48 hours: hitting the wall

48 hours of little to no sleep (hello, insomnia) and I finally crashed this afternoon after my last panel. Missed the dinner with John Mariani at the Windsor Court, missed the reception for Calvin Trillin at Brennan's, missed the birthday party for Marva Wright at the Ritz-Carlton...all of which looked fantastic (especially the Trillin reception). Frankly, the amount of panels and parties seems to have outgrown the four days of the Festival. Or maybe I'm getting old.

Tonight? I got nothin' except this room.

Several years ago, when Harrah's wanted to come into New Orleans, the city allowed them to build a casino, but no hotel; the already-here hoteliers used their pull to shut down hotel plans. Later, when it went through, there were worries that a casino hotel wouldn't be "New Orleans" enough (as if the chain hotel skyscrapers on Canal Street were antebellum mansions).

Anyway, the place is plenty luxe and completely separate from the casino, but what strikes me is the amount of local art in the rooms. I have two lithographs by the photographer Richard Sexton and one by Lee Tucker in one room, and all three are striking original works of art. The hotel could've put up prints of a Mardi Gras parade or Jackson Square in each room, and the guests probably would've found it sufficiently picturesque, but someone put some thought into buying work from local artists for out-of-towners to enjoy. And that impresses me more than the huge sunken bath, which is plenty nice but could be anywhere.

Tomorrow, four panels, a play, two parties, and a dinner, and I don't know how much I can fit in. This requires a mule team of bloggers.

"Southern Culture on the Skids?"

Professor Helen Taylor; Charles Reagan Wilson of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture; writer Michael Swindle; columnist Chris Rose; and moderator Josh Clark.

“Some people would probably like to secede from the U.S., but a lot of others would argue that the U.S. has seceded from us," said moderator Joshua Clark at the "Southern Culture on the Skids?" panel, which was one of those TW events where everything goes off the rails a bit and ends up just fine anyway. You want a literary festival where everyone behaves? Don't come to this one.

I had a feeling it might go a bit catawampus when my old neighbor, the Village Voice writer and essayist Michael Swindle, wandered off down the sidewalk with Barry Gifford in search of a pre-panel Bloody Mary, a concoction that seemed to be unavailable at the Bourbon Orleans, where the panel was being held. Mike was disgusted that a New Orleans hotel didn't have a place for a man to procure an adult beverage at 12:30 on a Friday afternoon, and he let his displeasure and disbelief known during the panel several times...until a hotel manager finally came upstairs with a tray of cocktails in hurricane glasses for all the panelists.

"The three English phrases most recognized in the world are Jesus, Coca-Cola, and Elvis Presley – and two of them are undisputably from the South," said Professor Taylor, who had an interesting perspective as an Englishwoman who had made Southern studies her vocation. She and Charles Reagan Wilson provided a more academic contrast to Swindle and Chris Rose, who just shrugged his shoulders at trying to sum up a culture that "encompasses Minnie Pearl, Ernie K-Doe, and George Wallace. And then some audience member delivered cans of Spam to the panelists.

When it was over, I found Mike and his cocktail at the authors' table, but it didn't appear that his publisher had actually managed to get his latest collection to the Festival for sale. It has the impressive title Slouching towards Birmingham: Shotgun Golf, Hog Hunting, Ass-Hauling Alligators, Rara in Haiti, Zapatistas, and Anahuac New Year's in Mexico City. Mike shrugged. "I talk good," he said, "but I just can't sell any books."

Apple-latcha, not appa-laytcha

Moderator Bev Marshall and authors Mark Powell, Ron Rash, and Sharyn McCrumb.

The first thing they established on the Appalachian writers' panel this morning is that the region is properly pronounced apple-latcha, not appa-laytcha. In a town with street names like Tchoupitoulas, people understand the import of getting it right.

Sharyn McCrumb read an engaging snippet of her novel St. Dale, and kept things popping with some tart observations and notable quotes, several of which made everyone in the room crack up:

“I grew up in an atmosphere of Johnny Cash meets Debussy.”

"On tour, I kept running into people who thought Deliverance was a documentary.”

“It’s fun to talk to the literati about NASCAR, because they think it’s the former president of Egypt.”

Actually, I wasn't too impressed with that last quote; there are probably racing fans in the halls of Harvard as surely as there are Dante fans in the woods of Tennessee. As any New Orleanian who has spent significant time Uptown and downtown knows, there's snobbery and then there's reverse snobbery. But McCrumb is a good reader and an even better writer.

Ron Rash, I'm ashamed to say, is a writer of whom I knew nothing, but after listening to him read, his books are going to the top of my reading pile. He's got a gripping, quiet, pared-down style that's incredibly powerful. Same with Mark Powell, who read a selection from his book Blood Kin, which won the 2005 Peter Taylor Prize for literature. Powell brought up the ongoing problem of the suburbanization of the South and Appalachia in particular, with McMansions going in atop the mountains and Wal-Mart clear-cutting the old downtowns.

Mr. Rash made one particularly poignant point about that: “There’s three ways that the culture will survive," he said. "Music, cooking, and literature.”

