
THE KUMQUAT BOOKSTORE
228 LEE LANE
Ann Moores, who opened The Kumquat two decades ago, said that her sons are in college and she is ready to go on trips with her husband, a petroleum enginner whose work takes him out-of-state. "We have an empty nest now," Moores said. "It didn't make any sense for me to stay."
Percy, author of numerous novels including "The Moviegoer," suggested naming it after the little orange fruit; Moores does not know why. "He just liked the sound of it, I think," she said.
"Percy was such a private person, this was a public place where people could get a glimpse of him," said Edward Dupuy, a professor of communications at St. Joseph's Seminary College and author of "Autobiography in Walker Percy: Repetition, Recovery, and Redemption."
Writer Sheila Bosworth remembers such glimpses of Percy, who died in 1990. "I used to drive by and (Percy) used to sit on the swing outside. He was only there for a few minutes, but there he was, one of the great literary geniuses of the 20th century just sitting there," she said.
Moores sold the building to a clothing boutique called ReElle, which plans to move in by September. She said the openings of the mammoth Books-A-Million near Covington and the Barnes & Noble superstore in Metairie had no bearing on her decision. "One day, my husband was out of town and my son was on a trip and I thought 'I don't want to be home alone like this,'" she said.