rolling of the hold. I should like to paint the sea from within, but not having drowned, in a diving suit. To go down with a canvas, paintbrushes and the rest, as I’m told a Japanese painter did.

the last book I ever read (The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War, excerpt six)

from The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War by Manuel Rivas:

“One day an official from the military health inspectorate appeared in the infirmary. He ordered a patient to be examined in his presence. Doctor Soláns was nervous, as if he felt he was being scrutinized. Doctor Da Barca meanwhile stood back, deliberately asking him for advice and handing him the initiative. Suddenly, as he bent to sit down, the official made a strange gesture and a pistol fell out of his shoulder holster. We were there to keep an eye on a prisoner considered dangerous, Genghis Khan. He had been a boxer and a wrestler, and was a bit mad and would suddenly flip. He had been jailed for unintentionally killing a man during a display of freestyle wrestling. He had meant to give him a fright, that was all. From the start of the fight between Genghis Khan and a wrestler called the Lalín Bull, this little man, who was sitting in the front row, had been shouting it was fixed. ‘It’s a fix! It’s a fix!’ Genghis Khan had blood pouring from his nostrils, he could do that, but still this repulsive little man was not satisfied, as if the spectacle of the wound confirmed his suspicions that the fight was fixed. So then Genghis Khan went berserk. He lifted the Lalín Bull, all twenty stone of him, up in the air and threw him as hard as he could on top of the man shouting that it was a fix, who never felt cheated again.

the last book I ever read (The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War, excerpt five)

from The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War by Manuel Rivas:

“Anarchists and Communists are constantly at each other’s throats. The other day, at the tobacco factory in Coruña, they almost came to blows. A strange creature, this Da Barca fellow!”

“He seems to act on his own. As a link.”

“Well, don’t take your eye off him. He’s clearly up to no good!”

the last book I ever read (The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War, excerpt four)

from The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War by Manuel Rivas:

“One night, a cold, winter’s night, there was a shipwreck. As you know, there have always been and still are a lot of shipwrecks off our coast. But this was a very special shipwreck. The boat was called the Palermo and contained a cargo of accordions. A thousand accordions packaged in wood. The storm sank the boat and swept the cargo towards the coast. The sea, its arms like those of a crazed stevedore, smashed up the boxes and carried the accordions in towards the shore. The whole night, the accordions played tunes which you can understand were fairly sad. The music was driven in through the windows by the gale. Everyone in the district was woken and heard it, and the two sisters were scared stiff, like everyone else. In the morning, the accordions lay on the beaches like the corpses of drowned instruments. All of them were useless. All of them bar one. It was found by a young fisherman in a cave. He was so struck by the coincidence that he learned to play it. He was already a spirited, cheerful young man, but the accordion gave him an unusual grace. At the dance, Life fell for him so completely that she decided that love was worth more than the bond with her sister. And they absconded together, because Life knew that Death had a foul temper and could be very vindictive. And so she was. She has never forgiven her for it. This is why she roams to and fro, especially on stormy nights, stops at houses with clogs at the door, and asks whomever she meets, ‘Do you know of a young accordionist and that slut, Life?’ And because the person asked does not know, she takes them with her.”

the last book I ever read (The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War, excerpt three)

from The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War by Manuel Rivas:

“Is it true what I read in the bishop’s newsletter, Da Barca?” Casal intervened ironically. “That at a conference you said man hankered after his tail.”

Everyone laughed, beginning with the doctor, who picked up the thread. “That’s right. Apparently I also said the soul is in the thyroid gland! But now that we’re about it, let me tell you something. In surgery we come across cases of dizziness and vertigo that occur when a human suddenly stands up, traces of the functional disorder brought about by the adoption of a vertical position. You see, what we humans suffer from is a kind of horizontal nostalgia. As for the tail, let’s just call it a peculiarity, a biological deficiency, that man does not have one, or he does, but it’s been trimmed, so to speak. The absence of a tail is a factor worth bearing in mind when discussing the origins of speech.”

the last book I ever read (The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War, excerpt two)

from The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War by Manuel Rivas:

Doctor Da Barca smiled thoughtfully. Then he said, “The only good thing about borders are the secret crossings. It’s incredible the effect an imaginary line can have. It gets traced one day by some doddering king in his bed or drawn on the table by powerful men as if they were playing a game of poker. I remember a terrible thing a man once said to me, ‘My grandfather was the lowest of the low.’ ‘Why? What did he do?’ I asked. ‘Did he kill someone?’ ‘No, no. My paternal grandfather served a Portuguese.’ He was drunk with historical bile. ‘Well,’ I said to annoy him, ‘if I were to choose a passport, I’d be a Portuguese.’ Fortunately, however, this border will soon be swallowed up in its own absurdity. True borders are those that keep the poor away from a share of the cake.”

the last book I ever read (The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War, excerpt one)

from The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War by Manuel Rivas:

The reporter Sousa felt partially relieved. This beautiful, ageing woman who had come to the door, seemingly chosen on a whim by the chisel of Time. This very sick man, out of hospital two days previously, with the spirit of a cycling champion. It had been suggested to him at the newspaper, “Why don’t you give him an interview? He’s an old exile. Apparently he even had dealings with Che Guevara in Mexico.”

