Sustaining New Orleans : literature, local memory, and the fate of a city / Barbara Eckstein.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [261]-274) and index.

The claims for New Orleans exceptionalism -- "Indiscourageable progress": the decline of the New Orleans streetcar and the rise of a streetcar named Desire -- Sex and the historic city: a walking tour on the wild side -- Malaise and miasms: Dr. Percy and the public health of New Orleans Environs -- The spectacle between piety and desire: New Orleans Black Panther Party and Ishamel Reed's neo-hoodooism -- The vampires' middle passage: the world of Anne Rice and the promise of New Orleans's coast -- Mapping the spirit region: Sister Helen, the Dead Men, and the folk of New Orleans environs.

This book pursues two meanings of the phrase, "sustaining New Orleans." One is the perpetuation of the images and ideas and tales of New Orleans sustained in public memory--local and not--through a range of activities and media, widely read literature notable among them. The other references the concept sustainability understood here to mean the struggle to balance the competing demands of social justice, environmental health, and economic growth. This book argues that these two definitions of sustaining New Orleans are mutually constitutive. It further argues that widely read literature set in the city, through its engagement with urban folkways that shape and reshape public memory, has participated, for good and ill, in the framing of the city's problems, the proposed solutions to those problems, and the perceived effectiveness of those solutions.