Augusten Burroughs didn’t set out to become the new bad boy of American letters when he careened onto the bestseller lists two years ago with Running with Scissors, his hilarious, horrifying account of the world’s worst childhood: it just happened, like much of his highly unconventional life to date. Abandoned by his dysfunctional parents to the "care" of his mother’s lunatic shrink, his Valium-gobbling patients and the pedophile next door, Burroughs left formal education in the fourth grade, overcame childhood sexual abuse, earned his GED at 17 ("It was like, Spell cat,’ " he recalls) and by 19 was a New York advertising writer responsible for $200 million accounts. Unusual events seem to form a static-like cling to Burroughs, leaving him to process them the best way he knows how by writing about them.

There are dark passages indeed to Burroughs’ modern-day Horatio Alger tale as depicted in Running and its 12-step sequel, Dry. America may not have been quite prepared for his depiction of addiction, obsession, AIDS and graphic gay sex, but we soldier through the grim stuff for the same reason Burroughs did: in the belief that love and happiness lie just around the next ordeal. He has earned his place alongside such singular dysfunctional hall of famers as Oscar Levant (The Memoirs of an Amnesiac), Frederick Exley (A Fan’s Notes) and Jim Carroll (The Basketball Diaries).

So it came as a relief to hear Burroughs’ upbeat tone as he spoke by cell phone from the newly paved driveway of the home he and Dennis, his partner of five years, are building in Amherst, Massachusetts, a few blocks from his brother and not far from the unsettling sites of Running with Scissors. It’s the very Beaver Cleaver moment that the articulate, engaging Burroughs has been dreaming about most of his life.

"I never had a home, never had a home with a washer and dryer, so this is a first," he says. "These are the days when I’m finding myself in grocery stores, which is something I never did, and that kind of thing fascinates me. I can’t tell you how much I love Target and Costco, that kind of culture, because it’s something I never felt a part of. I’ve always felt like a tourist because I have never fit in anywhere."

Burroughs’ new beginning is evident throughout Magical Thinking: True Stories, his first collection of funny, edgy essays drawn from a life way less than ordinary. Raise your hand if you’ve ever been cast in elementary school for a Tang commercial only to be left on the cutting-room floor, drowned a rat in your bathtub, had the roof of your mouth splayed open by a dentist on a routine visit, or had a gay fling with an undertaker in the same viewing room where Rose Kennedy’s wake took place.

What keeps us laughing and turning the pages even as we shudder at the thought of these experiences is Burroughs’ unflagging humor, relentless optimism and endearingly self-deprecating style. Witness his response when a particularly odiferous street person shows up at a book signing:

"But then, look at me. My brain is incorrectly formed, and I’m shaped like a tube. Plus, I’m an alcoholic, a survivor’ of childhood sexual abuse, was raised in a cult and have no education. So, really, if you think about it, the only thing that separates me from the guy with the stinky foot and no teeth is a book deal and some cologne."

At 40, Burroughs is free of the stampeding alcoholism that threatened to trample him (see Dry), unchained from the lucrative but unfulfilling world of advertising and involved in a relationship that evens out his eccentricities. His last bout with substances was muscle-enhancing steroids, chronicled here in a chapter called "Roid Rage," that ended with a herniated disc from weightlifting. The fact that he only chews a half a box of nicotine gum a day is almost quaint, considering.

Burroughs says he understands how readers might get the wrong idea about him.

"When people meet me, many times they’re very surprised because they expect someone who is kind of wacky with seven piercings and very hip and cool and New York City, and I’m not," he says. "I’m like the guy who prepares your taxes or a dentist. I’m very conservative and boring in a lot of ways." OK, so your accountant doesn’t regale you with tales of gay sex. But Burroughs maintains he’s not out to shock anybody; he merely presents the details of his admittedly unusual experiences to underscore the universal themes of his writing.

"I think people tend to see the bigger point, which is maybe not fitting in and feeling like you didn’t have the childhood that you expected you would have, or that you felt lonely or struggled with drugs and alcohol or just that you were able to achieve your dreams. These are the themes that I personally struggled with."

