The Ritz of the Bayou: The New Orleans Adventures of a Young Novelist Covering the Trials of the Governor of Louisiana, with digressions on smoldering ... and other aspects of life in the tropic zone

In this “unjustly neglected” masterpiece, Nancy Lemann gives an atmospheric account of the New Orleans trial of the Governor of Louisiana for racketeering, fraud, and bribery.This 40th anniversary edition features a new introduction by critic James Wolcott and an afterword by the author. New Orleans-born novelist Nancy Lemann returned to her hometown from Manhattan in 1985, tasked by renowned editor Tina Brown to cover Governor Edwin Edwards's two corruption trials for Vanity Fair.The work that emerged from this trip was less a straightforward account of the court proceedings and instead a masterful portrait of the politicians, their families, the lawyers, and the other reporters covering the trials, rendered in sparse, wry vignettes.Championed and edited by Gordon Lish, The Ritz of the Bayou is Lemann’s sole book of nonfiction and has attained lost classic status in the decades it has languished out of print.In hazy, atmospheric scenes of cigar smoke-laden bars, heaping plates of oyst