How long before we can again use New Orleans as a setting?

[Penelope Street]

When can we use New Orleans as a setting without the reader recalling the hurricane?

I'm not talking about writing a story involving the hurricane or the aftermath; I mean any story. I read a story the other day, one written at least a year ago; and as soon as a character mentioned Tulane I was jolted right out of the story, back to the images I'd seen on television.

By coincidence, the story I spend a large part of last July writing is set in Louisiana and features a scene in New Orleans. Some timing huh? I'm not worried so much that anyone will imagine I am trying to capitalize on the disaster- I just don't want the reader jarred out of my tale for the same reason I was jolted out of the other story. So how before most readers won't picture the disaster the instant they see "New Orleans" in a story?

(A) It's ok now.
(B) Another six months
(C) Another year
(D) Two years
(E) Longer

 

[Guest]

I'm from Baton Rouge. I also have a couple of stories ready to go that have a setting in New Orleans and have put them off for the reason you have stated. I've been reading a book, Swan Song by Robert McCammon, a 1987 horror-suspense novel about what happens after a nuclear holocaust. It mentions the Empire States building and the World Trade Center being blasted and flattened. I read that about WTC and winced. I think we will always feel a twinge of pain while reading stories that have settings where horrible disasters occured.

As far a posting a story with such settings, I'm not much help because I was wondering the same.

 

[NoJo]

The place will never be the same. So I guess N.O. stories will never be the same, either.

 

[Weird Harold]

When can we use New Orleans as a setting without the reader recalling the hurricane?

I'm not talking about writing a story involving the hurricane or the aftermath; I mean any story. I read a story the other day, one written at least a year ago; and as soon as a character mentioned Tulane I was jolted right out of the story, back to the images I'd seen on television.

Some readers will never get over associating "New Orleans" with "Devastion and Ruin" but that is the readers' problem and not the authors'.

However, a story about New Orleans or set in New Orleans is pretty much the same as a story about or set in London or Dresden -- there is far more history to those places than the "Devastation and Ruin," which is such a small part of their histories when all is said and done.

I never did know enough about New Orlean to set a story there, but If I had a story idea that involved New Orleans, or worked best if set in New Orleans, I would do my best to celebrate what New Orleans was (and will be again someday) without worrying about whether some readers will have bad associations with either the name or the setting.

 

[amicus]

Not sure it will ever be the same. Someone mentioned the twin towers and I have been surprised at the number of films on television that used the New York skyline as a backdrop.

I am also surprised that my response is an emotional one the moment the pop onto the screen.

On New Orleans though, I think the French Quarter, which to my understanding did not suffer great damage, was the usual setting, or at least included in the settings, so it may not change.

Didn't Ann Rice have a mansion or a story set somewhere in New Orleans?

amicus...

 

[Guest]

 

[Colleen Thomas]

My first stories that i gave a public showing are set in new orleans. I have set several others in the city or it's enviorns. For me, I will always remember New Orleans as I knew it pre-Katrina. Even if I visit it will always be the City I remember from my childhood.

My opinion then is set stories there whenever you have one that cries out for such a setting.

 

[Tom Collins]

My experience in reading N.O. stories is that if the story well written enough and the author makes no mention of Katrina I can forget, become totally involved in the tale and see it as it was without thinking about how it is. That goes for N.Y. too.

 

[Tom Collins]

Didn't Ann Rice have a mansion or a story set somewhere in New Orleans?

amicus...

Most what Anne Rice has written is set in and around New Orleans. There are, occasionally, other settings within a book, but she always comes back to N.O. That's where she lives too.

 

[ScribeOfErised]

My first stories that i gave a public showing are set in new orleans. I have set several others in the city or it's enviorns. For me, I will always remember New Orleans as I knew it pre-Katrina. Even if I visit it will always be the City I remember from my childhood.

My opinion then is set stories there whenever you have one that cries out for such a setting.

Exactly. I spent several a lot of time there during my childhood. So, even though my head knows that most of my old haunts are damaged beyond belief, or repair, my soul remembers the smell taste of beignets melting in my mouth, the humming of the cicadas, the ghost stories and the voodoo house that we all ran past on the way home from school. I know that my Aunt Hattie's house is gone, and it's going to be wrench when I see it again, but I can always go back in my head and sip dr pepper on her verandah and spit sunflower hulls at the bees in the spanish moss.

Sadly, the lady herself passed away a few years ago and the house went to a distant cousin. Ironically enough, the cemetary where she was interred was mostly for poor people. It's very hard to get to, and to get into, and it's small and narrow. It's on a small rise of ground so it weathered the flooding rather well.

 

[Penelope Street]

Thanks to all for taking the time to reply. I was hoping I might get some feel as to how long it would be before the average reader could come across "New Orleans" in a piece of fiction and not envision a flooded city. What I think I'm hearing is that most could read past it now, though some might be jarred a little.

Only one scene of my story is set in New Orleans, and even then the characters only go clubbing, so I could probably change it to Miami without too much trouble. Even so, I like it the way it is and I've decided to submit it unchanged, probably sometime in late spring.

Thanks Bunches &
Take Care,
Penny