There is a sense of completion about Magical Thinking (the title is a psychological term for the belief that one exerts more influence over events than one actually has), a sweeping-up that suggests the author may be ready to move beyond his fractured past. Early next year, shooting begins on the film version of Running with Scissors, with Julianne Moore as Burroughs’ mother and Jill Clayburgh as the psychiatrist’s wife. But for Burroughs, his imperfect past will always be, in the words of Pat Conroy, "a renewable thing."

"I really look at my childhood as being one giant rusty tuna can that I continue to recycle in many different shapes. As a child, I was never drawn toward depraved or extreme situations; I really wanted a normal little childhood. Unfortunately, that’s just not what happened. But I ended up having the ability to appreciate this strangeness I found, an ability to use it for something better."

Jay MacDonald urges all families to keep the "fun" in dysfunctional.

Ernestine Bradley is the wife of Bill Bradley, the former basketball star, U.S. senator from New Jersey and 2000 presidential aspirant. But she dwells neither on sports nor politics in The Way Home: A German Childhood, An American Life, her engaging account of growing up in wartime Germany and then flowering as an adult in America. Although her marriage to Bradley clearly put her in the company of the glamorous and mighty, she doesn’t gossip or drop names. Her focus, instead, is on coming to terms with her parents particularly her self-involved mother and finding her own way in a culture she first glimpsed through its conquering army.

Bradley came to America in 1957, when she was 21 years old and working as a stewardess for Pan American airlines. The following year, she married an American doctor and moved to Atlanta. There she gave birth to her first child, earned a doctorate in comparative literature and began her long career as a college teacher. After the marriage ended, she moved to New York, leaving her child in the custody of her former husband. In 1974, she married Bradley, who would go on to serve 18 years in the Senate. While he lived in Washington (and eventually took care of their young daughter), she continued to teach in New Jersey. Such an arrangement, she observes, was perfectly congruent with the then-prevailing feminist values to which she enthusiastically subscribed.

Speaking to BookPage from her home in New Jersey, Bradley explains why her book concentrates more on what was going on inside her mind than the minute details of what was happening around her. “I think the world always needs some interpretation,” she says, her German accent still distinct. “Otherwise we face it blindly. Without a structure, you can’t process whatever information there is.” Although she says she made some good friends in Washington during her husband’s tenure in the Senate, Bradley admits she was not drawn to the town’s social scene or political intrigues. “So many of the people you meet in Washington, particularly among the political participants, you don’t really develop friendships with. They are all purpose-based contacts, I would say.” Fully half the book is devoted to the author’s life in Germany. Her descriptions of Passau and Ingolstadt, the towns in which she grew up, are vivid and often warm, despite the deprivations she suffered. Always at the center of her recollections is her domineering mother, who was simultaneously an inspiration and a burden. Ernestine was conceived out of wedlock, but by the time she was born, her mother had made a marriage of convenience. That marriage ended eight years later when Ernestine’s real father, a German soldier, came back into the picture. It was not until her mother’s death in 2001 that Bradley seemed able to resolve their complex relationship.

“When I was a teenager the time that she influenced me most profoundly,” Bradley reflects, “I wasn’t really aware that I was being influenced heavily influenced by her. I could only read my responses . . . . [M]y actions were to get away from Ingolstadt as soon as I could. Today, in this country, [that’s] not a big deal. But at the time, which was in the late ’50s in Germany, it was a major step. I don’t know in retrospect whether it was a step of liberation or just a step to get away from this very powerful influence.” But leaving home didn’t end her mother’s influence, Bradley concedes. “I think after I came to this country, I still enacted the imprints I had received before I left. As she began to fail [physically] and I went to Germany right after the [2000] election frequently to be with her some of my thoughts began to be clearer to me. I began to understand why I had to leave, why I wanted to leave and what the cost would have been if I had stayed. Like any mother, she only wanted the best [for her children] but she always thought her way was the best.” In 1992, Bradley discovered she had breast cancer. In fighting the disease, she lost a breast. But the experience made her more resilient and philosophical. “Losing a breast is not so great an inconvenience as losing an arm or a foot,” she writes. “I am lucky.” Now retired from the faculty of Montclair State College, Bradley teaches one course a semester at the New School in New York and spends a lot more time with her husband, daughters and grandchildren. “My life,” she says with evident satisfaction, “is completely filled.” Edward Morris writes from Nashville.

