The best bookstore that won’t have any best sellers
Tucked away in a narrow alley behind the St. Louis Cathedral is a bookstore that’s no larger than the Pets and Nature section in a Barnes and Noble. But each volume on the packed shelves has been carefully chosen. If you’re looking for a memoir by a Kardashian or the latest installment of a dystopian fantasy, you won’t find it here. Faulkner House Books is a sanctuary for Literature with a capital L.
In 1990, Joe DeSalvo, ex-lawyer turned premier collector and bibliophile, and his wife, Rosemary James, a former New Orleans newscaster and noted interior decorator (you can see her work in the film Interview with a Vampire), bought the building that once served as William Faulkner’s home and painstakingly restored the upper floors for their residence and the first floor as an elegant, chandelier-decorated bookstore.
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Address 624 Pirate’s Alley, New Orleans, LA 70116, +1 504.524.2940, www.faulknerhousebooks.net | Hours Daily10am–5pm| Tip While many cities have seen their independent bookstores slowly disappear, New Orleans still has a handful of healthy ones. In addition to Faulkner House, there’s Octavia Books (513 Octavia St), Maple Street Book Shop (7529 Maple St), Garden District Book Shop (2727 Prytania St), and Blue Cypress Books (8126 Oak St). All have excellent selections of New-Orleans related titles. All sponsor readings and signings on a regular basis.
Not yet considered the greatest American novelist of the 20th century when he resided at 624 Pirate’s Alley, the young Faulkner spent his time in New Orleans the way many 20-year-olds do: mixing drinks in his bathtub, challenging friends to footraces over rooftops in the Quarter, and shooting at passersby with a BB gun. Somehow he also found the time to write a series of stories entitled New Orleans Sketches and the novels Mosquitoes and Soldier’s Pay.
The shop often has rare and first editions of books by or about Faulkner in their ground-floor collection located on the other side of an iron gate and away from the main selling area. They’ve also had signed volumes by Truman Capote, Lillian Hellman, and other pillars of New Orleans literary history. More-contemporary authors, such as Willie Morris, Elizabeth Spencer, William Styron, and Barry Gifford, have all made in-store appearances.
The spirit of Faulkner, who died in 1962, is said to still occasionally drop by to make inappropriate advances every time Joe and Rosemary hire an attractive female clerk.
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