Rediscovering Francine Prose

I was browsing the New Arrivals at the library when I came across a biography of Caravaggio by Francine Prose. I hadn’t seen her name on a book in along time — my fault, not hers — so I snatched it up and read the book sitting in the sun on the fish pier. It was wonderful — I suspect it would be impossible for her to write badly. Even when I don’t care for her subject matter, Prose always writes beautifully. Her last name is astonishingly appropriate.

Later I found my copy of her book The Lives of the Muses, which I had read some years back and loved. It is an ingenious book in that she chose to write about the women who inspired artists, musicians, writers throughout time. Each chapter is delicious - I loved the chapters on Elizabeth Siddel and Lee Miller - and I was doubly thrilled by her inclusion of Yoko Ono as her final muse.

As I was thinking about her I remembered having read a book of hers back in the Seventies that I carried around for months, re-reading passages but I had to go to Amazon to find the name. It was Marie Laveau, Prose’s weighty fictionalized version of the life of New Orleans’ famous voodoo queen. The book, I discovered, is out of print now and hard to find but I was able to locate a copy through the inter-library loan service and I picked it up on Saturday. It is even better than I remembered it — always a wonderful discovery.

Marie Laveau is one of those semi-mythic characters like Merlin who may or may not have existed but should have. In New Orleans her grave is still the site of pilgrimages bringing flowers and candles beseeching her spirit for love charms and healing spells. Shops in the French Quarter carry mysterious little Marie Laveau voodoo dolls and candles. Taking her on as a subject was quite a task for Prose but she did a splendid job. Whether the real Marie Laveau is anything like the character in prose’s book no one can say but it doesn’t matter. Prose’s recreation of early nineteenth century New Orleans, it’s society antics and aura of mysticism is delicious.

I’ve always had an affection for the tall glass-enclosed candles that one finds in voodoo shops in New Orleans or Mexican marketplaces. I love their names — Come-Back-To-Me, Banishment, Heal-Me or, my favorite, Law-Stay-Away — as well as candles to saints both familiar and unknown. Mary Magdalene is a favorite. So is St. John the Baptiste, two of my favorite saints.

I have a healthy respect for voodoo. It’s not that I believe in it but I believe that those who do believe in it, do so whole-heartedly and with alarming intensity. I have a little experience with that. Years ago I worked at a psychiatric hospital in the adolescent ward. One of our patients was a stunningly beautiful young black woman — tall and slender with a mass of thick black hair and a sweet nature. She was only 16 then and had come here with her family from the Cape Verde Islands. Her English was minimal. If you met her you could not have imagined what she could turn into. The “episodes”, as we called them, came suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere. Her eyes would grow huge and red and wild and she would begin shrieking, snarling, clawing at unseen assailants. Screaming like I had never heard anyone scream. No one could explain it. Her doctors tried every sedative they knew (this was over 20 years ago before the current crop of pharmaceuticals). The diagnoses varied — psychosis, schizophrenia, forms of epilepsy. But in private discussions in the staff room the word “voodoo” was sometimes whispered. The story, as much as we could piece together from her terrified family and the girl was that she had been “fixed” by a voodoo man who desired her and was angry because her family took her away to America. I don’t know if that was true and I don’t know what happened to her. She was eventually moved to another facility and I moved on in my life.

But as I am re-reading Prose’s gorgeous book about Marie Laveau, I began thinking about that girl. And wondering. There are genuine mysteries in this world. I’m glad we have brave writers like Francine Prose who can write about them so well.

Thanks for reading.