On the screen, Gene Wilder is known for his comic teamings with Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor. Away from the public glare, the man with the melancholy gaze and trademark frizzy hair paints watercolors and lives in a Colonial-era house in Connecticut with his fourth wife, Karen.

How this came to be is the result of the twists, turns and ironies of his life, as detailed in his new memoir, Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art. Unfolding chronologically, in a series of vignettes, it co-stars family members, famous names, women he has loved, including his late wife Gilda Radner, and his therapist. "Writing the book was, in itself, a kind of therapy. Several years ago, a brief trip to California became a months-long visit [when his mother-in-law took ill]. I thought I'd go crazy if I didn't have something artistic to do. . . . I started writing, and whatever had built up, after, oh, Gilda, then finding my wife, Karen, and then memories from childhood . . . it just started pouring out," Wilder recalls.

No, he didn't have a ghostwriter. Speaking by phone from his home in Connecticut, he reminds us, in his soft-spoken, carefully modulated voice, that he has written "more than a half-dozen movies." No fan of tell-alls, the introspective Wilder takes his readers through his life's journey via his work, exploring the notion of fate, and how the choices we make reverberate. Consider this scenario: after auditioning six times for Jerome Robbins, Wilder was cast in the 1962 theatrical production of the Bertolt Brecht play, Mother Courage. Though he went on to realize he'd been terribly miscast, he became friendly with co-star Anne Bancroft, whose boyfriend was Mel Brooks, who told Wilder about a script he was writing which would include a role for him. Three years later, when Wilder was on Broadway, Brooks reappeared in his life to report that the deal for the film, The Producers, was at last cinched.

"Oh, my God. If it hadn't been for Mel!" says Wilder, whose performance of nebbish producer Leo Bloom led to a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. He went on to star in Brooks' nutzoid Western, Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein. He wouldn't have met Radner had director Sidney Poitier not suggested her as the leading lady in Stir Crazy. Wilder soon discovered that the "Saturday Night Live" star was as troubled as she was talented. "I said, at one point, we can't live together. And that's a fact," he admits. Indeed, he adds and writes, were it not for an episode involving Radner's Yorkshire Terrier, Sparkle, they might not have married at all.

Readers may find it surprising that Wilder doesn't romanticize his marriage to Radner. "Oh, you noticed, did you?" he deadpans. He depicts her as demanding, anxious to be loved, a fount of neuroses. But he also stuck by her during her bout with ovarian cancer. "I always thought she'd pull through," he recalls. After Radner's death in 1989, Wilder became the patient, successfully battling non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

He was halfway through writing his book when he realized "I was really writing a love story." But thinking back, he could never have anticipated this particular romance. It began with the movie, See No Evil, Hear No Evil. To prepare for his role, Wilder met with speech pathologist Karen Webb. Following Radner's death, the two reconnected and married. "But if I'd met Karen 20 years [earlier], it would never have worked. I wasn't ready for her and she wasn't ready for me."

In his book's preface, Wilder refers to the famed fountain outside the Plaza Hotel in New York City. To get past it, do you walk to the left or to the right? "I believe that whichever choice you make could change your life," he writes. In Kiss Me Like a Stranger, Wilder offers an unconventional but honest look back at where his own fateful choices have led.

Biographer Pat H. Broeske has covered Hollywood for several newspapers and magazines.

James Frey has never been shy about his towering literary ambition. Since he burst onto the scene in 2003 with A Million Little Pieces, the best-selling, highly charged memoir dissecting his recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, Frey has ruffled feathers and raised temperatures by saying things like:

"When I decided I wanted to be a writer, I didn’t get into it to be a guy who sold 15 books and got a review in the local paper. I’m in this to be one of the great writers of my time."