Who was interested in that nowadays? Only a head of local news who read Le Monde Diplomatique at night. Sousa detested politics. To tell the truth, he detested journalism. He had recently been working in Accident and Crime. It had got too much for him. The world was a dung-heap.

the last book I ever read (The Knockout Artist by Harry Crews, excerpt seven)

from The Knockout Artist by Harry Crews:

It took only a moment to go up to Jacques’s apartment and find the .38 revolver. He didn’t even need a light. He unsnapped the suitcase, slipped the .38 out of its holster, and put it behind his belt. He went downstairs and got in the car and headed toward Exposition Boulevard, driving slowly, as calm in his heart as sleep. On the way, he stopped at a twenty-four-hour Eckerd Pharmacy and bought a can of lighter fluid, a large can.

the last book I ever read (The Knockout Artist by Harry Crews, excerpt six)

from The Knockout Artist by Harry Crews:

They had turned the northern edge of Audubon Park past Loyola and Tulane universities and were headed now toward the zoo and the finish of the five miles they ran every morning. As he always did, when they came into the last quarter-mile, Eugene went up on his toes to sprint and cried, loud enough to turn the head of an old man walking twin poodles: “Balls! Who’s got’m?”

But he knew who had them. Jacques had balls enough for four fighters. And despite the fact that he had already gone over four miles and outweighed Eugene by thirty pounds and had heavy boots on his feet, Jacques began to pull away from him in the sprint to the finish. And he was laughing all the way, his breathing as easy as if he had been walking. Eugene pulled up, leaned over, and put his hands on his knees, gasping. Jacques came to him and put his huge hand on the back of Eugene’s neck.

the last book I ever read (The Knockout Artist by Harry Crews, excerpt five)

from The Knockout Artist by Harry Crews:

“Is that where you’re from, South Georgia?”

“That’s where I’m from.”

“I’m from Mississippi. We’ll get together sometime and talk about chitlins and incest and other southern contributions to culture.”

the last book I ever read (The Knockout Artist by Harry Crews, excerpt four)

from The Knockout Artist by Harry Crews:

What he wished was that he could write better, that he could get what he wanted to say down on paper in a way that was not so crippled. And more than that, he wished he did not lie to his daddy and his mama and his brother, Edsel. He did not even have to lie. He knew that. But there was something that made him want to lie, or at least made lying necessary. It was all very confusing. He knew it wasn’t really necessary to send money home. He could just stop. Except he felt he could never stop. His daddy and mama and Edsel needed the money badly and he had got used to being able to help them out. Writing the letters and sending the money, made it easier to do what he was doing even if he hated what he was doing. But he had to keep doing what he hated so he could write the letters and send the money. He shook his head violently, as if to clear it after taking a punch. These were strange times. Maybe Pete was right, maybe he had knocked himself out too many times. He looked back at the last two words he had written and could not remember what he wished.

the last book I ever read (The Knockout Artist by Harry Crews, excerpt three)

from The Knockout Artist by Harry Crews:

Pete got off from his job as projectionist at the Flesh and Flash around one-thirty, so Eugene was in no hurry. He rode past the Audubon Zoo, which was not one of his favorite places in New Orleans, but where he often went. Across Audubon Park he could see Tulane University and Loyola University where they sat cheek by jowl, darkened silhouettes against the night sky. He liked the universities even less than he liked the zoo because they reminded him of the young men and women who swarmed about them reading strange books, speaking strange languages, and studying about countries with names he couldn’t even say. Since Budd had abandoned him here two years ago he had by necessity changed from a shy, quiet boy to a man who could shuck and jive the paint off the walls if he wanted to. But all the two years had really taught him was how hopelessly ignorant of real learning he was.

the last book I ever read (The Knockout Artist by Harry Crews, excerpt two)

from The Knockout Artist by Harry Crews:

“Some got heart, some got talent, some got both. Take Rocky Marciano. Everybody that ever fought him, beat him. But he retired undefeated, right?” Eugene didn’t answer. He didn’t say anything much all afternoon, except for an occasional grunt or yes or no. But that seemed enough for Budd. “Marciano would take five punches to land one. But Jesus, what a hitter. Archie Moore was the only guy to ever take him off his feet. He hit Marciano with everything but the ring post. But he got off the canvas and whipped the shit out of Moore. All on heart. There was no quit to him.

“And Willie Pastrano, light-heavyweight champion of the world. Couldn’t hit for shit. All points, no punch. But a win’s a win, that’s what they say.

