“Reading
Madame Vieux Carré” copyright 2012 Kristin Fouquet
My week started
off badly. Sprinting to the phone, I sprained my right gastrocnemius and found
I could no longer stand or walk without assistance. As humbling an experience
as it was, I decided to accept it as an opportunity to slow down and spend some
time reading. I bought Madame Vieux Carré: The French Quarter of the Twentieth Century by Scott S. Ellis as
a research book. I’m writing a novel set in the Quarter in 1961 and I thought
the book would be a good resource. Well, it certainly was, but it became so
much more for me.
While I have
always loved the French Quarter of my hometown, New Orleans, I found myself
falling more in love with her as I made my way through the pages of this book.
Mr. Ellis did thorough research and even accounted personal experiences as an
inhabitant of the neighborhood in the 1980s. As I hobbled back and forth on
crutches between reading, I contemplated my own aging. I was a denizen of the Vieux Carré when I was ages 20-23 in
the early 1990s. It was an impressionable time for me for many reasons and I
felt emotionally safe in Madame’s world. One does not simply dwell in the
French Quarter, one has a relationship with her. You become a character in her
ever-changing play.
This book is a
scholarly work of history, including endnotes in accordance with the Chicago
Manual of Style. However, it is endlessly accessible with moments of great
humor and eyewitness accounts. A large part of my affection for Madame Vieux
Carré is my belief it was a labor of love. I do not know Mr. Ellis
personally nor professionally, but the author writes with such eloquence and
honesty, I make the assumption. Only several years shy of being three centuries
old, Madame wears her beauty well. While I live Uptown, I will in the days to
come be off of these crutches and once again visit the Vieux Carré. I will traverse her streets with a deeper love for
knowing more of her secrets.
Madame Vieux Carré
Kristin Fouquet
January 20, 2012
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