What is often left out of the accounts of Frey’s supposed overreaching is what he usually says next: "I don’t say that I am one of the great writers, which I think is an important distinction. But that’s the ambition, for sure. I want to be read in 75 years."

Whether Frey’s new book, My Friend Leonard, will be read in 75 years is, of course, impossible to say. But it will certainly be read – widely read – this year. While somewhat different in tone from Pieces (there is more humor and less rage, for example) My Friend Leonard is just as compelling as the first book, with the same electrifying narrative energy, stylistic daring and atmosphere of emotional risk.

My Friend Leonard takes up about where Pieces left off. Out of recovery, Frey does a stint in jail for a past drug conviction, then sets out to rebuild his life. He is advised and assisted at critical junctures by his friend Leonard, a larger-than-life Las Vegas gangster 30 years his senior whom he met in rehab and who has decided to treat Frey like the son he never had. Leonard helps Frey financially by employing him occasionally as a bagman for some of his enterprises. He guides Frey through the purchase of his first Picasso. He uses a little unfriendly persuasion when Frey’s neighbor seems about to turn murderous after an incident between their dogs. Skeptical readers might wonder if Leonard is a sort of idealized, if hard-bitten, fairy godfather. But Frey says otherwise.

"Did the stuff in the book really happen? Yeah, it did. My girlfriend killed herself the way I wrote it. Leonard helped me the way I said he helped me, died the way he died. The events in the book are the events of my life. But that’s not to say that I didn’t pick and choose what to use and how to use it. The goal was to write a great book, to create something that somebody will feel good about having read. It’s a sort of juggling act, where I have to be true to the events and the people, but where I also know that I am writing a book and that I have to be true to what the book should be," Frey says in a gravelly voice during a telephone interview.

The 35-year-old Frey and his wife, Maya, a creative director at a New York advertising agency, had their first child, a daughter, in December and are in the midst of moving to an apartment "that is a bit more baby-friendly" in New York’s Tribeca district. Frey takes the call at the home of friends, and as he talks, he moves from room to room ahead of his friends’ noisy family life.

"One thing that’s always been important to me is that nobody who has ever been in one of my books has ever had a problem with anything I’ve written," Frey continues. "They’ve never disputed my version of events or felt offended by it, even when I didn’t write about them in a positive way. Which means something."

At the very least it means that Frey is exceptionally good at conveying the emotional truths behind the events he relates. His portrait of his friendship with Leonard is deeply resonant and offers a fuller human portrait of a gangster than you’re likely to find anywhere else.

What is most striking – and most difficult to describe – is Frey’s manner of telling his tale. Here, as in A Million Little Pieces, Frey’s style is raw, visceral and emotionally electric. Frey says that when he set out to be a writer he studied writers like Hemingway, Henry Miller and Baudelaire and noted that each had a voice, a signature style that sounded like no one else’s. He deliberately set out to develop a recognizable style all his own.

"People read my books and think because they flow very easily and very simply that it must just come out that way," Frey says. "It doesn’t. I work very hard and I’m very, very deliberate and methodical in how I work."

In fact, Frey says one of the things that sets him apart from "smarter or more naturally gifted" aspiring writers of his generation is his "ability to sit there for 10 hours and get done what I need to get done, without ever losing confidence that I can do it. And to do that day after day after day after day after day."

So it’s no real surprise to learn that since completing the manuscript of My Friend Leonard, Frey has finished the screenplay for A Million Little Pieces, which will be filmed later this year, and written the script for a TV pilot for Fox. He is currently working on a screenplay for Paramount. Earlier this year, he wrote introductions for British reissues of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn.

