Reviewed by: Audubon on Louisiana: Selected Writings of John James Audubon ed. by Ben Forkner Christoph Irmscher Audubon on Louisiana: Selected Writings of John James Audubon. Edited by Ben Forkner. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2018. Pp. xliv, 388. $65.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-6958-2.) Ben Forkner’s volume, a tribute to the role of Louisiana in the writings of birdman extraordinaire John James Audubon, has its roots in a forgery and a creative lie or, rather, a set of such lies. In 1803, when Audubon fled Napoleon’s France to the United States, his forged passport stated that he was born in Louisiana. That was justification enough for Audubon to claim, on multiple occasions, that he was indeed from there and not from Saint-Domingue. But according to Forkner, if Louisiana was not Audubon’s real home, it “should have been”: ecstatic impressions of the lavish landscape and bird life of this region are woven throughout Audubon’s work (p. xviii). [End Page 898] It is difficult to determine what audience Forkner had in mind with this expensive collection. Audubon on Louisiana: Selected Writings of John James Audubon contains no reproductions of Audubon’s artwork, and the texts the editor has selected are, for the most part, accessible elsewhere. Forkner’s fluently written introductions liberally draw on the efforts of previous biographers and present no new insights. And while he effusively conjures reactions that the Louisiana landscape elicited from Audubon, Forkner seems satisfied with letting undocumented generalizations (for example: “Audubon’s eye was always alert” [p. 33]) take the place of analysis. Surely there is more to be said about the fact that Audubon himself once owned slaves than “Slavery was the way of the world” (p. 39). In recent scholarship, a nuanced portrait of Audubon has emerged as a polyglot and multicultural figure, a citizen of the world rather than of any specific region. Forkner’s volume is a step backward, an awkward return to earlier heroic readings of Audubon that praise his genius rather than try to understand him as a cultural figure. Although Forkner does not mince words about the perceived failings of other scholars, his own grasp of the material is not impeccable. Errors range from garbled names (“Johann Jasper Lavater” instead of “Johann Kaspar Lavater” [p. 44]) to more egregious missteps, such as the passage chosen to demonstrate Audubon’s feelings upon his return to Louisiana in 1829, which was fabricated by Audubon’s bowdlerizing granddaughter (the original passage appears in Stanley Clisby Arthur’s 1937 biography, Audubon: An Intimate Life of the American Woodsman [New Orleans, 1937], p. 289). Even more troubling, ornithological identifications are not reliable. Recycling Audubon’s often obsolete designations, Forkner, for example, writes about the wood ibis (now the wood stork) as if this were still a viable species name. In accumulation, such oversights make this edition virtually unusable for bird lovers and Audubon enthusiasts alike. It could be argued that Audubon on Louisiana was intended for a much wider readership. But what is a general reader to do with a version of Audubon’s Louisiana journal that offers no helpful notes whatsoever? Take the cryptic entry for November 2, 1821, written when Audubon was desperately trying to establish himself as a professional painter in New Orleans: “Recd the Visit of Brutter the Painter, the good Man Very sorry to see My Father Antonio” (p. 170). No clues are given, not even in Forkner’s index, which simply replicates the names the way they appear in Audubon’s text. Some quick research reveals that Audubon was then in the middle of painting a portrait (now lost) of a legendary New Orleans priest named Antonio de Sedella, but known as Père Antoine (Audubon’s journal for this period is archived at the Ernst Mayr Library, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University). And another look at the manuscript confirms that the name of Audubon’s skeptical visitor that day was not “Brutter” but “Bruster” (Audubon was using his characteristic st-ligature). Mystery solved: Audubon’s rival was Edmund Brewster, who was—lo and behold!—preoccupied with his own rendition of Père Antoine, now housed in...