New Orleans History -- Lake Pontchartrain
Monday, October 07, 2024
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1920's & 30's - Mosquitoes and Pylon

Quotes from a Gambit Weekly article (Rising Star, by W. Kenneth Holditch) about William Faulkner's life in New Orleans:

'In the next few months (1926), Faulkner wrote much of his second novel, Mosquitoes, which was a satiric look at the life of the artists and writers in the Quarter. The story grew out of a yacht cruise on Lake Pontchartrain attended by several members of the creative community the year before. Although the humor is hardly cruel, Anderson was not amused, and many of the others portrayed were still angry 50 years later, feeling that the writer they had befriended had betrayed their trust. Besides Mosquitoes, Faulkner was already at work on his first novel set in his mythical Yoknapatawpha County, Flags in the Dust, and on Father Abraham, a manuscript that would ultimately become the Snopes trilogy.

Endless Inspiration
Given the fact that Faulkner lived in New Orleans for only 15 or 16 months, the city's influence upon his work was astounding. When he arrived in early 1925, he had written nothing to indicate what lay ahead, but by the time he left at the end of 1926, he had produced two novels, begun work on three others and published a sizable number of newspapers and magazines pieces. He would return to New Orleans on several occasions -- in 1934 for the opening of Shushan airport, about which he wrote the novel Pylon, and again in 1951 when he was awarded the French Legion of Honor.'

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