Miller’s bold presentation of his life in his books had a powerful philosophical influence on Frey’s development as a writer, just as his friend Leonard had a powerful influence on his development as a human being. "I’ve learned a lot of things from a lot of people." Frey says. "And they all boil down to similar things: you have to be willing to hurt for what you want. You have to risk, to gain. You have to be willing to feel pain and deal with pain. You have to decide what you want out of life and be willing to pay the consequences if you want to have a great life. It’s worth it. And you’re a sucker if you don’t."

Alden Mudge writes from Oakland, California.

Julia Scheeres’ memoir Jesus Land is a painfully candid account of a family riddled with dysfunction. Scheeres, now 38, grew up in a strict Calvinist household in Lafayette, Indiana, the daughter of a surgeon and his Bible-thumping wife. Her parents’ missionary zeal led them to adopt two African-American boys when Julia was still a toddler. One of them, David, became Julia’s soul mate. Together, the two endured their upbringing and shared many trials, including a harrowing stay at Escuela Caribe, a Christian school in the Dominican Republic run by New Horizons Youth Ministries. Scheeres’ parents appear more interested in their own religiosity than their children’s emotional needs. Her father’s answer to discipline was bone-breaking brutality; meanwhile, her mother turned a blind eye to rampant behavioral problems, including David’s attempted suicide.

Julia’s other adopted brother, Jerome, grew up angry and hostile, and his repeated sexual abuse of Julia was additional torment in their ugly home life. Jesus Land concludes with the news that David, whose personal notebook inspired the memoir, died in a car crash in 1987. He was only 20 years old. Scheeres recently answered questions from BookPage about her wrenching personal story.

BookPage: Your portrait of Escuela Caribe is troubling, since what’s supposed to be a reaffirming place for confused teens comes off as an insensitive reform school. Do you think your parents made a mistake in sending you there? Julia Scheeres: I think it’s a mistake to send any child to Escuela Caribe. For $3,000 a month, you can ship your child to a Christian boot camp in the Dominican Republic, where she’ll receive a substandard education, learn to spout “Praise Jesus,” and be so traumatized she’ll have nightmares about it for the rest of her life. Escuela Caribe is essentially a dumping ground for the problem teens of wealthy evangelicals. Many students come from homes where they were emotionally, physically or sexually harmed, yet these issues aren’t addressed by the school. Such camps are located in foreign countries for good reason: to evade U.S. regulations governing child welfare, academic quality and housing standards. The whole point of Escuela Caribe is to break the “rebellious teenage spirit” through humiliation, intimidation and suspending simple freedoms and convert kids into Christian automatons.

BP: Frank memoirs involving family and abuse can be painful reading for all concerned. What have been the reactions of those involved in your life at that time? JS: My book is first and foremost a tribute to my brother David. I found a green notebook after his funeral in which he detailed what it was like to grow up black in a white, fundamentalist family and about our time together at Escuela Caribe. I wrote Jesus Land in an effort to preserve his memory and the memory of the life we shared together. I was the person who knew him best, and it’s my job to keep telling people about what a quirky, tragic and beautiful soul he was. The reaction of other family members and acquaintances wasn’t a consideration as I wrote Jesus Land.

BP: Of all the people in your book, your father seems the most mysterious. What was, or is now, your relationship with him? JS: My father was a ’50s-era dad, who left childcare to the wife and was largely absent due to his high-pressure work as a surgeon. But he was also pressured to be the Biblical head-of-the household disciplinarian. We didn’t talk about problems or issues in my house. You were told what to do, and you obeyed. If you broke the rules, you got spanked or whipped, in my brothers’ case. I grew up fearing and avoiding my father not a healthy situation. I no longer have contact with either of my parents, who work as full-time volunteers at a missionary compound in Orlando, Florida.

BP: Being the victim of sexual abuse usually holds lingering consequences. What has been the long-term emotional or behavioral fallout for you? JS: Where to begin? A rabid distrust of people, and all men in particular? Sexual frigidity and/or promiscuity? A tendency to depersonalize and/or revile sexual partners? I’m sure it’s all well-documented in the case studies. I think the most important step for me was meeting my husband, a man who blew away my low expectations for male behavior and companionship. I don’t think people ever fully recover from ritual abuse of any sort. I still get into funks, but have learned to better negotiate them.