“Then there’s guys like Scott LaDoux. He’d maul you, brawl you, butt you till you bled, step on your feet, and thumb you blind. But he only wanted to win. And he was only doing what the referee let him do. It’s up to the referee to control the fight. But he would have used his teeth if he could’ve got away with it. I never saw a referee that could control LaDoux. Last I heard he was refereeing wrestling matches. Jesus, wrestling matches, after being in with some of the best fighters in the world. Well, what the hell, we all gotta do something.”

the last book I ever read (The Knockout Artist by Harry Crews, excerpt one)

from The Knockout Artist by Harry Crews:

He forced himself to carefully count the suits one more time. And got yet another number. There were probably either 130 or 127 or 133 or 128 suits of clothes hanging in the open closet just there in front of him. And on the floor beneath each suit was a pair of shoes. So however many suits were in the closet, there were that many pairs of shoes also. It occurred to him the first time he saw them that there were not that many suits in all of Bacon County, Georgia, which was where he came from. But he was not in Bacon County now. He was in a house that was as big as a train station on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, Louisiana, and things were different here from the way they were where he came from. Christ, were they different. The whole world had changed up on him in New Orleans. Like the houses on St. Charles Avenue. There were few of them he could look at and not be reminded of a train station or else wonder why in God’s name anybody would want to live in something so unthinkably huge.

the last book I ever read (The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis, excerpt eleven)

from The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis:

I poured another glassful of martini and stepped out onto the balcony. New Orleans loves balconies—balconies and sequestered courtyards where you can (at least in theory) go on about your life at a remove from the bustle below and about you. Across the street, schoolgirls left St. Elizabeth’s, every doubt or question anticipated, answered, in their catechism and morning instruction, strong young legs moving inside the cage of plaid uniform skirts.

the last book I ever read (The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis, excerpt ten)

from The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis:

“Por nada.”

This went on for some time. I remember my father sitting beside the bed for a week or two. Verne came in a few times and told me if there was anything she could do . . . Corene Davis bent down and whispered something in my ear, which later Earl Long tried to bite off. One night Martin Luther King was there, but nobody else saw him. I asked.

the last book I ever read (The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis, excerpt nine)

from The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis:

I hung up.

And what about me? Back when I found Corene Davis I’d thought my anger, my hatred, was gone forever. I’d been on top for a long time now, even chipped off a little corner of the good life for myself. But it was a lie, a story that didn’t work, a piece of white man’s life, not mine; and now the anger and hatred were coming back. I had kicked that guy in the hotel room in the stomach. I had wanted to kill him, kill them both. Robert Johnson’s hellhound was nipping at my heels.

the last book I ever read (The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis, excerpt eight)

from The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis:

We walked down Decatur to the French Market and trudged over the levee. A cool breeze eased in off the water. Due south along the river’s curve lay the city’s bulky torso, flanked by the wharf with its growth of ships, tugs, barges. The Canal Street ferry was just pulling out of its slip heading at an angle toward Algiers.

That camel’s hump of land over there, directly opposite oldest New Orleans and now the city’s fifth ward, is central to its history. At various times called Point Antoine, Point Marigny and Slaughter House Point, in the last days of French rule it was the site both of the colony’s abattoir and powder magazine—and a depot for shipment after shipment of slaves newly arrived from Africa.

Dr. King had a dream. I at least had History.

the last book I ever read (The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis, excerpt seven)

from The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis:

Home these days was a four-room apartment on St. Charles where trolleys clanked by late at night and you could always smell the river. It had a couple of overstuffed couches, some Italian chairs, a king-size bed, even pictures on the wall. Mostly Impressionist.

the last book I ever read (The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis, excerpt six)

from The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis:

Until 1850 or so, Jackson Square had been Place d’Armes, and it was there, during the years of Spanish rule a century earlier, that rebellious French leaders had been executed. A few blocks landward, in Congo Square, slaves were allowed to pursue music and mores otherwise proscribed by the Code Noir and femme de couleur libre Marie Laveau held court over regular Sunday voodoo rituals. Scenes from our rich heritage hereabouts. Laveau, incidentally, was said to have consorted with alligators. Obviously one hell of a woman.

That night LaVerne and I had dinner at Commander’s Palace. Trout Almandine because they make the best in the city and a Mouton-Rothschild because we felt like it. The wine steward seemed a bit huffy at first but, as the evening went on, grew ever friendlier in proportion to the growing redness of his face.

the last book I ever read (The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis, excerpt five)

from The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis:

I picked up yesterday’s Times-Picayune and glanced through it. All the headlines were about the heat wave, or the brownouts, or the president’s trip to wherever, but right in along there, a little lower, were the usual burglaries, rapes and murders that make the world go round. Fine city, New Orleans. I’d been other places. It was still my favorite. Just don’t ask me why.

the last book I ever read (The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis, excerpt four)

from The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis:

There’s an old novel called Black No More, about a scientist who invents a cream that’s able to turn black people white and the social havoc this brings about, written in the thirties by George Schuyler, a newspaperman. When I was a kid, Dad always used to grin when any of his friends mentioned it. And Mom said she’d whip me if she ever caught me reading it. Till I did, I thought it was about sex.

the last book I ever read (The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis, excerpt three)

from The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis:

They walked to the door and damned if they didn’t turn around together at the last minute and, raising their hands to chest level, close them into fists. It looked like it was choreographed. Then they went out the door. Damned if I know how they’d lived this long. If the cops don’t get you, the crackers will.

