New Orleans for Booklovers / Solid Evidence

Solid Evidence

   Walker Percy, a great friend to Maple Street Book Shop, used the backdrop of Mardi Gras in his first novel, The Moviegoer, which won the National Book Award.

    John Kennedy Toole created in A Confederacy of Dunces, one of the most hilarious and authentic portraits of New Orleans crazies and characters. And some Maple Street Book Shop people played lunatic roles themselves in helping Thelma Toole, Toole's mother, get the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel published. Also, the shop gave two parties for her. The first (co-hosted by writer Chris Wiltz) celebrated Louisiana State University agreeing to publish the book, and the second featured Thelma Toole playing the piano, singing in memory of her "genius" son, and signing copies of her deceased son's book. At the second party, apparently everyone's attention hadn't been rapturous enough for her. She later pronounced that a certain local author had been "cavorting with the young people."

    Native Chris Wiltz, who worked at Maple Street Book Shop, is the creator of New Orleans private investigator Neal Rafferty who stars in The Killing Circle and The Emerald Lizard.

   Sherwood Anderson, author of Winesburg, Ohio, came to New Orleans in 1922 and encouraged other writers to follow suit. He was partly responsible for drawing William Faulkner to the city.

    Two-time Edgar-Award-winner James Lee Burke is best known for his Cajun detective, Dave Robicheaux.

Michael Lewis, Rhoda Faust

    In 1920, writers and intellectuals in New Orleans founded The Double Dealer, a literary magazine that went on to publish such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, and Edmund Wilson.

   Faulkner wrote a piece for The Double Dealer called "New Orleans."It includes sketches of eleven different New Orleans characters, including the priest, the beggar, the artist, and the tourist. He also wrote and set his novel Mosquitoes in New Orleans.

   Occasional residents and visitors to the city included Gertrude Stein, John Dos Passos, Sinclair Lewis, and Thomas Wolfe.

   William Spratling and Faulkner created a book of caricatures of local figures titled Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles. Anderson was not amused.

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