Letter from New Orleans: It was appropriate that a symposium to mark the centenary of the death of Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn survived Hurricane Ivan, because Hearn's most notable work in the 10 years he lived here was the novella Chita: A Memory of Last Island about the great disaster of 1856 when a hurricane hit Ile d'Derniere and left thousands dead.
But that was such a long time ago, and so much more goes on in the Big Easy than the odd hurricane scare or a symposium on some ghostly literary fugitive. The Crescent City is built on a bend of the great Mississippi, just before it submits to the sea. It is one of the world's most celebrated party towns and is a rich cultural gumbo of fabulous Creole and Cajun cuisine, and the eternal muse to a myriad of wonderful writers and musicians.
New Orleans is as much influenced by European and Caribbean flavours as American ones. Cockfighting, for example, is an issue in a current local election. The French Quarter, with so much Spanish colonial architecture, offers a happy suggestion of what Old Havana might one day become. It is also Caribbean-like in the way it lulls you into old habits, and you may find yourself sucking on the odd cigar or taking a spoonful of sugar.
The French Quarter seems to weave a strange magic spell. A whispering sibilance sounds from hidden alleys suggesting some dark arts being performed - could it be the old voodoo queen Marie Laveau? She and our Lafcadio were rumoured to have had a scandalous affair.
Here in the afternoon haze, a heavy heat imposes a dreamy languor, and tropical lianas loll from balconies of old colonial houses. In the evenings the world seems to drowse in a sweet melancholy, and the senses become stirred by moonlight and magnolia, and the call of the mockingbird. One can rouse only to reach for a cool mint julep and to imagine someone somewhere shouting, "Stella! Steeell-laaa!"
But for those still in possession of the sweet bird of youth, it is always party time. It has been said that the Big Easy is where America comes to sin. On Bourbon Street there's something for every discerning hedonist, from the strip joints to the gaming rooms and dive bars.
Kiosks sell "Huge Ass Beer" takeaways to party animals. And if you have enjoyed the best book ever about New Orleans, John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, you will have to restrain yourself from an impulse to hug the careworn hot-dog vendors, who share an occupation with the book's anti-hero and all-round loveable curmudgeon, Ignatius J Reilly.
I discover that one of Lafcadio Hearn's old residences on Bourbon is now, alas, a strip joint called Big Daddy's Bottomless Bar (reliable sources tell me the bottomless bit is a lie). A nice irony since it has been claimed by some of his more excitable biographers that Hearn occasionally strayed into the infamous Storyville area for spiritual consolation.
Despite the limited lurid side, it must be emphasised that all is not tacky on Bourbon Street, and certainly not in the rest of the bijou Quarter, most of which consists of fine eminently respectable establishments. You have the legendary Galatoires and Arnaud's restaurants, with Antoine's nearby, and amazing old-time jazz in the historic Preservation Hall, or blues in Papa Joe's, or maybe just a Ramos gin fizz in Tony Moran's Old Absinthe House, where Oscar Wilde and Lafcadio Hearn were past patrons. But it is really the antique shops, old bookshops and chic galleries that set the elegant tone pervading in the Quarter.
New Orleans is of course the home of jazz, and in the constellation of dazzling jazzmen none shines brighter than the great Louis Armstrong. You might be surprised to hear that when "Satchmo" finally tied up Lady the mule and abandoned his coal cart after earning his first income from playing the coronet, he rushed out to buy the records of his favourite musicians, one of whom was Count John McCormack, whose phrasing, he said, was beautiful.
Among the locals, you may notice some fine southern manners. One morning I sneezed while having a coffee and beignets in the Café du Monde on Decatur Street, near the French Market, when two young women at another table turned simultaneously and said, "Bless you". Perhaps the most endearing local manner though is the way shop assistants and barmaids pepper their sentences when serving you with sultry Elvis-like singing sounds, such as, "okay, baby", "you got it, baby", or just plain sweet "baby".
Indeed, such is the importance of decorum here that the local newspaper, the Times-Picayune, even has an etiquette columnist, Miss Manners, who is appalled, for example, by any notion of creating a scene, and when answering questions always begins with, "Gentle Reader". You can imagine her as the fallen Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire announcing in a fragile, yet imperious drawl, "I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action."
In a place of such abundant exotic curiosities, surprises and conundrums, oddly enough the strangest one of all was beamed in from Ireland. One evening, I came back to my lodgings on Ursuline Street only to find the boyish, pixie visage of the recently wed Daniel O'Donnell staring out from a Christian television channel. He was wearing a shiny silver suit and doing a "sexy" little "Chandler Bing" shuffle, while smiling sincerely and singing of salvation.
Talking directly to camera, Daniel's gentle plea to the god-fearing folk of Louisiana was that they should donate generous sums to the TV station, for which they would receive his CDs and DVDs. The cost? Oh, $70 to $200 a throw, would do nicely thank you very much. Only through prayer and perhaps buying his goodie bag, might the world's terrible troubles "at the minute" be assuaged.
The Lord moves in mysterious ways, gentle reader, marriage imposes great financial burdens, and old man river he just keep rolling along.