Which shows, perhaps, that Appalachia and New Orleans aren't that far apart at all.

Photos from Tennessee's house

Tonight there was a party at the former residence of TW, now owned by Dr. Brobson Lutz. It was one of those French Quarter places that's very modest from the street, and opens up to country-club expanses inside: courtyard after courtyard. Lots of local folks and visitors there, and if I took your picture tonight and it's not here, you should be thanking me instead of cursing me; the gods of Olympus and Nikon were not with me, and I took a cameraful of remarkably crappy snaps of not-bad-looking people. That said, this was the best of the bunch:


Paul Willis, executive director of the Festival, with Errol Laborde, editor of New Orleans magazine. Errol's wife Peggy Scott Laborde, the fest's VP of development, was there as well, but I didn't get her picture. New Orleans' professional photographers have nothing to fear from my digital cam from Target.





A not-so-good picture of Josh Clark, editor of Louisiana in Words, a new "flash" anthology of stories that encapsulate one minute each of life in Louisiana.









David Cuthbert, theater critic of The Times-Picayune, with Jeremy Lawrence, who plays Tennessee Williams.





New York visitor Travis Holder, enjoying himself and telling some really funny stories.










The lovely bartendrixes for the evening...I didn't get their names, but they were grace under pressure personified when it came to facing dozens of New Orleans social types who needed to get their liquor on. The whole staff for the party was remarkably patient, funny, and on the ball.

Michael Lewis on what's holding New Orleans back

Another blogger, Dangermond, attended the Michael Lewis panel this afternoon and recorded Mr. Lewis' thoughts on what's holding the city back post-Katrina. It's well worth a read if you haven't figured it out from the fiendishly clever clue on the left.

Barry Gifford does not take drugs and neither should you

"What kind of drugs are you on?"

That was the first question asked at the Barry Gifford master class this afternoon, which was moderated by New Orleans filmmaker and teacher Mari Kornhauser. The subtitle for the panel was "Translating Life to the Screen," so naturally there was a lot of talk about movies; Gifford was interesting, funny, and articulate, but I would've rather heard about his books (22 of them! in 28 languages!). Gifford was also the founder of Black Lizard Books in the 1980s, which brought back into print a number of wayside-fallen noir authors (his reprint of After Dark, My Sweet was what introduced me to Jim Thompson).

He has two more books coming this spring: Memories from a Sinking Ship (a novel) and The Cavalry Charges: Writings on Books, Films, and Music (essays). But most of the discussion centered on the movie version of his most well-known novel, Wild at Heart, which seems to have a bigger cult following than I knew...and by that, I mean a bigger cult than usually gathers around David Lynch movies. (For the record, he loves Laura Dern and liked Nicolas Cage's interpretation of his character.)

Gifford had so many interesting things to say that I gave up trying to transcribe, but this quote stuck with me all afternoon:

My father was involved in organized crime. I grew up in a world of men, and my role was to sit and observe; that was my university as a writer, and I was fascinated by this. I had very little discipline – I didn’t go to school in the early years – so I would stay up all night and watch the Million Dollar Movie. That's how I developed this sense of narrative. Separating truth from lies...and realizing that there wasn’t much difference.

(Oh, and for the record: Mr. Gifford says he stopped taking drugs in 1970, when they began to interfere with his imagination. Why do you think they call it dope, kids?)

Another food event: Willie Mae's Scotch House

Got a note this a.m. from Mary Beth Lasseter of the Southern Foodways Alliance:

John Egerton, a guest at the TW festival in NOLA, has been reading your blog and suggested that I get in touch with you to let you know of a special event planned for Sunday night, April 1, after the festival. Several guests of TWF, including Egerton and Calvin Trillin, will join the Southern Foodways Alliance to celebrate the re-opening of Willie Mae's Scotch House in the Tremé. The rebuilding of this restaurant began last January, has cost over $200K, and has been led by a volunteer crew from all over the nation.

On Sunday night, we'll have a dinner (it's sold out now) and a film screening (which isn't). If time/space are available, might you mention this film event to your readers? Info on the film screening is available here. To read more about the rebuilding effort, visit here.

We hope that you, and others, might join us for a celebration on Sunday night. And, if your time allows, stop by Willie Mae's on Monday for a plate of fried chicken.

That is tempting. As you can see by the pre-storm photo, the Scotch House was basically a small living room with a few tables, and the one time I tried to go there, I couldn't get in. Fried chicken, smothered pork chops, red beans: as a good friend of mine once remarked, "That isn't soul food--that's food food."

Opening day and master classes

So far, so good; the organizers are walking around looking sanguine, whether that's really how they feel or not. This is the scrum at the checkin table. Somewhere in there is executive director Paul Willis, associate director Karissa Kary, v.p. Doug Brantley, LouAnn Morehouse, and program assistant Marika Christian. Marika was a longtime Festival attendee who just up and moved to New Orleans one day, and the city opened up its magic box for her; she found an attic apartment above the city's most notable TW scholar, Dr. Kenneth Holditch, got a job with the Fest, and is now working on her first novel under the tutelage of local writer Julie Smith...all of which is the sort of thing that happens in New Orleans with alarming regularity if you just strip off your defenses and dive right in.