But anyhow, I had a case.

Power to the people.

the last book I ever read (The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis, excerpt two)

from The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis:

Bobbie brought me another beer. Maybe she figured I needed it.

“At any rate,” Blackie went on, “it was to have been at the Municipal Auditorium, the eighteenth of August, at eight p.m. She was coming in early that morning to speak to some student groups at Tulane and Loyola. She did that wherever she went. Spoke to students, I mean.”

the last book I ever read (The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis, excerpt one)

from The Long-Legged Fly: A Lew Griffin Novel by James Sallis:

I got up and went to the window, taking the bourbon with me. I put it down in one gulp and put the glass on the sill. Down in the street a group of kids were playing what looked like cops and robbers. The robbers were winning.

the last book I ever read (Herbert Asbury's The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld, excerpt twelve)

from The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld by Herbert Asbury:

A few of the best brothels regularly employed orchestras of from two to four instruments, which played each night in the ballroom from about seven o’clock to closing, which was usually at dawn. The other depended upon the groups of itinerant musicians who frequently appeared in Storyville, playing in the streets and saloons for coins and drinks. One of the most popular of these combinations – though not for dancing – was a company of boys, from twelve to fifteen years old, who called themselves the Spasm Band. They were the real creators of jazz, and the Spasm was the original jazz band. There were seven members besides the manager and principal organizer, Harry Gregson, who was the singer of the outfit – he crooned the popular songs of the day through a piece of gas-pipe, since he couldn’t afford a proper megaphone. The musicians were Emile Lacomb, otherwise Stalebread Charley, who played a fiddle made out of a cigar-box; Willie Bussey, better known as Cajun who performed entrancingly upon the harmonica; Charley Stein, who manipulated an old kettle, a cow-bell, a gourd filled with pebbles, and other traps and in later life became a famous drummer; Chenee, who smote the bull fiddle, at first half a barrel and later a coffin-shaped contraption built by the boys; Warm Gravy; Emile Benrod, called Whisky, and Frank Bussey, known as Monk. The three last-named played whistles and various horns, most of them home-made, and each had at least three instruments, upon which he alternated. Cajun Bussey and Stalebread Charley could play tunes upon the harmonica and the fiddle, and the other contributed whatever sounds chanced to come from their instruments. These they played with the horns in hats, standing upon their heads, and interrupting themselves occasionally with lugubrious howls. In short, they apparently originated practically all of the antics with which the virtuosi of modern jazz provoke the hotcha spirit, and sometimes downright nausea. The Spasm boys even screamed “hi-de-hi” and “ho-de-ho” – and incidentally these expressions, now the exclusive howls of Negro band-leaders, were used in Mississippi River songs at least a hundred years ago.

the last book I ever read (Herbert Asbury's The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld, excerpt eleven)

from The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld by Herbert Asbury:

Sicilian criminals appeared in New Orleans soon after the beginning of the great wave of immigration from southern Europe before the Civil War, and within a few years were operating in well-organized bands in various parts of the city. As early as 1861, on June 22, the True Delta declared that “recent developments have satisfied the police of the city that an organized gang of Spanish and Sicilians thieves and burglars have long made their headquarters in the Second and Third Districts.” Two months later the same newspaper reported the arrest of a band of Sicilian counterfeiters and again called attention to the presence in New Orleans of large numbers of Sicilian robbers and assassins. On March 19, 1869 the Times said that the Second District was infested by “well-known and notorious Sicilian murderers, counterfeiters and burglars, who, in the last month, have formed a sort of general co-partnership or stock company for the plunder and disturbance of the city.” This “co-partnership” was the Stoppagherra Society, organized as a branch of the Mafia by four men, who, driven from Palermo by the Sicilian authorities, arrived in New Orleans early in 1869. The assassins of the Stoppagherra quickly disposed of a gang of Messina men who attempted to set up a rival band in the autumn of 1869, and thereafter the Mafia was the dominating element in Italian crime, not only in New Orleans but elsewhere in the United States, for with the Louisiana metropolis as headquarters, branches were soon established in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and other large cities. To these havens of refuge and opportunity, largely through the kind offices of politicians who found the Mafia a great help at election times, flowed a stream of criminals from Sicily and other parts of Italy. In New Orleans alone during the late 1880’s, according to the Italian Consul, Pasquale Corte, there were a hundred escaped Italian criminals, not one of whom had entered the country legally. Many had become naturalized citizens. These desperadoes, and other members of the Mafia, kept the Italian colony of New Orleans in a state of terror for more than twenty years, and grew rich and powerful upon the proceeds of robbery, extortion, and assassination, most of the victims being fellow-countrymen who had failed to pay the sums demanded by the Mafia leaders. A few of these killings – there were about seventy during the two decades – were committed with knives, but in most of them the murderers used a weapon known to the New Orleans police as “the Mafia gun” – a shotgun with the barrels sawed off to about eighteen inches, and the stock sawed through near the trigger and hollowed out. The stock was then fitted with hinges, and the entire gun folded up like a jackknife. It was carried inside the coat on a hook. Loaded with slugs or buckshot, it was as deadly a weapon up to thirty yards as had ever been devised.

