Author

Publication

1999 - W.W. Norton, New York, New York (State)

Language

English

Word Count

62,500 words, Guess

Page Count

250 pages

Identifiers

and 2 more
  • Goodreads1241404
  • LibraryThing148294

Classifications

  • DDC813/.54
  • LCCPS3568.U76677 Y4 1999

Description

"Yellow Jack is a ribald, picaresque trip through an 1840s New Orleans saturated with sex, drugs, death, and corruption. It is the story of Claude Marchand, an apprentice to Louis Daguerre, who discovers the magic art of photography when he hides a broken thermometer in a cabinet and finds that the mercury fumes bring out images etched by the sun in metal plates. After a falling-out with Daguerre, Marchand flees from Paris to New Orleans where he becomes the first daguerreotypist in America and he gets hopelessly entangled with both a voodoo-adept octoroon mistress and the erotically precocious daughter of a prominent New Orleans family. As the city is ravaged each summer by yellow fever (yellow jack), Marchand's miraculous art is tested by death, politics, and jealousy. Mercury drives him mad, but his work will nevertheless make him immortal, after a fashion."--BOOK JACKET.

First Sentence

IT IS A MYSTERY why those chronicling the history of photography have chosen to ignore Claude Marchand.

Subjects

Other Editions

  • Yellow jackW.W. Norton1999-01-01

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