New Orleans Needs My 'Weird' Mother

In response to your Aug. 8 page-one story "Nobody Said Boo When Anne Rice Came to New Orleans":

I guess it's more than natural for a son to respond to accusations that his mother is "weird". My response is, yes, she is weird. It takes a weird woman to embark on a mission to revive a corner of religious history that is being consumed by urban neglect and crumbling from white flight. It takes a weird woman to open her doors to the trick-or-treating children of the projects, when everyone else runs in the opposite direction. It takes a weird woman to hold her book-signing far from the comfortable confines of the Garden District Book Store, the signing's usual site, just to spend an excessive amount of money accommodating her guests in a strange neighborhood so that they can see what happens "when it takes a lot to unsettle people." It takes a weird, wonderful woman to put her neck out for what she believes in when the "genteel" try to fight her with all they have.

What better city for such a weird woman than New Orleans, where "weird" is an accurate description of the Louisiana politics that left the shell of a promised casino sitting smack in the middle of downtown serving as more of an eyesore and a traffic problem than a dream of a new industry. But as an 18-year-old boy who has grown up in this weird city with the weird Vampire Novelist as his loving and dedicated mother and is about to leave it behind for his next four years of college, I can say that it is going to take something very weird to save this city.

Christopher Rice
New Orleans

- The Wall Street Journal, September 3, 1996