ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 24, 1995 TAG: 9512220055
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: F-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW ORLEANS
SOURCE: SERGIO ORTIZ SPECIAL TO THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
If cities were people, New Orleans would be the earthy and lovable old uncle who shows up drunk (and with a young thing at his side) at sedate family gatherings, all the while secretly reveling in his open defiance of polite society. It has had that attitude for centuries, way before its label ``The City That Care Forgot'' was mongrelized into the coarser sound bite of ``The Big Easy.''
Sprawled over both banks of a crescent formed by the Mississippi River Delta, New Orleans is really not North American at all. Its rhythms, smells, lusty ambience and complacency developed from a delicious mixture of French, Spanish, African, Creole and Cajun cultures spiced with the spirit of the American frontier. In its infancy, pirates, mercenaries, outcasts, drunks, religious fanatics, defrocked priests, gamblers and whores all found haven here and thrived in the warmth of its tolerance. To this day, the place reeks of hedonism, decadence and immorality - qualities long recognized as potent magnets for writers.
My interest in New Orleans began more than a decade ago, when I first visited the city while on a magazine assignment. Subsequent visits saw the hedonistic thrills of Bourbon Street grow stale - but a wisp of profound solemnity could be perceived floating above the laughter, behind the shrill jazz emerging from French Quarter dives. I had heard that no one could know the ``real'' New Orleans unless he or she studied the literature that spawned in the city. After many visits, I began looking for this other New Orleans, even though the place seems to resent having anyone peeking behind the carnival mask it perennially wears.
Across Decatur Street from the Cafe du Monde stands a 19th-century brick building with shops catering to the tourist trade at street level and offices on the top floor. The building once housed Madame Begue's infamous and bawdy restaurant, Tujague's, where O. Henry held court on his frequent visits to the city in the late 1800s.
He was treated like royalty at Madame Begue's, whose place was so well known for so long that Edna Ferber mentions it in her novel ``Saratoga Trunk,'' published half a century after O. Henry was a fixture there.
A few short blocks away, on a narrow street appropriately called Pirate's Alley, the house where William Faulkner worked on his first novel, ``Soldiers' Pay,'' is these days a homey and well-stocked bookstore named the Faulkner House. It's a three-story, narrow building with wrought iron alcoves full of Boston ferns and other semi-tropical plants that mirror the Mediterranean colonial soul of the city.
Owners Joanne Sealy and Joe DaSalvo live above their bookstore and are well versed in New Orleans' literary legacy. They note that Pirate's Alley, which runs parallel to the west side of St. Louis Cathedral, was known as Orleans Alley in Faulkner's day. ``Seems like everybody who's written a book has lived in New Orleans at one time or another,'' says DaSalvo, rattling off the names of literary lions. ``Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Dos Passos, Percy Walker, Anne Rice ... ''
Rice, the New Orleans native and author of the extremely popular series of vampire books, until recently was so readily accessible that she was listed in the New Orleans telephone directory. Today, Rice lives in a magnificent Victorian mansion on First Street in the elegant Garden District, a short trolley ride along St. Charles Avenue and minutes away from the French Quarter.
Faulkner left New Orleans for Europe in July 1925. Although none of his possessions remain behind, his stay is commemorated by a plaque on the wall of the winsome building at 624 Pirate's Alley.
There is no such plaque at 722 Toulouse St., the building a few short blocks away where Tennessee Williams lived in 1938 while learning to write the incisive dramas that fathomed the frustrations of Southern society.
Williams wrote ``A Streetcar Named Desire'' in Chapala, Mexico, nine years later, but the play about illusion, repressed passion and cruelty remains a shining example of how good writers are able to capture the flavor of a city from a considerable geographic distance - the technique known as ``transposing oneself.''
At 811 Royal St., a short distance away, a run-down building once housed a young writer named Truman Capote who arrived in New Orleans in 1945 aboard a Greyhound bus, determined to master the craft of writing. Capote, who was born in the city but later moved away, found the place ``noisy as a steel mill. Streetcars clattered and tourists chattered outside during the day; at night soldiers and sailors turned the street into a raucous party. So I took to working all night and sleeping all day.''
He wrote many short stories and part of the novel, ``Other Voices, Other Rooms,'' while living there. Capote returned to New Orleans later to write what came to be considered the first ``impressionistic'' travel article for Harper's Bazaar.
Six blocks away, in the northeast of the Quarter at 715 Governor Nicholls, is the Sherwood Anderson home. Anderson bought the house in 1922 and there wrote the novel ``Many Marriages'' and a collection of short stories, ``Horses and Men.'' Faulkner, Lillian Hellman, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Spratling, Gertrude Stein and John Dos Passos all visited at one time or another to drink and trade stories.
In 1924, while writing ``Manhattan Transfer,'' Dos Passos lived at the northeast end of the French Quarter, at 510 Esplanade Ave. near the old U.S. Mint at 1300 Decatur St. (Today the mint is a museum housing an extensive collection on New Orleans jazz and Mardi Gras.)
Although most writers have lived and worked in the French Quarter, uptown New Orleans has attracted its share of famous literati.
The houses in the Garden District are more typical of New England than of New Orleans and it is there, on Prytania Avenue, that Lillian Hellman spent her formative years and early adulthood in a boarding house, an exquisite four-plex shaded by a live oak, owned by her aunt.
Hellman, who was born in New Orleans, is known for her plays ``Toys in the Attic,'' ``Watch on the Rhine'' and ``The Little Foxes.'' But she first attained fame in 1934 with ``The Children's Hour,'' her drama about the devastating effects of a child's charge of lesbianism against two of her teachers. Hellman wrote it while living at 1718 Prytania Ave.
Twelve blocks west, also on Prytania, there is an old cemetery with its graves and crypts built above ground, as is the custom in Louisiana, where the water table is just beneath the surface. Across the street, on the corner at 2900, an impeccable small white house overlooks the graveyard, which fascinated F. Scott Fitzgerald, who in 1920 rented an apartment there while revising the galleys of his first novel, ``This Side of Paradise.''
If any author reflects the schizoid nature of New Orleans he is George Washington Cable, a native of the city who was regarded in his lifetime as maybe the best short story writer in the world, although very few people are familiar with his name today. Cable wrote about the ``Negro experience'' with such a keen eye that many who read him today think of him as black, despite the fact that he was descended from German stock and his parents were from Indiana. His story ``Sieur George'' has been favorably compared with the best of Joseph Conrad's. Cable was considered ``the twin genius of Mark Twain,'' who made lengthy visits to New Orleans as Cable's guest.
The house Cable lived in stands among lush greenery at 1313 8th St. It is still a private home that reflects style, wealth and the unparalleled elegance of days gone by.
LENGTH: Long : 132 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: SERGIO ORTIZ. 1. It's known as the birthplace of jazz,by CNBbut New Orleans has attracted more than musicians. Famous writers,
including Tennesee Williams, Percy Walker, Anne Rice and William
Faulkner have found New Orleans' hedonistic atmosphere most
appealing. 2. (no caption). 3. (no caption). color.