[percy-l] Walker Percy, New Orleans and a Thought for All Souls’ Day

lowry.charles at gmail.com lowry.charles at gmail.com
Tue Nov 2 13:51:46 EDT 2021


From “The City of the Dead”:

“The cemeteries, true cities of the dead, seem at once livelier and more exotic to the visitor newly arrived, say, from the upper Protestant South where cemeteries are sedate ‘memorial gardens,’ or from New York City, where mile after mile of Queens is strewn with gray stone, a vast gloomy moraine.  A New Orleans cemetery is a city in miniature, streets, curbs, iron fences, its tombs above ground—otherwise, the coffins would float out of the ground—little two-story dollhouses complete with doorstep and lintel.  The older cemeteries are more haphazard, tiny lanes as crooked as old Jerusalem, meandering aimlessly between the cottages of the dead….

“They, the little cities, are liveliest on All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day when families turn out to fix up the family tomb, polishing or whitewashing the stone, scrubbing the doorstep for all the world like Baltimore housewives scrubbing the white steps of row houses….  Even now, All Saints’ and All Souls‘ have a more festive air than otherwise—should they not?—startlingly different from the unctuous solemnity of Forest Lawn.  Crowds throng the tiny streets, housekeeping for the dead, setting out flowers real and plastic, perhaps regilding the lettering, while vendors hawk candy and toys for the children, and on All Souls’ saying a not noticeably sad prayer or two for the dead.”

Et fidelium animae per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace.

Sent from my iPhone


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