The lower Mississippi River winds past the city of New Orleans
between enormous levees and a rim of sand, mud, and trees called
"the batture." On this remote and ignored piece of land thrives a
humanity unique to the region-ramblers, artists, drinkers, fishers,
rabbit hunters, dog walkers, sunset watchers, and refugees from
immigration, alimony, and other aspects of modern life. Author
Oliver A. Houck has frequented this place for the past twenty-five
years. Down on the Batture describes a life, pastoral, at times
marginal, but remarkably fecund and surprising. From this place he
meditates on Louisiana, the state of the waterway, and its larger
environs. He describes all the actors who have played lead roles on
the edge of the mightiest river of the continent, and includes in
his narrative plantations, pollution, murder, land grabs, keelboat
brawlers, slave rebellions, the Corps of Engineers, and the oil
industry. Houck draws from his experience in New Orleans since the
early 1970s in the practice and teaching of law. He has been a
player in many of the issues he describes, although he does not
undertake to argue them here. Instead, story by story, he uses the
batture to explore the forces that have shaped and spell out the
future of the region. The picture emerges of a place that-for all
its tangle of undergrowth, drifting humanity, shifting dimensions
in the rise and fall of floodwater-provides respite and sanctuary
for values that are original to America and ever at risk from the
homogenizing forces of civilization.
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