Explore "Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century" by John Loughery on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
NEW ORLEANS WAS "SURELY THE most civilized spot in America," Sherwood Anderson wrote to his brother in 1924, comparing the "hard fist" of Chicago, which he knew all too well, to the "open hand" of the city on the Gulf. New Orleans, he felt, offered the charm of Creole culture, a leisurely pace of life, and a picturesque setting in which to write and bask in the sun. Dorothy was less interested in culture or leisure, though the picturesque was on her mind-as was forgetting the immediate past and pushing herself to get on with her own writing.
From the two rooms she, Della, and Mary rented on St. Peter Street in the Vieux Carré, within walking distance of Jackson Square and the French market on the Mississippi River, she worked on her new novel, corresponded with the Bonis about her constantly shifting publication date, and solicited blurbs for her dust jacket from Eugene O'Neill, Floyd Dell, Mary Heaton Vorse, and Llewellyn Jones. She told Jones early in the new year that she was having, on the whole, a "lovely time" with Della and Mary, though the three of them were living at the moment largely on shrimp, rice, oranges, and bananas. Mary had a wonderful sense of humor and exhibited a "huge appetite for a 'good time. 'â" It was the right place for anyone in search of a good time. There were "lots of pretty boys around," she noted excitedly. She was drinking "a little but not too much" and was in general "being godly and righteous according to my lights. " Presumably Jones, now a confidante, knew what that meant.