BP: Despite your troubled youth, you’ve gone on to obtain a master’s degree and respect as a journalist. To what do you ascribe your perseverance? JS: I’ve always had a strong sense of self and an independent streak three miles wide. Growing up, I believed that if I could just escape the pettiness surrounding me, things would get better. And they have.

In the world of showbiz sidekicks, Ed McMahon is royalty—the most famous second banana, ever. Instantly identifiable, the man with the booming laugh and avuncular voice worked with Johnny Carson for more than four decades. The announcer for Carson’s daytime game show, “Who Do You Trust?” McMahon went on to spend 34 years opposite the late-night TV king on “The Tonight Show.” McMahon’s warmly affectionate Here’s Johnny! is his homage to their friendship.

“That was the best time of my life, the best years of my life, being with him,” says McMahon. Not that the famed pitchman is packing it in. To the contrary, McMahon, at 82, seems tireless. Speaking by phone from his Beverly Hills office, on the eve of a New York publicity tour, he relates that he and wife, Pam, are busy raising their niece (whose mother died as a result of a car accident). “We had the sweet 16 party with a hundred kids in the backyard.” With a laugh, he adds, “When you say your prayers tonight, say one for me, because I’m raising a teenager!” (The father of six also has six grandkids.)

McMahon, who penned a 1998 memoir, hopes this latest book will dispel some notions that have surfaced since Carson’s death early this year, especially the oft-heard claim that Carson was ice-water cold and aloof. “He was not cold, he was private. He was wonderful on camera, but once the cameras stopped, he returned to being a private man. Johnny used to say, ‘Ed, I’m great with 10 million, I’m lousy with 10.’” Noting that Carson didn’t intrude, didn’t force himself, McMahon explains, that was a result of his Nebraska-Midwestern ethic.

Along with sharing golden moments from “The Tonight Show,” McMahon gives peeks at those guests who caught some guff. Like the time a performing Ray Charles snapped at the house drummer, “Pick up the pace!” Johnny made him apologize, recalls McMahon. Then there was the off-putting appearance of comedian Charles Grodin. “It went a little too far because it left the audience out. Johnny was always very concerned about the audience,” McMahon says. “He didn’t want anything to be beyond their comprehension.”

A man who feels comfortable in a crowd, McMahon is a former carnival barker and boardwalk pitchman (he hawked the Morris Metric Slicer) who once went door-to-door selling pots and pans. At 17, he was working in radio and on early TV, as well as calling bingo games. World War II led to a stint in the skies as a Marine Corps aviator. Returning home to TV, McMahon was involved in 13 Philadelphia shows in a single year. That included hosting a late-night movie and playing a clown on a Saturday morning kiddie program. Then came a repeat of military life: he was recalled to service for the Korean War.

It was through a producer for popular Philly TV host Dick Clark that McMahon’s name surfaced as a possible announcer for Carson’s game show. McMahon took the train to New York, met with Carson, then headed back home. He wasn’t hopeful about the prospects; the meeting had lasted all of six minutes. When the show’s producer called, saying Carson wanted McMahon to wear suits, McMahon wondered what he was talking about. “Oh . . . didn’t they tell you? You got the job. You start next Monday.” And so began one of TV’s most durable partnerships.

Over the years, they shared drinks at Sardi’s, survived marriages and divorces (McMahon lucked out at number three) and endured painful losses. In 1995, when McMahon’s son died of stomach cancer, Carson called to express condolences, adding, “There’s not a day when you won’t think about him.” He was speaking from the heart: Carson’s photographer-son, Rick, had died in a 1991 car crash. (Carson famously wrapped one of his shows by airing his son’s photos.) As for what set Johnny apart from the rest of the chat pack, McMahon says, simply, “Class. He had class.” Not a big fan of some of today’s talk show hosts, and their sharp and piercing comedy, McMahon notes, “Johnny very seldom penetrated. It was always like a powder-puff. He still got the laughs, but he didn’t hurt.”

