The Reader Travels

It’s amazing what you come up with if you search Yahoo! or Google for “Blanche Dubois Drag Queen.” You simply can’t count the number of drag queens who go by the stage name of Blanche Dubois.

Some people like to interpret that maybe Blanche really was a drag queen or a transsexual in A Streetcar Named Desire. She didn’t need the lights dimmed low to hide the wrinkles around her eyes. She needed to hide her Adam’s apple and the slight stubble upon her cheeks. Right?

But according to Tennessee Williams, if he wanted to write about a drag queen, he’d write about a drag queen. As a matter of fact, he did, in one of the recently rediscovered plays, And Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Queens. Maybe we should all check that out.

Sting’s song from The Dream of the Blue Turtles is, of course, a tribute to Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. I enjoyed Interview, but I couldn’t finish The Vampire Lestat. I just couldn’t get past all that hokey rock star crap.

Interview takes us to the old mansions before they got too old, where we get to party with a couple of hot young aristocrats. And what would a vampire story in New Oreans be without a few trips through the cemeteries? I also love the homo-erotic undertones. They make me sweat.

I have friends who have nothing good to say about Anne Rice, but I enjoyed The Witching Hour, too. Yes, the descriptions drag on, and she gets a little preachy, but I couldn’t stop turning the pages.

I can’t really stomach all the spanking in her porn, though. It’s a shame too, because the erotic nature of her mainstream works would make her a natural for some more intense erotic writing. It doesn’t quite measure up, though, sorry to say.

I say, leave your clothes on and the lights down low, Ms. Rice. Savor the mystery and the allure of the dark.

It always bugs me when some movie or TV show portrays someone from New Orleans with one of those generic southern accents. I mean, no one in New Orleans sounds like that.

On the other hand, when I saw the movie City Hall, which took place in New York City, I said, “There’s something wrong here. John Cusack doesn’t sound like he’s from New York. He sounds like he’s from Louisiana.” In the next scene, we find out his character is from Louisiana. I was pleased.

Traveling around New Orleans, you’ll hear a wide variety of accents and inflections, much like New York or London. It makes me think of Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady and how much fun he would have in Greater New Orleans.

My family moved out of New Orleans when I was in the first grade, so I lost my accent long ago. But I love to hear my cousins talk when we visit, and I love to hear my mother’s accent resurface when she’s talking on the phone to her sister.

So, when I read A Confederacy of Dunces, I found myself reading it out loud so I could hear Ignatius Reilly and his mother talking to each other in their rich, nasal tones. It felt like home, dahlin’.

So you may be able to find a life of prosperity, comfort and ease in Florida, but you still have to worry about hurricane season and petty gossip.

Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God gives us a look at some of the natural scenery of southern Georgia, northern Florida and the Everglades. From sunshine and pear trees to the wildness and beauty of the wetlands.

So, if you meet a young hottie named Tea Cake, and you have a chance to ride him all over the Everglades, you gotta do it, honey, hurricanes and all.

While I’m here in Georgia, I ought to mention one of my favorite works of art — Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. It was already one of my favorite movies long before I actually read the book.

My brother-in-law Dave once told me that he usually liked to watch a movie first because it was too easy to ruin a movie by reading the book first; but it wasn’t as easy to ruin the book if you’d already seen the movie. Movies are much more fragile that way. Regardless, I was a little worried when I started reading The Color Purple.

Even though I knew the movie story so well and the music had touched me to my core, I was still amazed at how much richness and color was packed into that skinny, little book. Honestly, I think it’s a linguistic masterpiece, up there with Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. (How’s that for a comparison? Wrong, I know.)

Recently a dear friend gave me a book called, The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult. It was Alice Walker’s memoir of making her book into a movie with Steven Spielberg and Quincy Jones. It was so much more than a memoir, for it included her original screenplay, the liner notes from the soundtrack and fan mail from people who had been touched by her words.

The lady is something special. I saw her speak here in Dallas a few years ago, and she was ready to move on, ready to talk about her other works, and why does everyone always want to talk about The Color Purple? I have enjoyed her other novels, and I quote them often, for their messages have real meaning for me. But I believe her true talents as a writer lie in her shorter works, those power-packed, poetic short stories and that little, skinny book that first gave us Celie and Shug.

Dipping further south along the Atlantic coast, you’ll find the lovely old town of Savannah, Georgia. Of course, you simply must spend at least one Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

There’s not a lot of plot, but there are plenty of colorful characters. In fact, when I read the book, I really couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about, and when my friends told me how bad the movie was, I wasn’t at all surprised, despite Kevin Spacey and despite John Cusack, because the plain and simple fact of the matter was that, well, let me say it again - the story had no friggin’ plot.

So, what was all the fuss about? I’ll tell you. It was all about those wacky Savannah people - from the rich eccentric on trial for murder to the conspiracy guy who may or may not be poisoning the city’s water supply to the flashy transvestite who steals the show. It was the people and the vivid descriptions of the historic city where they live that had readers raving about the book and discovering the coastal town of Savannah for themselves.

After all, people just adore gossip.

While you’re touring Baltimore, you should have Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Okay, so maybe there’s no such place, but I’m sure you can find plenty of good comfort food around the city.

When something’s missing in your family or in your heart, fill the gaps with hot soup and warm bread. Not too much, though. You don’t want to burn your tongue or die of heart disease.