Feet on the Street, Roy Blount, Jr.
Feet on the Street, Roy Blount, Jr.
List: $9.98 | Sale: $6.99
Club: $4.99

Feet on the Street:
Rambles Around New Orleans

Author: Roy Blount, Jr.

Narrator: Roy Blount, Jr.

Abridged: 1 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/01/2005


Synopsis

“Betcha I can tell ya / Where ya / Got them shoooes. / Betchadollar, / Betchadollar, / Where ya / Got them shoooes. / Got your shoes on your feet, / Got your feet on the street, / And the street’s in Noo / Awlins, Loo- / Eez-ee-anna. Where I, for my part, first ate a live oyster and first saw a naked woman with the lights on. . . . Every time I go to New Orleans I am startled by something.”

So writes Roy Blount Jr. in this exuberant, character-filled saunter through a place he has loved almost his entire life—a city “like no other place in America, and yet (or therefore) the cradle of American culture.” Here we experience it all through his eyes, ears, and taste buds: the architecture, music, romance (yes, sex too), historical characters, and all that glorious food.

The book is divided into eight Rambles through different parts of the city. Each closes with lagniappe—a little bit extra, a special treat for the reader: here a brief riff on Gennifer Flowers, there a meditation on naked dancing. Roy Blount knows New Orleans like the inside of an oyster shell and is only too glad to take us to both the famous and the infamous sights. He captures all the wonderful and rich history—culinary, literary, and political—of a city that figured prominently in the lives of Jefferson Davis (who died there), Truman Capote (who was conceived there), Zora Neale Hurston (who studied voodoo there), and countless others, including Andrew Jackson, Lee Harvey Oswald, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Jelly Roll Morton, Napoléon, Walt Whitman, O. Henry, Thomas Wolfe, Earl Long, Randy Newman, Edgar Degas, Lillian Hellman, the Boswell Sisters, and the Dixie Cups.

Above all, though, Feet on the Street is a celebration of friendship and joie de vivre in one of America’s greatest and most colorful cities, written by one of America’s most beloved humorists.

About The Author

Roy Blount, Jr. has written many books, including the memoir Be Sweet and the novel First Hubby. He appears regularly on NPR’s Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me and is a contributor to many national publications. He lives in Manhattan and western Massachusetts.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Faith

Well, let's start with the good stuff. As a lover of New Orleans, and literature about New Orleans, I appreciate the little nuggets, historical tidbits, and anecdotes that Roy Blount, Jr. shares in this book. And I especially love the title, a nod to a favorite in the NOLA musical canon, "Didn't He......more

Goodreads review by Phil

Beginning and ending, of course, with The River ("ending" being an operative word in this mid-2005 copyright, in that Roy muses about the imminent destruction of the city by Her Man), with everything from sweat to oysters (and more oyster) to strippers to jazz to characters in between, Roy Blount, J......more

Goodreads review by Todd

“One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere, like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. No......more

Goodreads review by Jeff

I've been on Roy Blount kick lately, rereading several of his books. I read this one when it came out in 2005, and I enjoyed it even more this time around. When it comes to New Orleans, I put myself in the same category as Blount - a frequent visitor over many years who loves the city and knows it p......more