Another Oyster Update

I recently wrote about artists and their art being as distinct as an oyster and its pearl. A lot of you wrote back, and said it makes sense, for a lot of reasons. So, speaking of oysters, and speaking as one that is finally seeing some modest success, I feel one particular cultivator of art deserves my thanks.

Rosemary James is the quiet heroine of American literature. An accomplished writer in her own right, a journalist and with her husband the late Joe DeSalvo co-creator the Faulkner-Wisdom writing competition she has maintained a venue that fosters, nurtures and promotes American writing like no other. Personally, I have found it to be a sustaining medium for writing, not for those times that I warranted recognition or placement, but for all those times I did not.

As a then unagented writer, the Faulkner was a goal, a reason to put work out there. Note, I didn’t say it was a reason to write. That particular pathology didn’t need anything to continue, and, in fact, couldn’t be stifled. The Faulkner was for me what an occasional buoy, sandbar, or oyster reef rising to the tidal water line is to a drowning sailor trying to make it to shore.

Every year, the Faulkner was an opportunity, a goal, a validation even if nothing else was selling or being otherwise recognized.  It is for that reason that I feel it is just appropriate to say an overdue “Thank You” to Rosemary James and Joe Desalvo for what the Faulkner has meant to me.

I pieced together a short summary that doesn't nearly tell the tale. But here goes. Rosemary James, a former reporter for The New Orleans States-Item and WWL-TV, is cofounder of The Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society, a nonprofit organization devoted to writers and their readers. The author of Plot or Politics, she and her husband owned Faulkner House Books, one of the country's most famous bookstores and the heart of the literary scene in New Orleans.  She is the editor of My New Orleans, a beautiful anthology of recollections, musings and spiritual renderings about America’s one and only truly continental city.

Joe DeSalvo, a native New Orleanian, was a graduate of Loyola University and of the University of Maryland School of Law. A tremendously successful corporate attorney, he and Rosemary created The Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society, Inc., the (501) (c) (3) literary and educational foundation and the Faulkner Society which became the namesake of the competition.

Faulkner House Books, New Orleans

The Faulkner-Wisdom competition has discovered, launched, and promoted great work and true art for so long that it is impossible to really measure the magnitude of its contribution. Suffice to say on behalf of all of us oysters in the bed … or the culch if you want to be technically correct … thank you from the bottom of our bivalves.