“New Orleans may be too seductive for a writer.” -Walker Percy, author of The Moviegoer and other novels
New Orleans has a long history of being a city for writers and artists. One of the reasons the Bookpacking experience is perfectly well-suited for this city is the way so much culture and so many people are brought into a totally unique and bohemian place, making it a wonderful home for aspiring writers and a fantastic subject for stories. Famous writers, like Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and Mark Twain lived in New Orleans, and all of the books on our book list took place in or right outside of the city.
The group standing with the Ignatius J. Reilly statue on Canal Street
Part of what made Bookpacking so cool was the ability to visit the places we had just read about, making the books feel so much more real. On our first night out, we all walked down Canal Street and not only got to see the places where Ignatius of A Confederacy of Dunces walked but also found a statue of him. After having just spent the length of the novel with this character, seeing him in person with his hunter hat and sour expression, draped in Mardi Gras beads, felt really special. New Orleans allowed the fiction to come to life.
One evening, as we were in the process of reading Coming Through Slaughter, a book about the life of founding member of jazz Buddy Bolden, we went to Preservation Hall to listen to a live jazz performance. Preservation Hall was a small building and the age of the wood that made it up was apparent. Stepping into the hall felt like stepping back in time. We stood in the very back of the room. As the lights dimmed and the musicians started, a mood and energy filled the room unlike any other. The music pulsed through the space and the instruments seemed just as alive as their players. Each person had a turn for a solo, and as the different instruments went back and forth it was like the instruments were engaged in conversation with each other that I got to witness. It was easy to picture living decades ago, standing in that same room, listening to what was at the time this new kind of music, a music that seemed to be able to create life in the air. Through the music, I was suddenly connected to Bolden through more than just words and feelings, but through beat, energy, and melody. His spirit was in the music, and through music, everything is alive.
Mardi Gras costume on exhibit at the Presbytère museum
Part of what makes New Orleans such a fitting setting for Interview with the Vampire is that the city seems to push the limits of what is possible to exist in reality. The city has a long history of suspected vampires and of ghost sightings, going right back to colonial days. Its history blurs the line in the city between fantasy and real life, something that makes it the perfect setting for a vampire story. It also makes it a wonderful place to write in general, because it’s somewhere where stories are able to seep into reality, and where people are able to step into stories.
This is also seen in the novel The Moviegoer, where Binx’s experience of the city is constantly being compared in his mind to different movies he’s seen. Because of New Orleans’ one-of-a-kind literary quality, it really lends itself to someone who wants to see the world through the lens of a story.
Book of A Streetcar Named Desire that was signed by the original cast
Another facet of The Moviegoer is that throughout the book, Binx’s family is preparing a krewe for Mardi Gras, which is a group that gets together to make a float for the parade. Although Mardi Gras had passed this year, we got to go see an exhibit on the celebration and what went into making it at the Presbytère museum. No matter how detailed a description is of the Mardi Gras costumes, nothing could ever capture their majesty in real life. The costumes are huge, for one thing. I can’t imagine walking around in all of that, let alone in the Louisiana heat. Every inch of them is beaded, feathered, or colored. The opulence of the whole thing was absolutely astounding. I saw why it was such a big deal to the family to have to figure everything out.
In addition to our Bookpacking books, we also got the opportunity to explore the city’s connection to other great authors. The Historic New Orleans Collection museum had an exhibit focusing on A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams’ play exploring toxic masculinity and relationships and mental health in New Orleans in the 1940s. The exhibit featured the desk Williams wrote at and some original manuscripts and film props, which were really cool to see. I had read A Streetcar Named Desire for school previously, and it made me really grateful I had. Every writing of New Orleans seems to have a different perspective of the city, and seems to see it as a slightly different thing. Because of this, the more I read the more ways I’m able to look at the city.
My imagining of absinthe, aka. “The Green Fairy”, a popular drink both in New Orleans and among writers of a certain time period
Another stop we made in the French Quarter was the Faulkner House bookstore, named because it had once been the house of William Faulkner. It was a small but neat and beautiful bookstore. We passed a bar that had been frequented by authors like Faulkner, Williams, Rice, and Hemingway, where they would go to drink absinthe and write and talk. The unconventionality and artistry of the city has always given writers the freedom to observe other people and explore themselves in deeper and new ways. Especially for queer writers, New Orleans was somewhere they could safely experiment with themselves and were given the ability to be themselves in full rather than having to hide.