MASH Goes to New Orleans

M*A*S*H #3

by Richard Hooker, William E. Butterworth III

The Battle of New Orleans Revisited

The whole MASH gang--Hawkeye, Trapper, Hot Lips and the rest--hit New Orleans to attend the American Tonsil, Adenoid and Vas Deferens Society convention.

But that's just the beginning.

It may take years for the Crescent City to recover from the gang's outrageous brand of medical madness--and their boozing, cruising and cutting up all the way from Basin Street to the Louisiana bayous.

Genres: Fiction, Humor

189 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Richard Hooker is the pseudonym of Hiester Richard Hornberger Jr. who was born February 1, 1924 and died November 4, 1997. He was an American writer and surgeon. His most famous work was his novel MASH (1968). The novel was based on his own personal experiences during the Korean War at the 8055th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. It was written in collaboration with W. C. Heinz. The novel took 11 years to write. In 1970, and then again from 1972-1983 it was used as the basis for a critically and commercially successful movie and television series of the same name.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.
Richard^Hooker

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Forget the movie and show - and if you haven't read the three books by Hooker read those first - but this book, of which I was a bit trepidatious because of the quicky-published and exploitative nature of so many volumes in the series pushed out atop each other - shows promise and hope. The MASH crew is present, and hi-jinks ensue, but they are almost used as a framing device on which to hang stories of the Big Easy rather than an end in themselves. The ghostwriter who took the reigns has a solid handle on the leads so far (in that their tone hasn't hanged from the originals) and the story as a whole has a Donald Westlake quality in terms of dry humor.
Here's hoping the other dozen measure up to the first.

[Meaghan Buchanan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is probably my least favourite of all of Hooker's M*A*S*H books. Everything was still funny, but there were too many new characters and a few too many "coincidences".

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

It begins with a kidnapping, and gets steadily more amusing and twisted from there. Hawkeye's wife, Mary Pierce, is about to deliver their fourth child, and is understandably not amused by the idea of her husband assisting during the delivery, so she has a chat with the guys from The Swamp. Trapper, Spearchucker and Duke put together a plot to get Hawkeye out of town for the duration, and Mary first drugs him with a doctored hot cocoa, then they bundle him up in a straightjacket and put him on a plain for New Orleans, where the annual meeting of the TA & VD (Tonsil, Adenoid and Vas Deferens) Society is taking place.

By an amusing set of coincidences, the French Quarter hotel which is hosting the TA & VD convention is also hosting a missionary conference, where Hot Lips Houlihan is one of the medical missionaries, and a Knights of Columbus grand gathering where Archbishop Patrick Mulcahy is representing the Vatican, and the President of the TA & VD Society is...Frank Burns. It gets far more convoluted before it's all through.

Great lines,

"Mr Wachauf had gone to meet his Maker as a result of the energy shortage. He had been standing under an electromagnetic lift supervising the loading of a fifteen-ton six-foot square mass of compacted automobiles into a railroad car at the precise moment the Southeastern North Dakota Power Company had been forced to reduce power to its clients."

Strong drink,

"Do you still make them (martinis) by exposing the gin for thirty seconds to the smell of an old vermouth bottle cork?"

Which reminds me where I got my favorite dry martini recipe, after all these years.

There is an amusing paragraph or two about why the manager of the hotel doesn't like to have religious groups stay there. They brown bag their meals and don't spend any money at the bar, and "The cold truth of the matter...is that the black ink comes from the boozers."

Which reminds me of my conversation with the longtime owner of the Three Rivers Resort. She told me that the original owners were a family of home-schoolers who couldn't stand all the partying people who came there to raft the river, so they sold it to..a Mormon family who also had little tolerance for the hard-drinking party animals who sold it to her and her husband, a pair of retired California school teachers, "We sell them all the beer, wine and cigarettes they want."

But I digress.

Hooker and Butterworth introduce us to the first of the "new" characters in the M*A*S*H universe, "Horsey" de la Cheveaux, a Cajun oil multimillionaire whose family's land grant in Bayou Perdu dates back to the time of Louis XIV, and who was patched back together at the 4077th by Hackeye and Trapper, back in the day.

This book actually begins a pattern which continues through the rest of the series, as various characters, for diverse reasons, end up gathering unwittingly in a series of cities, worldwide. As they say, it's all about the journey, not necessarily the destination.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating 3.5

Really enjoyed this book, the ‘too many’ coincidences piling on top of one another at the hotel were just right for my sense of humour.
The number of characters introduced in the first 5/6 chapters was a lot but I was able, just, to keep them apart in my mind .
The episodic telling of the stories worked really well for me, even though there were a couple of plot lines that extended through the majority of the book.
This would have worked well as a film in the 1970’s as a lot of movies worked with similar setups where smaller stories take place for the first 2 acts until the big story appears in act 3.

Possibly this should have been a 4 rating but will see how long it sticks in my memory.
From now on the series apparently goes downhill but will see as hopefully will be reading a book a month in 2024.

Overall a nice entertaining read that fits nicely with the first two books. Definitely recommend

[Samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to enjoy this book, but the addition of Butterworth changed the tone set by the previous novels. Sentences are long, wordy, and repetitive, and too many characters get introduced within the first few chapters. For most of the novel, the focus is set on these fresh characters, putting the beloved members of the 4077th on the back burner until the climax. For most readers, it’s simply too much to keep track of. Overall, the overarching plot is enjoyable. Yet, it’s incredibly disappointing that the plot and its subsequent intertwining subplots are flat until the last 50 pages.

[Jeff Mayo · Rating 2 out of 5]

The series went in a different direction once Hooker departed as the author. This spends half of the novel introducing new characters. The new characters play the largest part in the plot, a medical convention in New Orleans. The original characters are just supporting players in this one.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pleasant read. Love the Piercintyre adventures.

[Steven Batty · Rating 3 out of 5]

It never really goes anywhere.

[Chris Shedlick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Modestly entertaining adventure of the former 4077 surgeons. RADAR shows up. Some other characters introduced who will reappear later in these books, so pay attention.

[Benn Allen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the worst thing I read, but far from the best. "M*A*S*H Goes to New Orleans" is a rambling novel with barely anything resembling a plot in it. Much of the comedy relies on slapstick, which works better in a visual medium than a literary one. Some of the chronology contradicts the original novel (Shaking Sammy was a temporary replacement for Father Mulcahy in the original book, Frank Burns was a Captain, not a Major, when assigned to the 4077th, etc.), thus making this book, if not the rest of the "M*A*S*H Goes to..." series takes place in its own separate time line. MG2NO has only the thinnest of threads holding it to Richard Hooker's original book, much less any connection to the movie or the TV series (which the book advertises on the back cover). Basically MG2NO is fluff to be read to kill some time.

[Christopher Rush · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice to see some of the gang back together again. Not quite as saucy as some of the later installments.

2021 Update: You know, this hasn't aged quite so well, but its spirit of lighthearted playfulness is there, when humor was an acceptable thing, unlike today. I'm not saying this is Shakespeare, but the women are much more intelligent than the male characters, and astute readers will hearken to that, as well as whether the bad behavior is done by the good guys or the bad guys (not that there are really "bad guys" in this one).

[Barry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very light enjoyable comedy with the slightly older MASH team. My only problem is that this is pertinent to the TV show rather than the original novel.

[Lynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed rereading this. I will probably reread more of the series soon.

[Rick Hamell]

MASH - but after the war. Same joking and tom foolery, but Hawkeye and Trapper come out in the end.