New Orleans Has Repeatedly Played Muse to Authors Born Here, Like Truman Capote, Or Lured Here, Like William Faulkner and Sherwood Anderson
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NEW ORLEANS From Bienville to Bourbon Street to bounce. 300 moments that make New Orleans unique. WHAT HAPPENED In 1925, while 1718 ~ 2018 living in the French Quarter, William Faulkner wrote a series 300 of stories, “New TRICENTENNIAL Orleans Sketches.” New Orleans has repeatedly played muse to authors born here, like Truman Capote, or lured here, like William Faulkner and Sherwood Anderson. Though none stayed long, the city’s impact on their work was long standing. Anderson LA. STATE LIBRARY first visited New Orleans in 1922 and soon came to live here with his new wife. He was the center of literary and social life for the bohemian crowd in the French Quarter. He mentored several writers in the city, including a young Mississippi writer, William Faulkner, who moved to New Orleans in 1925. Faulkner first lived with the Andersons and then on Pi- rate’s Alley, where he wrote the poorly received “Soldier’s Pay.” Anderson advised Faulkner to MUSEUM OF MODERN ART return to Mississippi to write what he knew. Truman Capote’s semi-autobiographical novel ‘Other Voices, Other Rooms’ tells the story Anderson himself moved away from New Or- of a 13-year-old, slightly effeminate boy who is sent to New Orleans to live with his father. THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION leans after about five years here, complaining of the heat and the water running off his back Sherwood Anderson’s novel, ‘Dark Laughter,’ was based in part by while he worked. Anderson’s observations of New Truman Capote was born in New Orleans as Orleans. The title references the laughter and singing of African- these authors were leaving. He liked to say he American people whom the was born in the Hotel Monteleone, where his book’s protagonist meets in New mother was living, but he was actually born at Orleans. Anderson lived in the Pontalba Apartments. Touro Infirmary. When he was young, Capote was sent to live with his aunts in Monroeville, Ala., but returned to New Orleans for summers and holidays. He moved with his mother and her new husband to New York in the 1930s. But William Faulker wrote his Capote came back to New Orleans in 1945 and novel ‘Soldier’s Pay’ at a home on Pirate’s Alley lived at 811 Royal St., where he wrote part of his which is now home to first novel. Capote considered New Orleans his Faulkner House Books. hometown and returned here frequently. THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION.