Field Notes from the French Quarter

A brief, unscientific dispatch from New Orleans

The Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA) opened it’s spring virtual book fair this morning. Visit my booth if you have a chance. Or stop by my website, where I have an extended list of items that I prepared for the event.

I just came back from Louisiana, where my wife was doing book research. I like to tag along whenever she has something particularly interesting lined up. On this trip, a biologist from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries took us out to an island jammed with thousands of nesting brown pelicans. Three humans among ten thousand birds was a pretty amazing experience, even if the biologist kept referring to the colony as “the resource.”

Nesting adult brown pelicans and juveniles with white plumage on Queen Bess Island.

After I dropped Amy off at the airport for the next leg of her trip, I had a few spare hours before my flight to Portland, so I visited another great American resource, the French Quarter of New Orleans. Of course, when I say I visited the French Quarter, I mean I did the only sensible thing. I went to the bookstores.

The French Quarter—despite its to-go bars dispensing Hurricanes and Hand Grenades and the proliferation of stores selling t-shirts with slogans that are only funny after a few Day-Glow cocktails—still hosts more eccentric, individual bookstores than any neighborhood in America.

This is a quick, incomplete report on the state of bookselling in the Big Easy.¹

Arcadian Books & Prints (714 Orleans Ave., behind St. Louis Cathedral)
Across the street from the chic Bourbon Orleans Hotel, Arcadian looks like a bookstore, but functions more like an anti-capitalist art installation, proof that you can, in fact, have too many books. Browsing here is more reminiscent of coal mining, where a collapse is always imminent, than any kind of regular shopping.

A friend named this the Fan of Damocles aisle at Arcadian Books

Don’t take your spouse here. You might think you can use Arcadian as evidence of how controlled and organized your collection is, but don’t fall for that trap. Your spouse will instead see it as a prediction of what’s ahead, like a visit from the ghost of Bibliomania Yet to Come.

Dauphine Street Books (818 Chartres Street, near Jackson Square)
From the name, you might reasonably expect Dauphine Street Books to be on Dauphine Street, and it used to be—in a cramped, windowless space with janky electricity. Twice, on previous visits when the lights weren’t working, the owner, Steve Lacy, handed me a flashlight before setting me loose in the pitch-dark stacks. The new location has windows on two sides and a much nicer atmosphere. The stock right now is a bit thin, although I found a signed R. K. Narayan first edition I didn’t have for my personal collection. Steve has been in the used book trade for nearly 40 years, going back to Logos Books, in Santa Cruz, California. Steve knows what he’s doing and the place will only get better.

He named his NOLA shop after its location, which seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, he owned the building so no one could make him move. But after Katrina hit New Orleans, he decided to move and sold the building. And then he changed his mind and stayed. He rented his shop space back from the new owners for several more years, but with rising rents and declining foot traffic in the upper French Quarter, he took a chance and moved. He told me that the new space gets a lot more customers, even if he has to explain a dozen times a day that Dauphine Street Books is actually at the corner of Chartres and Madison.

Beckham’s Bookshop (228 Decatur)
Beckham’s, the oldest bookstore in the Quarter, opened in 1967 and has been at its current location since 1979. The store founders, Carey Beckham (89) and Alton Cook (91), partners in business and in life for seven decades years, finally retired last year.² They sold the business and the magnificent, if dilapidated, building to Steve Lacy, who fortunately had both the means and the ambition to take it on. Beckham’s historically had interesting books. Age took a toll on the owners and the store, and the stock here is also a bit thin while Steve settles into finding inventory for two shops.

Steve Lacy, far left, the new owner of the venerable Beckham’s Bookshop, a New Orleans institution since 1967.

A Gallery for Fine Photography (241 Chartres Street, until June 2025)
My friend Joshua Mann Pailet’s establishment, one of the first galleries devoted to fine art photography, has been around for, in his words, “fifty-one fucking years.” What you could easily miss is that this is a secret bookstore. The interior walls, hung with photographs, are actually cabinets that open to reveal thousands of photobooks. However, you will need to go soon, as A Gallery will be leaving the French Quarter in June. It will reopen on St. Charles Street, a few miles away. Whether Joshua will keep the books in the new gallery or not is still a matter of debate.

Look carefully and you’ll see hinges on the left. There are thousands of books behind these and other doors at A Gallery.

Crescent City Books (240 Chartres Street)
Across the street from A Gallery, this is one of the dwindling number of ABAA-member open shops. Crescent City Books occupies a bright, single-room with a wall of collectible first editions, a nice selection of used titles, new books of local interest, and vintage New Orleans maps and prints.

The Analog Quarter
Remarkably, none of these bookstores sells online. It’s almost like the internet never quite reached the French Quarter. The internet supposedly connects us, but mostly we all seem connected to our screens. It was nice to visit a place where the connections are still off-line. Shopping on the web is more convenient, but I don’t think it makes me happier. I know that finding a signed R. K. Narayan book in the French Quarter delivered a thrill and a memory that no online purchase can match.

1. If you are familiar with bookstores in the French Quarter, you’ll notice that I left out the most well-known shop, Faulkner House, a charming jewelbox of a store. The truth is, I forgot about it until it was too late.

2. This website has a couple of great portraits of Beckham and Cook.