the last book I ever read (Herbert Asbury's The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld, excerpt ten)

from The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld by Herbert Asbury:

The fame of New Orleans as the gayest place on the North American continent was spread by the ballrooms, the cafes and coffee-houses, the hotels and restaurants, the elegant gambling-establishments, and the unrestrained merriment of the Mardi Gras festival. But the fact that at the same time the city was notorious throughout the world as a veritable cesspool of sin was principally due to the prevalence of prostitution, which in turn was due to the tolerances with which it was regarded by the authorities and the people generally. This attitude, eagerly embraced by the American politician because of the protection it afforded to one of his most lucrative fields of graft, was based upon the Latin viewpoint that prostitution was an inevitable and necessary evil, to be regulated rather than suppressed; it became such a definite municipal characteristic that it persisted until comparatively recent years. From Bienville to the World War commercialized vice was the most firmly entrenched phase of underworld activity in New Orleans; it was not only big business on its own account, owning some of the best property in the city and giving employment to thousands, but was also the foundation upon which the keepers of the concert-saloons, cabarets, dance-houses, and other low resorts reared their fantastic structures of prosperity. Without the lure of the harlot it is doubtful if such districts as the Swamp and Gallatin Street, and the Franklin Street area which Bison Williams described as “the only locality in the city where decent people do not live,” could have existed.

the last book I ever read (Herbert Asbury's The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld, excerpt nine)

from The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld by Herbert Asbury:

Marie Laveau was a free mulatto, and was born in New Orleans about 1796. On August 4, 1819, when she was in her early twenties, she was married to Jacques Paris, also a mulatto, the ceremony being performed by Pere Antoine. Paris died in 1826, and a year or so afterwards Marie Laveau went to live with a mulatto named Christophe Glapion – there is no record of their marriage. She had a daughter in February 1827 – whether by Paris or by Glapion is unknown – who was named Marie and who subsequently married a man named Legendre. In her youth Marie Laveau was renowned among the free people of color for her beauty, and especially for the symmetry of her figure. By profession she was a hairdresser, and as such gained admittance to the homes of fashionable white ladies, where she learned many secrets which she never hesitated to use to her own advantage. As a lucrative side-line she acted as procuress for white gentlemen, furnishing quadroon and octoroon girls for their pleasure, and also served as go-between and letter-carrier in clandestine love-affairs among her white clients. She became a member of the Voodoo cult about the time her husband died, and usurped Sanite Dede’s place as Queen half a dozen years later. Sanite Dede was then an old woman.

For several years after she became queen of the Voodoos, Marie Laveau spent much of her time in a flimsy shanty on Lake Pontchartrain, which was sometimes used for meetings of the cult. One day while she was there a hurricane passed over New Orleans and the lake, and the shanty was torn from its foundations and hurled into the water. Marie Laveau sought safety on the roof, but when several of her followers tried to rescue her, she discouraged their efforts, crying out that the Voodoo god wanted her to die in the lake. She was finally induced to accept assistance, however, and according to the tale which was freely spread among the Negroes, the moment Marie Laveau reached the shore the fury of the storm abated and the lake became as smooth as the surface of a mirror.

the last book I ever read (Herbert Asbury's The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld, excerpt eight)

from The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld by Herbert Asbury:

The first Voodoo doctor of whom there is any record in New Orleans was a huge coal-black Negro with a tattooed face, who called himself Doctor John, and who flourished during the early and middle 1840’s. He was a mind-reader and a dabbler in astrology, and for special magical effected sold shells and pebbles which had been soaked for three days in an evil-smelling oil rendered from snakes, lizards, and frogs. Wrapped in a hank of human hair and carried in the pocket, one of these shells or pebbles provided blanket protection against all harm. Doctor John is said to have numbered among his clients the famous slave Pauline, a mulatto, who was the first Negro to be executed under the provisions of the Black Code after the American occupation, and the first person of any color to be hanged in the Parish Prison, which was erected behind Congo Square in 1832. Pauline became the property of Peter Redeck in the autumn of 1844, and soon thereafter bought from Doctor John a love-philter with which to charm her master. She succeeded and became his mistress, although the newspapers of the time were inclined to give the credit to Pauline’s handsome face and superb figure rather than to Doctor John’s magic. Late in 1844 Redeck went to St. Louis on business, and in January 1845 Mayor Edgar Montegut received an anonymous letter which informed him that a white woman was being kept prisoner in her own home at 52 Bayou Road. On January 14 Mayor Montegut and a detachment of police went to the address, which was the home of Peter Redeck, and found Mrs. Redeck and her three children, aged two, four, and seven, confined in a cabinet by the slave Pauline, who had taken possession of the premises as soon as Redeck had left for St. Louis. Mrs. Redeck told the Mayor that she and her children had been imprisoned for six weeks, during which time Pauline had beaten and starved her, and taunted her with the infidelity of her husband. Pauline was immediately tried, found guilty, and condemned to death, but because she was pregnant the execution was postponed to March 28, 1846. On that date, clad in a long white robe and white cap, her arms bound with black cord, she was hanged in the courtyard of the Parish Prison.

