It’s the small traditions -- from eating red beans and rice on Monday to meeting under a clock outside a department store -- that remind them that some part of this sinking city will endure. Those reminders are sacred, even if they seem trivial to the rest of the world.

I had nearly given up on the original manuscript of Confederacy of Dunces until a year ago when I interviewed Lynda Martin, the sister of John Kennedy Toole's best friend in high school. “The manuscript?” she said in a soft southern accent. “Yes, well I have it in my closet here at home.”