Let's Walk: A New Orleans Literary Tour
Melinda Palacio -- July 29, 2005
On Carolyn Goldsby Kolb's walking tour, I discovered why the city of New Orleans represents an emotional shortcut for writers. The almost 2-hour-walking tour is dizzying with information about writers and famous novels and movies set in New Orleans.
The most important thing I learned from the tour is that it's more than a coincidence why so many writers and filmmakers flock to the city of Jazz. "The port city is a crossroads," said Kolb, "where anything can happen." You only need to take in the sounds spilling out of alleys, the variety of cultures and cuisine and the rich literary tradition to understand why New Orleans, especially the French Quarter, holds an infinite possibility for story.
Kolb started her walking tour at the horse's head in Jackson Square. She asked, "What is the first thing you notice about this town?" From the perspective of a California native, living in Santa Barbara, the first thing I noticed was air of decay, as if the city were under constant attack by the elements. Here in Southern California, if the paint on your house is starting to chip, it's a good excuse to apply for a permit to build a bigger, newer house. Not so in the crescent city, where humid, over grown foliage and rusting wrought iron staircases add to the charm of this Catholic port city. The run-down look gives the city its own third-world charm with cobbled stone streets, abundant bougainvilleas, and pink and yellow crepe myrtles.
The French quarter is characteristically ancient and French, even though France ceded Louisiana to Spain in 1762 and then took it back at the beginning of the 1800s and then sold it the United States in 1803. The first best selling novel set in New Orleans is Chateaubriand's Atala.
From Jackson Square, we crossed Decatur street where street performers herded the crowds from their daily fix of beignets at Cafe du Monde.
We continued past the railroad tracks to the river bank where to our left we could see the French market and straight ahead the Mississippi river (yes, Mark Twain's river) and beyond, Algiers where Jack Kerouac immortalized his visit to William Burroughs in On the Road. We took in the sights of lovers strolling on the riverbanks, a lonely jazz musician playing, making his living, barges bringing coal and other goods to the city, the gambling cruise ships and the fake steamboats.
In the nineteenth century, New Orleans newspapers provided work for writers. New Orleans was also the site of several literary journals, such as the New Orleans Review and the Double Dealer which first published the works of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. As much as the city was in the imagination of fiction writers, its history was well documented by newspaper reporters and non-fiction writers such as Lyle Saxon, responsible for the WPA (Writers Project of America) guides of New Orleans and Louisiana. Saxon moved to New Orleans in the early 19th century when the French Quarter has descended to decay and slum status. He documented life in the quarter with collected stories, Old Man River and a guidebook on New Orleans. An important stop for book lovers is Faulkner House Books on 624 Pirate's Alley.
Kolb went into great detail, pointing out the location of movie scenes from Barfly, Tight Rope, King Creole, an Elvis flick, and Dinner at Antoine's.
Some of the stories that stand out are those that have to do with the Creole culture and the quarter's racially complex heritage. Balls and dancing were important in this town of crossroads where cultures and languages mixed. The French Quarter of the 19th century was ruled by Quadroon Balls and Placage -- the extra-marital union between a white married man and a mallato woman.
There was ambiguity of social status of free people of color. Anne Rice's second novel, A Feast of All Saints, a historical novel set in 1840's New Orleans about a boy named Marcel with one white and one free black parent, explored the racial complexities for people labeled as Octoroons or Quadroons, one-eight or one-quarter black.
Tennessee Williams had a few addresses in the quarter. One that stands out is 431 Royal Street, next door to Brennans--it's the apartment where Williams spent New Years Eve in 1939.
The
last two
sites focused on two female writers, Keyes (rhymes with sighs) and
Archaud. Frances Parkinson Keyes, author
of My Dinner at Antoine's(1948) and Crescent
Carnival(1942) restored the historic Beauregard House on 1113
Chartres between 1944 and 1950. The house was built in 1826 for the
grandfather of Paul Morphy and was the residence of confederate general
P.G. T. Beauregard from 1866 to 1868.
Across the street fromt the Beauregard-Keyes House is the convent of the Ursuline nuns, one of the oldest buildings in the Mississippi Valley, where 17-year-old Madeleine Archaud wrote about living in the quarter and its similiarities to France.
The tour seemed long considering Louisiana's sultry weather; however, I look forward to taking the tour again.
Carolyn Goldsby Kolb's has a new guidebook on New Orleans, The Fun Seeker's New Orleans: The Ultimate Guide to One of the World's Hottest Cities(2005). Kolb's walking Literary and Cinema tours, $20 pp, are by appointment only. She can be reached at 504-861-8158 or cgkolb@uno.edu.