Yellow Jack: A Novel - Hardcover

Russell, Josh

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393047687 ISBN 13: 9780393047684

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1999

Synopsis

Set in New Orleans during the 1840s, a novel of erotic adventure and human corruption follows an apprentice of Louis Daguerre from the studio of his mentor, where he has just participated in inventing photography, to America, where he uses the new art to photograph the victims of Yellow Fever.

About this title

Review:

When Claude Marchand first arrives in New Orleans in 1838, carrying the photographic equipment he's stolen from his mentor, Louis Daguerre, there is fever in the city:

I read in the French editions of the papers that the epidemic was in full fury, all that could save the city was October's cold. Almost half-a-thousand were dead. The papers claimed only the foolish or the mad would be out-of-doors at night, the time, it was agreed, during which the Fever was most likely to be acquired. The English editions, as I understood them, claimed news of an epidemic was a hoax, a lie, an attempt to slander the mayor.

Slander or no, yellow fever--called Yellow Jack by the local populace--provides young Marchand a good living; when he sets up shop as a portraitist, he finds much of his business deriving from memorial daguerreotypes of the dead. Soon Claude is living with Millicent, a mixed-race prostitute, but in love with 11-year-old Vivian, the daughter of a local businessman. Yellow Jack follows this rake's progress as he wins and loses each woman in turn yet is never quite free of either.

From the plays of Tennessee Williams to the novels of Anne Rice, there's something about New Orleans that encourages a writer's inner gothic; and Yellow Jack fairly drips with sex, corruption, death, and perversions of every persuasion. A trip to the opera results in a bloody deflowering behind heavy velvet curtains; the guests at a house party all wear blackface; a bereaved widower kills his dead wife's parrot when it can no longer mimic her voice. Yet, for the most part, Josh Russell doesn't let his story get away from him; his characters are so sharply drawn, especially Millicent, and the city so authentically reconstructed, that even the most melodramatic events seem weirdly appropriate. The result is a novel that entertains and disturbs in equal measure. --Alix Wilber

From the Author:

A Note on Nineteenth-Century New Orleans, Yellow Fever, and Daguerreotypes by Josh Russell

In New Orleans, the worst days of yellow fever and the heyday of the daguerreotype were contemporaneous. Between 1839, when the first daguerreotypes arrived in the city, and 1860, when other photographic processes made the technology all but obsolete, more than 26,000 New Orleanians fell victim to "Yellow Jack." The annual epidemics became so notorious that northern newspapers often referred to New Orleans as "The Necropolis of the South." The city, meanwhile, was thriving. Its population grew from just over 70,000 in 1839 to almost 170,000 in 1860, at which time New Orleans's volume of trade equaled that of New York City. New Orleans's residents proudly recorded their prosperity in daguerreotype after daguerreotype.

They also memorialized "Mister Jack's" victims in daguerreotypes. These days, viewers often find pictures of dead people ghoulish, but during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries memorial photographs were an accepted way of remembering the dead all over the world, not just in New Orleans, a city with a unique relationship with death. Even the very poor could afford to have a memorial portrait made of a loved one; the advent of photography made portraits, once available only to the rich, available to almost everyone. By the end of the nineteenth century, both yellow fever and the daguerreotype had all but disappeared from New Orleans. Mosquitoes were finally recognized as the disease's carrier, and successful steps were taken to cut their numbers. Except for 1897's mini-epidemic, which claimed 298 victims, several dozen summers passed with only one or two recorded fever deaths. The last half of the 1800s witnessed rapid progress in photographic technology. In the 1850s and 1860s the daguerreotype was gradually made outmoded by the less expensive ambrotype, which was later made obsolete by the even cheaper tintype. Daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes are a one-of-a-kind objects, like paintings or drawings. All but abandoned by 1900, these technologies were replaced by the now ubiquitous print photographic process, in which a negative is used to make unlimited reproductions of a single photograph.

About this edition

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0393047687
• ISBN 13: 9780393047684
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 250