I'm not familiar with Peter Wolf's work, most of it appears to be non-fiction regarding land abuse and use in America, but was interested in reading about a childhood in the New Orleans of days gone by. There is a nice essence in this memoir of the time period and how lives were lived from the 1940s to now. This book is a fine peek into time, place and not being a Baptist in the New Orleans.
Additionally, Peter does not live in New Orleans his entire life and you not only hear his story, but the novel also contains some nice descriptive passages regarding other parts of the world.
A fine book if you have an interest in New Orleans of times past.
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My New Orleans, Gone Away
Author: Peter M. Wolf
Publisher: Delphinium Books
Distributed by: HarperCollins
Publication Date: July 2013
Language: English
Hardcover
Memoir
ISBN-13: 9781883285562
Book Description:
From a Jewish boyhood in pre-Civil Rights New Orleans,
to his Yale friendship with Calvin Trillin, to his calling as an
architectural historian, Peter M. Wolf presents an intimate and
nostalgic life story in
MY NEW ORLEANS, GONE AWAY: A Memoir of Loss and Renewal
(Delphinium Books; July 2013; $24.95). Wolf’s memoir, with a foreword
by Trillin, casts a seductive spell of Southern charm as he travels back
to the NOLA he knew before Hurricane Katrina washed
it all away.
Growing up in a sixth-generation Jewish family in New Orleans
was unlike growing up Jewish anywhere else. A bucolic childhood playing
beneath the hanging moss and fishing “across the lake” with his
grandfather at Pass Christian, Mississippi obscured the contradictions
of Wolf’s life. His family celebrated Christmas, but also founded the
city’s leading Reform temple; his parents wanted to ensure propriety,
but spent their evenings drinking and gambling; his relatives never
spoke of money, but were founders of the leading
department store and largest sugar plantation; and he was closer to his
housekeeper than his parents.
Blissfully unaware, Peter was reveling in his sultry days at the local
day school as class president and tennis champion when his father
shipped him deep into chilly Yankee territory to attend Exeter and
prepare him for Yale. There, among the well-bred sons
of the elite he learned what he needed to know to survive in the Ivy
League. As his father predicted, Yale was easy after Exeter and he
quickly made three particularly close friends—Henry Geldzahler, Gerald
Jonas, and a kid from Kansas City full of snappy
patter named Bud, or as he came to be known professionally, Calvin
Trillin.
Wolf’s evocative journey through the formative years of the 20th century are vividly captured in
MY NEW ORLEANS as
he recalls his transition from a singular Southern boyhood in the
Crescent City to a young man striving for professional independence and
self-knowledge. It is an elegy to decades and generations of family
turmoil and social change,
loss and personal rediscovery.
--------------------------------------
Peter M. Wolf is a sixth-generation member of a New Orleans
family that has been long integral to that city’s culture and commerce.
After Yale, Wolf earned a Ph.D. in the history of art and architecture
from New York University. Dr. Wolf is a
nationally
recognized land planning, urban policy and asset management authority.
He is the founder of the Thomas Moran Trust; Chairman of the
Godchaux-Reserve Plantation Fund; and a trustee in East Hampton of Guild
Hall and The Village Preservation Society. His research
and writing have been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts;
the Ford Foundation; the American Federation of Arts: and a Fulbright
Fellowship.