Audiences also related to Carson’s wide-eyed charm, as well as the easy-going camaraderie with McMahon, who says of their astounding adventure, “I always liken it to two kids, kicking a can down the street. We had a good time together, and it showed.”

Biographer Pat H. Broeske spends her late nights watching Jimmy Kimmel.

Poet, novelist, essayist and contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered, Andrei Codrescu is both prolific and celebrated. A professor of English at Louisiana State University, he is also the editor of the literary journal Exquisite Corpse. Romanian by birth, Codrescu has lived in and around New Orleans for more than 20 years, and his latest book, New Orleans, Mon Amour, is a collection of essays detailing his decades-long love affair with the city. The volume is particularly meaningful in light of the city’s devastation, and a percentage of the book’s proceeds will be donated to hurricane relief. Codrescu recently answered questions from BookPage about his adopted hometown and its uneasy future.

BookPage: Did this book grow out of the recent events in New Orleans or was it one you had in the back of your mind? Did you feel compelled to write it? Andrei Codrescu: I’ve been writing about New Orleans for 20 years, but it never occurred to me that the city I knew, loved and criticized, would one day cease to exist. I had no idea that I might one day not take it for granted that the character, poignancy and peculiarities of New Orleans would be unavailable to my blithe pen. After Katrina, my writings suddenly had a shape, sadly, the shape of history.

BP: In the book, you describe just how many writers live and work in New Orleans. What has been happening in that community since the hurricane? AC: Well, some of them took refuge in my Baton Rouge house. James Nolan, Jose Torres-Tama, Claudia Copeland, Jed Horne escaped from New Orleans in various dramatic ways and came to Baton Rouge. There was camaraderie, and Jimmy Nolan, a true New Orleanian, cooked five-star meals. That’s a constant of the New Orleans character: protect civilization and keep your exquisite manners even as the ship goes down. Catastrophes happen suddenly, but manners and cuisine are acquired over time, they are about permanence. Many other New Orleans writers were scattered all over the U.S., to places where they imported our story-telling, joie-de-vivre, and, possibly, drove their hosts insane with some of the local bad habits (like the occasional cigarette and the story-lubricating rum). Right now, the hardiest souls are returning: there are regular poetry readings at the Gold Mine Saloon in the French Quarter, bookstores are re-opening, books about New Orleans are feverishly written and re-issued. Every writer I know is possessed by fury and inspiration. Sadly, this time is going to be known as a golden age for New Orleans letters. I want to collect every book and scrap of paper being published now; it will all be extremely valuable to our successors. Catastrophes are always great sources of inspiration for artists because they provide seriousness, gravitas, plus endless stories.

BP: You say charm can never be used exactly the way it’s found. With that in mind, do you worry about the future of New Orleans, especially its rebuilding? AC: I worry about corporate entities like casinos and entertainment conglomerates bottling fake charm and faux-history to create a bigger tourist trap than we can imagine now. A guy in California actually wants to recreate Storyville, an ancient prostitution district without prostitutes. Now, how exactly do you do that? The charm of New Orleans was that it was never virtual, it was always a hands-on experience.

BP: You were born about as far away from the American South as one can get, and yet you have articulated exactly the feel, nature and attitude of the region and of course, of New Orleans specifically. Do you have any thoughts on how this is? AC: When I first moved to Louisiana, people asked me where I was from. When I said, Transylvania, there was a sigh of relief. At least you’re not a Yankee. I was born in Sibiu, a small town in Transylvania, Romania, that was remote and provincial, but full of magic. I knew liars, storytellers and vagabonds where I grew up. I found them again in New Orleans. The politics of Louisiana was corrupt, just like home. Everyone knew what a cop or a judge cost. When the casinos came, the scale changed. The city started on the path that I fear Katrina hastened greatly. About a decade ago, all of Transylvania moved to New Orleans thanks to Anne Rice’s vampires and the city’s Goths, which proves that you don’t need to go home again; if you’re patient, your home will come to you, fangs and all.