Some sights of literary New Orleans

"A literary tour is the secular echo of a religious pilgrimage. The hope is the same as with saints’ relics: that some residue of genius will survive in the physical objects an author has touched, that the secret to his mind will turn out to be hidden in the places his body passed through — the proportions of a doorway, the smell of old stone." -- Sam Anderson

Before this plot held a hotel it was the major open-air slave market of New Orleans, the one chronicled in UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. In more recent but also tragic history, it makes an appearance in Ethan Brown's true-crime story SHAKE THE DEVIL OFF as the place where troubled war vet Zackery Bowen committed suicide after killing his girlfriend.

Truman Capote spent so much time in the Monteleone Hotel (halfway down the street, where the flags were) that he used to say he was born there. This was a slight exaggeration. Before I left I grabbed Capote's late-career story collection MUSIC FOR CHAMELEONS which I'd had sitting around forever, and in the one story in it set in New Orleans, everyone Capote talks to speaks exactly like him. I did not find this to be the case on my visit, although New Orleanians were very hospitable.

William Faulkner lived in this yellow house for just over a year while he was working on his first novel; now it's a book store, called, what else, Faulkner House Books. In terms of locations this would probably be my preferred one to live in due to its proximity to beignets at the Cafe du Monde (well, of course I did) and the view of the park across the narrow cobblestone street. Just before I ducked down the alley I watched a second-line wedding parade pass by the Saint Louis cathedral.

Tennessee Williams lived here when he wrote "A Streetcar Named Desire." There are no streetcars operating on the Desire line any more, but I was fairly pleased to find out that you can still ride in the streetcars for a very reasonable $1.25. Usually they aren't even that crowded.

Major landmarks I missed: statue of Ignatius J. Reilly of A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES (stored for Mardi Gras, apparently); half a dozen plantations claiming to inspire the ones in GONE WITH THE WIND, as well as any of the places Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara went on their honeymoon (figured they would be too hard to find, but here's a good stab at it).