the last book I ever read (Herbert Asbury's The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld, excerpt seven)

from The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld by Herbert Asbury:

Gilbert Rosière was a native of Bordeaux, a lawyer, and a graduate of a French university. He came to New Orleans to practice law, but being of a wild and carefree disposition, he fell in with a set of gay young men and became a leader in their escapades. Instead of establishing a law office he opened a fencing academy, and at the outset of his career attracted considerable local renown by fighting seven duels in one week. He earned a fortune by teaching young Army officers to fence during the Mexican War, but it was soon squandered. His contemporaries describe him as gay, witty, and somewhat irascible and, for all his record as a duelist, so tender-hearted that he could not harm a fly. He frequently wept at the theater and the opera – and killed several men who laughed at his displays of emotion.

the last book I ever read (Herbert Asbury's The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld, excerpt six)

from The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld by Herbert Asbury:

There was little to choose between the bar and restaurants and the purely hotel services of the St. Charles and the St. Louis, but the latter, located in the heart of the French Quarter and lavishly supported by the Creoles, soon became the center of the city’s social life and supplanted the Orleans Ballroom as the scene of the fashionable balls and masquerades. Soon after the reopening of the St. Louis, Hewlett inaugurated a series of subscription balls which became famous throughout the country as the acme of elegance and magnificence and as the most expensive entertainments in the country. Perhaps the most notable of these functions was that given in honor of Henry Clay during the winter of 1842-3, when two hundred subscribers each paid a hundred dollars, so that the ball and supper cost the then enormous sum of twenty thousand dollars. In the public rooms of the St. Louis were held also the most important of the balls with which New Orleans celebrated the winter carnival season, and, later, the functions of the organizations which participated in the observance of Mardi Gras. This celebration, for more than a century the best-known feature of New Orleans life, was introduced into the city in 1827 by a group of young men who organized a street procession of maskers. It was very successful and was repeated each year until 1837, when allegorical floats made their first appearance on the streets. The idea of such a pageant had been originally developed in Mobile by an organization called the Cowbellians. The second parade of this character in New Orleans was held in 1839, but nothing very ambitious was attempted until 1857, when the formation of the Mystic Krewe of Comus, the first of the organizations which now dominate the Mardi Gras celebration, placed the carnival on a firm footing and gave it practically the form in which it exists today.

the last book I ever read (Herbert Asbury's The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld, excerpt five)

from The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld by Herbert Asbury:

The Café des Ameliorations was frequented principally by elderly, unreconstructed Creoles who refused to admit that American possession of Louisiana was final. For years they met daily at the café, where they concocted fantastic schemes for the capture of the state government, the expulsion of the American barbarians, and the restoration of the territory to France. The most vociferous of these fire-eaters was an old gentleman known as the Chevalier, who was one of the odd characters of the time. With a dog and a monkey which remained his constant companions, the Chevalier first appeared in New Orleans about 1795, having removed to the city from an upstate settlement. He not only hated the Americans, but abhorred the ideas of equality which had developed even among the Creoles after the French Revolution, and was horrified at the popular dress of the period, especially the increasingly popular pantaloons and the custom of appearing in public without a wig. To the day of his death his attire consisted of the habiliments of a gentleman of an almost forgotten generation—powdered wig and queue, knee breeches, silk stockings, frizzled cuffs and shirt-front, and silver buckles on his slippers. Most of the Chevalier’s means were dissipated in the furtherance of chimerical schemes for the liberation of Louisiana, and about 1800, to recoup his fortunes, he opened a candy- and cake-shop on Chartres Street near Dumaine. His stock included a plantation delicacy called the praline, the first of that famous confection ever offered for sale in New Orleans.

the last book I ever read (Herbert Asbury's The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld, excerpt four)

from The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld by Herbert Asbury:

Every flatboat man possessed two major ambitions. One was to become the acknowledged champion of the river, the only bully who dared wear a red turkey-feather in his hat. The other was to visit New Orleans for a spree of whole0hearted wallowing in the fleshpots, for which exercise the town offered infinitely more facilities than any other city west of the Allegheny Mountains. Men frequently shipped aboard cargo boats for no other renumeration than a guarantee that eventually the craft would tie up along Tchoupitoulas Street. From the source of the Mississippi to its several mouths, New Orleans was lovingly known among the rank and file of the flatboat crews as the City of Sin. But the captains and the sober traders gave the town another nickname – they called it Dixie. Originally this word was applied only to New Orleans; not until the Civil War, when D. D. Emmett’s famous song, written in 1859, became the favorite battle-song of the Confederacy, was it in general use to designate the entire South. It came about in this fashion:

A few years after Louisiana became a part of the United States, at a time when the American monetary system was in a chaotic condition, one of the New Orleans banks began issuing ten-dollar notes, one side of which was printed in English and the other in French. On the latter, in large letters, was the French word for ten, dix. Since the proper pronunciation of French was not one of the accomplishments of the river men, one of these notes was known simply as a dix; collectively they were dixies, a name which was soon applied to the city of issue as well.

the last book I ever read (Herbert Asbury's The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld, excerpt three)

from The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld by Herbert Asbury:

The first article of the original Black Code ordered the expulsion of all Jews from the province; and the succeeding four articles prohibited any form of worship excepting the Roman Catholic, made it imperative upon masters to impart religious instructions to their slaves, and provided for the confiscation of blacks placed under the supervision of a person not a Catholic, or found at work on Sundays or holy days. The remaining forty-nine articles dealt entirely with the conduct and government of the Negroes. In particular, the Code prohibited any mingling of the races. Concubinage with slaves, and marriages of whites and blacks, whether free or slave, was forbidden under penalty of heavy fines and other punishments. Provision was made for the manumission of slaves, which could be granted by masters over twenty-five, either while living or by testamentary act, provided permission was first obtained from the Superior Council. The final article of the Code granted to manumitted slaves “the same rights, privileges, and immunities which are enjoyed by free-born persons. It is our pleasure that their merit in having acquired their freedom shall produce in their favor, not only with regard to their persons, but also to their property, the same effects which our other subjects derive from the happy circumstance of their having been born free.”

the last book I ever read (Herbert Asbury's The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld, excerpt two)

from The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld by Herbert Asbury:

Bienville sent to the directors of the Mississippi Company in Paris glowing descriptions of the salubrity of the climate at New Orleans, the fertility of the soil, and the many other advantages of the area which he had chosen for the new town. Other French officials, however, viewed the location with less optimistic eyes. The Commandant of the Nachitoches district wrote that the settlement was “situated in flat and swampy ground fit only for growing rice; river water filters through under the soil, and crayfish abound, so that tobacco and vegetables are hard to raise. There are frequent fogs, and, the land being thickly wooded and covered with cane-brakes, the air is fever-laden, and an infinity of mosquitoes cause further inconvenience in summer.” The climate, and the persistent infiltration of water from the Mississippi, have always been among New Orleans’ greatest drawbacks. All of the early visitors who recorded their impressions of the city complained of the penetrating cold and dampness of the winter months, and of the heat and mugginess of the summers. And neither time nor the installation of modern drainage systems have brough much relief; New Orleans is still perhaps the dampest spot on the North American continent, and certainly one of the hottest; shoes and other articles of clothing commonly mildew if left overnight on ground floors of buildings in the old quarter of the city; it is difficult to make plaster adhere to the walls, and cellars are almost unknown. In early days water was encountered from twelve to eighteen inches below the surface of the ground, and even today it is seldom necessary to dig more than three feet to find it, except in the comparatively high land of the newer parts of the city. As late as the 18040’s New Orleans was known throughout the United States as the “Wet Grave,” because of the difficulties encountered in burying corpses. “In digging ‘the narrow house’ water rises to within eighteen inches of the surface,’” wrote an English traveler who visited the city in 1832. “Coffins are therefore sunk three or four feet by having holes bored in them, and two black men stand on them till they fill with water, and reach the bottom of the moist tomb. Some people are particular and dislike this immersion after death; and, therefore, those who can afford it have a sort of brick oven built on the surface of the ground, at one end of which, the coffin is introduced, and the door hermetically closed, but the heat of the southern sun on this ‘whited sepulchre’ must bake the body inside, so that there is but a choice of disagreeables after all.” All burials in modern New Orleans, excepting those of Jews and the poorer classes of both whites and Negroes, are made above the ground in small ovens, or in tombs of varying degrees of beauty and elaborateness.

the last book I ever read (Herbert Asbury's The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld, excerpt one)

from The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld by Herbert Asbury:

In September 1717, John Law’s Company of the West, popularly known as the Mississippi Company, obtained, by royal grant, control of the French province of Louisiana, which comprised all the territory from the Illinois River to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the English settlements in the east to the dominions of Spain in the west. Into this vast area the French had penetrated only to the extent of a small settlement on the site of the present city of Mobile, another on the eastern shore of Biloxi Bay, and a third where Natchez now overlooks the Mississippi. All of these establishments had been planted between 1698 and 1716 by the Canadian explorers Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville, and his brother Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, the founder of New Orleans. Iberville also, in 1700, erected a blockhouse and a stockade on the Mississippi eighteen leagues from the sea, but this post was soon abandoned. As late as 1712, almost thirty-five years after La Salle had descended the river to the Gulf of Mexico and claimed Louisiana for France, there were in the entire province only eleven men not directly employed by the King. The total population was less than three hundred, including a garrison of a hundred and twenty-four soldiers and a few priests, twenty-eight women, and twenty-five children. There were also about fifty cows and a few pigs and chickens. Most of the men were adventurous voyageurs and coureurs de bois who had wandered into the province from Canada and Illinois, but the women, almost without exception, were deportees from the prisons and brothels of Paris, and the hardships of life in the wilderness had failed to work any changes in their manners and customs. When a worried priest suggested that sending away all immoral women would improve the general tone of the province, Lamothe Cadillac, who was Governor of Louisiana from 1713 to 1716, made this illuminating comment:

“If I send away all the loose females, there will be no women left here at all, and this would not suit the views of the King or the inclinations of the people.”

the last book I ever read (Amália Rodrigues’s Amália at the Olympia (33 1/3 Europe), excerpt ten)

from Amália Rodrigues’s Amália at the Olympia (33 1/3 Europe) by Lila Ellen Gray:

In relation to repertoire choice on the Olympia album, to some extent, Amália’s voice, as extracted from her live 1956 concerts, was made to sound more “Portuguese” than in the live performances (for example, not including a song she performed in Spanish). David Looseley, in his cultural history of Edith Piaf, notes something similar in relation to Piaf’s performances in New York, where she represents an essentialized American ideal of France. While Piag was becoming the sound of the French for New York audiences, Rodrigues was being shaped as the voice of Portugal. Looseley writes about how Piaf’s image postwar, as the “voice of France,” is an image “refracted through an American lens,” a representation that is then exported back to France. In making this argument he draws on the work of Richard Kuisel, who writes about the ways in which France, during the postwar period, is shaped from the perspective of the United States, as America’s “other.” Piaf’s representation as a French national icon is, to some extent them, “refracted” from the mirror that is the music and culture industry in the postwar U.S. For Amália Rodrigues, as the “voice of Portugal,” the most powerful refractions are cast from a three-way mirror, triangulated between Portugal, France, and the United States and the key cities of Lisbon, Paris, and New York (and Hollywood). At the same time, Amália’s Olympia album launched in a moment marked by “the fastest growth in popular music ever seen in France.” Portugal, in terms of geography, economic resources, and international visibility and power, was on the periphery, and the conduit of France helped to amplify Amália’s celebrity and voice for an international and European public.

the last book I ever read (Amália Rodrigues’s Amália at the Olympia (33 1/3 Europe), excerpt nine)

from Amália Rodrigues’s Amália at the Olympia (33 1/3 Europe) by Lila Ellen Gray:

“Barco Negro” became a mainstay of Amália’s repertoire, which she recorded throughout her career in highly varied performances and remains one of the songs for which she is most internationally known. In international markets, the song sometimes stands in as iconic for the genre fado itself. “Barco Negro” has been a key part of the repertoire for some of the most internationally successful contemporary professional fadistas and remains a favorite for amateur and professional fado singers in Lisbon. When the young fadista Mariza broke onto the world music scene in the early 2002s, she covered “Barco Negro” on her debut album. In 2021, she would include it on an Amália tribute album, and perform it in a concert “tour” for New York’s Town Hall, live streamed from a recording studio in Lisbon, during a pandemic lockdown, her instrumentalists in black masks. The fado singer Lina, one of the newest arrivals on fado’s international scene, also included it on her 2020 debut album (on both compact disc and vinyl), produced by Raül Refree, ion arrangement for voice, piano and vintage analog electronic sound effects. (Refree had previously collaborated with the Spanish superstar vocalist Rosalía in 2017, on the debut album that launched her celebrity.)

In multiple covers, retakes, and new lyric substitutions, some artists have turned the table, critically reflecting back on the occluded original lyrics of “Māe Preta (Barco Negro).” He does not only weep in stylized son as Amália does, but as Silva, who examines queer, indigenous and Afro-Brazilian intersections in Matogrosso’s performance, points out, at the end, he actually cries. In this inconsolable weeping, Silva hears Matogrosso as “[making a] space for the black woman of this violent [colonial] history, for the loss and mourning put upon māe preta to be heard.” Alternatively, Lopes and Nogueira hear in Matogrosso’s break into sobs, a protest of Brazil’s dictatorial regime.

the last book I ever read (Amália Rodrigues’s Amália at the Olympia (33 1/3 Europe), excerpt eight)

from Amália Rodrigues’s Amália at the Olympia (33 1/3 Europe) by Lila Ellen Gray:

The post-dictatorship reception of “Uma Casa Portuguesa,” both in Portugal and its diaspora, can be understood as one of both/and, not necessarily of either/or. Strong opinions continue to be voice on both sides: the song as regime propaganda versus the song as innocent. Vitor Pavāo dos Santos, in his book O Fado da Tua Voz: Amália e os Poetas (The fado of your voice: Amália and the poets), marks the song as one of the “greatest successes (perhaps the greatest?) in the history of Portuguese music” and writes, “It amazes me: ‘Uma Casa Portuguesa,’ a beautiful poem, so poorly judged by the simpleton intelligentsia reigning in Portugal, that took it for something salazarista (connected to the regime of the dictator Salazar).” He understands the lyrics as following in a poetic tradition of the pastoral or the bucolic and citing the ancient Roman poet Virgil, asks if it would be fair to say that Virgil was salazarista.