Here's the table from the Garden District Book Shop, which came through Katrina just fine and is actually bucking the brick-and-mortar bookstore trend by, well, not going out of business and actually making a little bit of scratch. It's in a great area; the Garden District is, if anything, cleaner than it was before the storm, Commander's Palace is (thank God) open again, and all that's missing is the streetcar running up St. Charles Avenue. Taking the "St. Charles bus" just doesn't have that romance to it.


And here's the Festival president, Pat Brady, with her inamorato/main squeeze Michael Ledet. Pat is also the author of Martha Washington: An American Life, which has gotten the sort of reviews that writers could (and have) killed for. Michael, who owns 2 Martini Press with the Gumbo Shop's Richard Stewart, was about to present a master class on self-publishing with Richard and Allain Andry, the author of the children's book Louie the Buoy.

Is anything going wrong? Well, they ran out of free coffee (which is, fortunately, not in short supply in the Quarter), and the out-of-towners are mopping sweat from their brows and looking slightly poleaxed. Wusses! It's only March.

Feeling Riche

Currently sitting at Riche in the Harrah's hotel with about six other journalists in town to cover the Fest...folks from Philadelphia, Lexington, Washington D.C., and parts farther afield: Corinna Metcalf from The Washington Times, Joseph Blake (formerly of the Philadelphia Inquirer), the married travel and antiques writers Angela Wibking and Virgil Fox, the former New Orleans travel writer Patti Nickell, who is thriving in Lexington, Ky., and Bonnie Warren, who reps the hotel and writes for a lot of local publications. (Photo: Bonnie's lobster bouillabaisse.)

This is typical Festival stuff--people have spent 10% of their time talking about books and 90% of their time drinking wine, yakking politics, gossiping, and chowing down.

Steak frites, mac-and-cheese, and a nine-onion soup. The best thing was escargot served on flatbread with chèvre, like a little snail pizza. And the service: outstanding. (Full disclosure: I ain't paying for this one, but believe me: it's good.) Verdict? Chef Todd English knows what he's doing.

After the meal, a couple of us went into the 528 jazz club next door to hear the excellent John Boutté, who has a voice like Sam Cooke, or maybe Jackie Wilson--but jazz-inflected and New Orleans through and through. Midway through the set my old neighbor Margarita Bergen appeared at our table with news; she's a columnist for Bayou Buzz and her biography lists her as the diva of culture, entertainment and epicurean delights of the New Orleans area," which is as good a description as any. (Photo: Joseph Blake and Margarita Bergen.)

And now it's 5:30 am, I have insomnia, and there's a whole day of master classes, plus a play and a reception at Tennessee Williams' old house tonight....

They all ast for you

Before spending four days immersed in books, I decided to walk on the wilder side of New Orleans with a visit to the Audubon Zoo. Years ago, the zoo was a local and national disgrace, but today it's one of the best zoos in the nation, with beautiful plantings everywhere. And thanks to the heroic staff, they only lost a few animals during Hurricane Katrina.

In fact, you wouldn't even know there'd been a hurricane. The sea lion exhibit was closed for repairs, but there was lots to see, and the Louisiana swamp habitat was packed with people gawking at alligators, nutria, the black bear, and the famous white alligator. But the best things were two six-month-old endangered leopard cubs, which were gamboling and frisking and dive-bombing their tolerant parents just like a pair of housecats.

Leaving the zoo, I turned on WWOZ-FM, America's best radio station, and listened to local music interspersed with a live interview with Miss Tee-Eva--chef, caterer, and sometime backup singer to the great Ernie K-Doe--just laughing and carrying on and talking about her famous gumbo recipe.

I don't care about Katrina, about Ray Nagin, Bill Jefferson, Kathleen Blanco, George W. Bush, Entergy, Allstate, or the Road Home program. Thanks to the people, this is still the best city in America.

In my room at Harrah's now, which is worth a post in itself. Later. After dinner and an hour in the jazz club downstairs, where John Boutté is playing tonight. And tomorrow: the Festival.

Festival eve

Tonight's the kickoff party for the TW Festival. The major donors and swellelegant folks will be getting together at the Palm Court Jazz Café for dinner, drinks, and music. I'll be spending the day at the Audubon Zoo and then checking into my hotel. Having dinner with some visiting journalists at Riche, the new Todd English restaurant in Harrah's, and then plan on checking out 528, the jazz club next door.

TENNESSEE AND HIS WOMEN: AN EVENING OF LITERARY REVELRY
Wed., Mar. 28, 7:30 pm
Palm Court Jazz Café, 1204 Decatur St.
$150

Online ticket sales closed

From the Festival organizers:

Online ticket sales for the 2007 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival have ended. To purchase tickets, please visit the Festival box office in the lobby of the Bourbon Orleans Hotel (717 Orleans St. at Bourbon). The box office will be open Thursday-Sunday, 9 am-5 pm. Event availability information will be updated regularly and is available by calling the Festival Offices (504-581-1144).