Bourbon Street: The Dreams of Aeneas in Dixie
Subtitle: A Novel
Publisher: WordsworthGreenwich Press
Published: July 2010
Place of publication: Greenwich, CT, USA
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 276
Description: Editorial Reviews

Review
"A compelling story line with pathos and humor, a measure of literary and historical allusion, and vivid imagery... The literary equivalent of high definition... with rich text that infuses the senses."
--Greenwich Post

"His pixilism is a sort of 21st century, digital metaphor that has similarities to French Impressionist paintings. Each sentence represents an idea, image or treatment of the big picture." 
--Redding Pilot

"Explores how creative people survive and contribute in a large and often impersonal environment. What is the role of a talented individual, an artist for example, in a complex, vast society?"
--New Canaan Advertiser

"His writing is different because he does not manufacture cookie-cutter best-sellers."
--The Wilton Bulletin

"Lentz's approach to writing is soul driven."
--The Weston Forum

"A journey: if you know what it means to miss New Orleans, then you really should read this book." -- Yvonne LaFleur, New Orleans, LA

"Hot as a New Orleans' summer. The pace is fast, the results are entertaining, and the characters are quirky." -- John A. Taylor, Jr., CLU, Mandeville, LA 

Product Description
Epic "Bourbon Street" portrays the rise of a gifted, young and penniless photographer -- Aeneas Jam -- who wanders Bourbon Street to photograph in black-and-white the images of legendary jazz players. Discovered by an Uptown debutante, Aeneas transforms into a portrait photographer of New Orleans' aristocracy. "Bourbon Street" is a gallery of vivid portraits of the chimeras of Aeneas. Illuminating, white hot comedy and dark, existential contrasts blend pixels into fine prose about the quest for a better life based upon one's dreams. Aeneas Jam's wanderings in New Orleans are an American jazz improvisation upon Virgil's timeless "Aeneid." This pre-Hurricane Katrina perspective of "Bourbon Street" beckons you to the gallery of the dreams of Aeneas in the French Quarter of New Orleans. 

From the Publisher
Bourbon Street deals with the dreams, chimeras, phantasms, and masks that drive one to seek a better life. Aeneas John Jam is a poor exile from Boston in the late 20th century just trying to build a life and make a living as a photographer way down deep in Dixie in New Orleans -- a maze of infinite masks and illusions. He considers himself an "aesthete" and strives to survive by shooting photos of the denizens of Bourbon Street for his gallery in the French Quarter. However, his quest for accomplishment in his art brings him only utter destitution. Until he meets his soul's mate, a debutante of nearly tragic beauty, who agrees to become his model. His Fortune turns as he pursues this love of his life and seeks to know if her love is real or only a chimera. Like the classical exile of Virgil's epic poem, "The Aeneid," Aeneas wanders through the streets of New Orleans in a comic quest to rise into high society and to do battle with every god, demi-god, monster and demon that he encounters. You need not know "The Aeneid" in order to enjoy this novel. But if you have read the enduring poem of Virgil, it will enrich your enjoyment of the novel's jazz improvisation on the epic poem. 

From the Author
"Bourbon Street" employs an accessible pixilistic writing style in which the syntax is built by using sentences as pixels. The challenge for every writer since Virgil's time has been to energize the words to leap three-dimensionally off the page to shape intensely real imagery, action, character and plot. Life does not confront the writer in neat, little, easily discernible patterns, after all. But rather life dazzles with its gloriously chaotic fragments that form the pixels from which we derive the meaning we forge in the smithies of our souls. So why should the writer be compelled to impose such artifice in the structure of the art that his individual talent creates? Wouldn't a work of literature be more true to life if it were built in the same fashion as one stacks up the pixels that slam into our imaginations every day of our lives? It's possible, I've learned, to write accessibly using a pixilistic writing style, which is better at capturing the art shaped from the chaos of existence. The mission of the writer is to help make sense of life. I hope that in the dreams and chimeras of the gallery of Aeneas on Bourbon Street you find plenty of meaning and beauty and comedy in the pixels. 

About the Author
Born in Woburn, Massachusetts, David B. Lentz graduated from Bates College and has written professionally for more than 35 years as an executive for global, financial corporations. He has lived in Boston's Back Bay, the Garden District of New Orleans, Houston and Philadelphia's Main Line. Currently, he resides with his family in Greenwich, CT. In addition to "Bourbon Street," Lentz has published five other literary novels -- "For the Beauty of the Earth", "AmericA, Inc.", "Bloomsday", "The Day Trader" and "The Silver King." He wrote a tragicomic stage play, as an American sequel to James Joyce's "Ulysses", entitled "Bloomsday", and a dark comedy, "AmericA, Inc.", as a satire on the intrusion of big business into everyday life. Lentz has published a volume of poetry, "Old Greenwich Odes", and is a member of the Academy of American Poets. His collected literary works published as "Essential Lentz" with generous excerpts from his novels, stage plays and poetry. He has served Bates College as an Alumnus-in-Admissions, the Board of Directors of the New Orleans Ad Club, the Philadelphia Mayor's Council for Literacy, Stamford-Greenwich Literacy Volunteers of America, Healing the Children Northeast (Board), Midnight Run for New York City Homeless, Hurricane Katrina JazzAid: New Orleans (Founder), Hope + Heroes Children's Cancer Foundation, St. Baldrick's Foundation for Children's Cancer Research, the Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association and as a Volunteer in St. Paul's Chapel at Ground Zero.