Top 5 New Orleans Literary Icons
As a New Orleans native, I've been a storyteller all my life. Nothing ever just happens in this city. There's always a back story just itching to be told. This trait is apparently contagious. Countless writers have come down to New Orleans, fallen in love with the city, and stuck around at least long enough to produce some of their best work.
In honor of the 100th birthday of probably the most famous of these New Orleans-loving writers, Tennessee Williams, I'd like to offer up a list of my personal top five literary icons who have written in and about New Orleans.
Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams celebrates The Glass Menagerie. (Photo Credit: tennesseewilliams.net)
I was lucky enough to have a personal friend of Tennessee Williams as an English teacher in high school, a happy coincidence that has lead pretty directly to my current career as a professional writer. No other playwright will ever come as close as Williams did to diagramming the human condition with just a few words of dialogue.
If you've never read a Tennessee Williams play, go grab a copy of one now. His stage directions are like short stories. Shakespeare wrote " Exit, pursued by a bear." Tennessee Williams' stage directions plop you down in the middle of a lush, tropical garden in a French Quarter courtyard.
Live the Words
Take a stroll through the Garden District or down Elysian Fields by the river and try to see the city as Tennessee Williams saw it. But there's really no better way to see his words come to life than by attending the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, which starts today.
Kate Chopin
An early feminist, Chopin's work went largely unnoticed until the 1960s, when her brilliantly written story The Awakening was unearthed by graduate students seeking out female writers from the 1800s. The unimaginably beautiful story takes you into and through a long lost era of aristocracy and class divisions in New Orleans at the end of the 19th Century.
Chopin influenced later southern writers such as William Faukner, Flannery O'Connor, and Tennessee Williams. While it provides an invaluable glimpse into life in the Crescent City and the then resort town of Grand Isle as Chopin experienced it, The Awakening was highly controversial when it was published in 1899 since the female protagonist did the unthinkable and went against the social conventions of the time. The imagery from final scene of The Awakening will stick with you for the rest of your life.
Live the Words
Walk among the 200 year old homes lining Esplanade Avenue on the edge of the French Quarter to see where Edna Pontellier lived.
George Washington Cable
Mark Twain, left, and George Washington Cable, right, on their Twins of Genius Tour. (Photo Credit: etext.virginia.edu)
While George Washington Cable's star may have faded over the years, he was the literary equivalent of a rock star in his day. Cable went on a performance tour with Mark Twain in 1884, reading selections from his New Orleans based book The Grandissimes to sold-out audiences at 103 shows in 80 cities across the country. To give that a little perspective, Lady Gaga's Monster Ball Tour has played 119 shows in North America so far, only 16 more performances than the Twain and Cable put on.
Dubbed the "Twins of Genius, " Twain and Cable wowed audiences that had never heard such detailed accounts of life in the south, and especially in New Orleans, with readings from their respective works. Cable's examination of all that makes New Orleans unique and special in The Grandissimes remains a compelling read today, even though the book is set around the time of the Louisiana Purchase.
Live the Words
Since most of The Grandissimes takes place in the French Quarter, it's easy to find many of the same locations Cable was writing about in the 1800s. Just use the book as a guide, and you'll be pleasantly surprised at how many buildings that housed restaurants in Cable's day still serve food on a daily basis.
Walker Percy
Since all things in New Orleans tend to mesh together at some level, it's only fitting that Walker Percy met William Faulkner on several occasions as a child when Faulkner would visit Percy's uncle in Mississippi. Percy's first novel, The Moviegoer, is set in New Orleans in the early 1960s, and it won a National Book Award in 1962. Time magazine also included The Moviegoer in its "100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923-2005."
Percy managed to capture a slice of life in New Orleans, writing about everything from old-line Carnival Krewes to the experience of watching a movie filmed in New Orleans while living in the Crescent City. Dipping heavily into existentialist themes and touching on deep philosophical questions, The Moviegoer works on several levels and really has to be read a few times to absorb the full effect of its beautifully nuanced imagery.
Live the Words
Watch an afternoon movie at the Prytania Theatre, and then stroll out into the almost unimaginably beautiful surrounding neighborhood, just as Binx Bolling did in The Moviegoer.
John Kennedy Toole
A Confederacy of Dunces: only in New Orleans. (Photo Credit: bookcase.blogspot.com)
Remember what I said about everything being connected in New Orleans? John Kennedy Toole, depressed that he couldn't get his novel A Confederacy of Dunces published, tragically committed suicide at the age of 31. Toole's mother brought a manuscript of the novel to Walker Percy, who was at the time the head of the English Department at Tulane University. Percy was blown away by the unparalleled work of comedy genius, and saw to it that A Confederacy of Dunces finally saw the light of day. Of course, the novel went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Toole saw the world as only a native New Orleanian could. Baton Rouge was a far away land populated by Yankees who might as well be speaking a different language. The natural order of things was subverted at every turn by Bourbon Street hustlers, old ladies with false teeth, a motorcycle cop in costume, and a gentlemanly suitor pursuing a long-widowed woman.
Only in New Orleans, and only because of New Orleans.
Live the Words
If you really want to feel like you just stepped into the pages of A Confederacy of Dunces, call in sick next Wednesday. Head down to the French Quarter at about 10 o'clock in the morning, find a bar that's at least 50 feet from the nearest t-shirt shop and make sure it does not sell daiquiris, settle in and watch the characters parade through the front door. You will feel like Ignatius J. Reilly in no time.
So that's my Top 5 list of New Orleans Literary Icons. Who would you add to this list? Let us know in the comment section.
New Orleans native Stephen Maloney has been writing about his home city since shortly after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005. As a journalist, Steve has worked as a staff writer for St. Tammany News in Covington and New Orleans CityBusiness in Metairie. He has also written articles for Offbeat Magazine, Inside Northside, Where Y'at, North Shore Report, the Journal of Jefferson Parish, and for the blog Junco Partners. Steve currently works as an Online Content Editor and SEO Specialist at FSC Interactive, where he edits, posts, and contributes to the GoNOLA blog. Follow Steve on Twitter @NOLAFidget.
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