Pointless, sporadic, and free ... and essential.The Letter From New Orleans — “pointless, sporadic, and free”— began as a bunch of emails to interested parties, from New Orleans. The book Letters From New Orleans, includes all the Letters, as well as additional material. Subjects covered in Letters From New Orleans include: Celebratory gunfire, rich people, religion, the riddle of race relations in our time, robots, fine dining, drunkenness, urban decay, debutantes, the nature of identity, Gennifer Flowers, the song “St. James Infirmary,” and mortality.