An observation about disguises: the New Orleans French Quarter has long attracted artists and writers and homosexuals for the good and understandable reasons given above: Latinity, quaintness, moderate exoticness, Mardi Gras, the usual para-Catholic aura- and the easiest way to get out of Mississippi and Ohio. But it is also a para-creative aura. Just as the denizens of the Vieux Carre live in the penumbra of the cathedral, they also live in the penumbra of art. Surprisingly little first-class art has come out of the French Quarter, even though it rather self-consciously imitates the décor of the Left Bank, habitat of many great artists years ago. This life style, as it is called, reminds one of the urban cowboy who secretly believes that if he dresses and walks like a cowboy, he may be a cowboy…

A prediction: What with artist types and writer types and homosexuals (who must be applauded for their good taste in cities: New Orleans, San Francisco, Key West) taking over such places as the French Quarter, and business types and lawyer types going cowboy, I predict that working artists and writers will revert to the vacated places. In fact, they’re already turning up in ordinary houses and ordinary streets long since abandoned by the Hemingways and Agees. Soon they’ll be wearing ordinary shirts and pants and Thom McAn shoes, not altogether unconsciously, but as a kind of exercise in the ordinary.