Louisiana visions, through wrought-iron scrollwork

I have never been to New Orleans, and I am afraid of ever going. Too strong an affinity for haunts of dissipation; too great a tendency in general to linger; too powerful a fascination with shellfish of all kinds: I am afraid the first oyster bar I walked into would finish me entirely. Old friends would stumble across me, 20 years later, still slurping the same bivalves. Nancy Lemann’s Lives of the Saints, first published in 1985 and recently reissued by NYRB Classics, does nothing to allay this fear.

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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Washington Examiner.