Gaines reigns in New Orleans literature

Last Saturday, I went to Xavier University to hear Ernest J. Gaines speak. Gaines, 80, wrote "A Lesson for Dying" in 1993, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. He's written eight novels in addition to short stories and essays.

Gaines grew up in a sharecropper family on a Louisiana plantation and was one of 12 children raised by an aunt who was crippled and had to crawl on the floor.

At 15, he moved to Northern California where he studied literature at San Francisco State University and later won a fellowship at Stanford.

I had never been on the Xavier campus, which is one of two traditionally African-American colleges in New Orleans, but finally found the lecture on the third floor of the student union. There were no signs, but many people got there anyway.

Gaines does not suffer fools gladly and proved to be a more challenging interviewee for the Fox reporter than she expected. He was unwilling to give her the predictable responses.

One person asked why his characters spoke different? Because they are all different people, he said.

An English professor tried to insist he had been inspired to title the novel after a famous British poem. He refused to back down and seemed not to know or care about her poem. Presumably, she had made a definitive statement to her class about its origin.

He explained to the would-be writers in the crowd why he had decided to make the teacher born in Louisiana instead of California, why the convict kept a journal and how he had learned of the roving electric chair that created such a powerful image.

Gaines seemed to prefer the children's questions which were less self-aggrandizing than the adults.

He has little time to write now that he's become famous because everyone wants to talk to him.

His novel is New Orleans' "Big Read" so there will be discussions in schools and libraries all month as well as screenings of the film at Zeitgeist Multidisciplinary Arts Center on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard.

New Orleans is a place where people enjoy reading. At book signings in our cherished local bookstores, folks line up to hear and meet the authors. A lot of the writers are from New Orleans. Because if you aren't reading - or even if you are - you're probably writing.

For a while, everyone was writing their post-Katrina memoir. In fact, there are still new Katrina memories appearing on the bookshelves. The story has been told from hundreds of perspectives.

But people also write about the music, the food, the French, the architecture, the races, the history, the ineffable culture. Because we can't ever get enough of it. We have to know more.

So, I wasn't too surprised to find a miniature lending library on Louisiana Avenue where I was walking the other day. Somebody had taken the time to build a cabinet like a huge bird feeder and place books inside it - for people to borrow or loan. It had a glass door with a wooden latch.

I stopped to examine the selection. There were children's books and business books and romance novels. I wondered if they might not get moldy in this incessant rain. But maybe they circulate quickly enough.

It was just another charming reminder of how different this place is from other cities.

Writers flock to New Orleans

Guide from Southern Rep in '40s attire, pointing out Stanley's house

As almost everyone knows, Tennessee Williams lived a bohemian life in New Orleans where he wrote "A Streetcar Named Desire," the steamy story immortalized as both play and film, starring Marlon Brando and Vivian Leigh. Who played Stella? Who knows.

In any case, every year, New Orleans celebrates this event with a weekend of literary events. The festival usually passes me right by, but for one reason or another, I connected with a local writer who was presenting and I decided to attend a couple of the lectures and perhaps pick up a few tips.

I heard a panel of authors share their experiences writing memoirs and was among 100 or so wannabe writers who listened to Amy Hempel talk about short story writing in standing room only.

Friday night, I attended a fabulous performance of "A Streetcar Named Desire" staged in a warehouse that was once a rum factory on Elysian Fields and took a walking tour of the neighborhood where the story was set. We saw the building where the Kowalskis would have lived, which was nowhere near the nightclubs, the Three Deuces bar and the place where they would have purchased their liquor - an essential element. Only United Hardware Story remains - in business since the 1940s.

Williams took a bit of literary license with the details. Blanche would never have found her sister's home had she taken the directions Williams suggested - the streetcar named Desire to Cemeteries and transfer to Elysian Fields, her final resting place.

Southern Rep put a slightly different spin on the story and new interpretation of the characters, but things still turned out badly for Blanche.