Little animals wearing clothes. Hard to resist in their bittersweet comic struggles.
These fables are, in a sense, Dalt Wonk’s love letter to the French Quarter — his home for over 40 years. The animals, flowers and insects are almost all Quarter denizens: a frog in his courtyard lily pond, a rat in the stone riprap on the levee, a roach in the kitchen of a restaurant. They call to mind people you know, difficulties you’ve faced.
A few Fables tell stories of exotic animals (like a seal or a hippo) in far-off lands. But all were written in the French Quarter and inspired by its singular, suggestive atmosphere.
Fables are one of the most ancient ways of talking about life. French Quarter Fables show how fresh, original, and entertaining they still can be.