curiosity piece to be kindly tolerated or actively despised by its new host. In actuality New Orleans’ general resistance to prevailing trends and tones places the city in a unique position. Few have any confidence in New Orleans, neither in its geographical form nor people (we take exasperating comfort in those of blank charm that pensively resent or boldly condemn us), but it’s an oracular city, so far behind the present day that everyone else keeps sailing along, catching, and sizing us up from time to time. Jelly Roll’s defiant eye is always there, looking for a wandering fortune, faithful to the descent like the rest of us, singular in his accomplishments, though dual in his follies, typifying our scarred principles and alluring cures. Despite being well-defined, for better or worse, New Orleans seems to exist as a blank slate for outsiders to grasp and cast their own aspirations, pretences, and prejudices upon, a few of the outsiders always end up lingering, holding fast, and adding to the city’s layers, despite the fact that New Orleans changes them more than otherwise, ingrains itself in them if for no more than confounding sustenance.
Though not every sentence needs to contain the ocean, we’re going to continue to float along, since clarifying the mention of a certain reptile is overdue. Cuba, crocodile, constellations, confidence man. Crocodile tears, crocodile lies, crocodile smiles. Also, crocodile mystique. Our latitude might be directly in line with Cairo, Egypt, but alligators are the usual animals found in this region rather than crocodiles, and there’s no record of Southerners ever deifying this particular lizard. If one interchanged croc for gator, as in, They caught another croc in Audubon Park, sunning itself by the fountain, it’d be incorrect and like expressing that New Orleans barbecue shrimp should taste like it was prepared with a tomato or vinegar-based sauce, or saying trolley instead of streetcar . It’s pariah talk. The usual misparlance from drink sloshing stumblers, but a terrible faux pas if spoken by a new local.
At the same time, use of the crocodile as a symbol is far more prevalent and expected, whether metaphorically straightforward as in Felisberto Hernandez’s short story about a pianist whose crying jags spawn a nickname, or more mysteriously so in the works of De Quincey and Bruno Schulz. The crocodile is also employed as a metaphor of deception, indicating seeming trustworthiness, yet actually containing ulterior motives, cloaked as a man of the people until the opportune moment arrives and the liberator is revealed as false. This is the case in the 18th century apocalyptic allegory Le Crocodile , depicting The Crocodile as representing the low material world vanquished by upright mystics. Before The Crocodile is finally defeated by the adepts, author Louis Claude de Saint-Martin introduces fantastical elements like a plague of books which turns all the tomes of Paris into paste that is eaten by the city’s residents, bringing about mass Babelspeak. Also, a number of the virtuous are swallowed by The Crocodile, and they travel through the limitless creature as if through purgatory.
The crocodile is likewise portrayed, though less fantastically, with expatriate Cabrera Infante’s essay Bites from a Bearded Crocodile referenced in The Interview, in which the author, a former adherent of the Revolution, scathingly takes Castro to task for bringing about the decline of a literary renaissance as part of turning into an authoritarian regime, with the typical accoutrements like show trials and censorship boards. The Castro government held particular animus for homosexuals, especially artists. A police unit under the name Social Scum Squad unleashed the Night of the Three P’s, a round-up of arresting all those considered pimp, prostitute, or pederast, many of whom ended up in concentration camps and worked sugarcane plantations. Anyone
Though not every sentence needs to contain the ocean, we’re going to continue to float along, since clarifying the mention of a certain reptile is overdue. Cuba, crocodile, constellations, confidence man. Crocodile tears, crocodile lies, crocodile smiles. Also, crocodile mystique. Our latitude might be directly in line with Cairo, Egypt, but alligators are the usual animals found in this region rather than crocodiles, and there’s no record of Southerners ever deifying this particular lizard. If one interchanged croc for gator, as in, They caught another croc in Audubon Park, sunning itself by the fountain, it’d be incorrect and like expressing that New Orleans barbecue shrimp should taste like it was prepared with a tomato or vinegar-based sauce, or saying trolley instead of streetcar . It’s pariah talk. The usual misparlance from drink sloshing stumblers, but a terrible faux pas if spoken by a new local.
At the same time, use of the crocodile as a symbol is far more prevalent and expected, whether metaphorically straightforward as in Felisberto Hernandez’s short story about a pianist whose crying jags spawn a nickname, or more mysteriously so in the works of De Quincey and Bruno Schulz. The crocodile is also employed as a metaphor of deception, indicating seeming trustworthiness, yet actually containing ulterior motives, cloaked as a man of the people until the opportune moment arrives and the liberator is revealed as false. This is the case in the 18th century apocalyptic allegory Le Crocodile , depicting The Crocodile as representing the low material world vanquished by upright mystics. Before The Crocodile is finally defeated by the adepts, author Louis Claude de Saint-Martin introduces fantastical elements like a plague of books which turns all the tomes of Paris into paste that is eaten by the city’s residents, bringing about mass Babelspeak. Also, a number of the virtuous are swallowed by The Crocodile, and they travel through the limitless creature as if through purgatory.
The crocodile is likewise portrayed, though less fantastically, with expatriate Cabrera Infante’s essay Bites from a Bearded Crocodile referenced in The Interview, in which the author, a former adherent of the Revolution, scathingly takes Castro to task for bringing about the decline of a literary renaissance as part of turning into an authoritarian regime, with the typical accoutrements like show trials and censorship boards. The Castro government held particular animus for homosexuals, especially artists. A police unit under the name Social Scum Squad unleashed the Night of the Three P’s, a round-up of arresting all those considered pimp, prostitute, or pederast, many of whom ended up in concentration camps and worked sugarcane plantations. Anyone
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