A Palpable Elysium Book

There is a picture of the Shadows-on-the-Teche in this book, an antebellum home right down the block from my parents' house. My mother worked in an office upstairs there for most of my early childhood, and I recall playing the part of a member of the Weeks family in some sort of colonial-Williamsburg-type tour of the grounds. I think my lines were to do with breaking my arm. I remember vividly the door Williams writes of, but was too young to know the names Henry Miller or Gertrude Stein. Apparently, they were among the guests there.

Williams makes me proud to be a Southerner-- though of course I was never ashamed of it.