Kenneth Holditch, an English professor and Tennessee Williams scholar who helped establish festivals honoring the playwright in New Orleans and two other cities, died Wednesday at his New Orleans home. He was 89.
He died of respiratory failure, said Joanne Sealy, a close friend and the executor of his estate.
“He was just brilliant. He knew everything,” said Sealy, the manager of Faulkner House Books. “If someone had literary questions, I’d call Kenneth. … He was the go-to guy.”
Kenneth Holditch, an English professor at the University of New Orleans and a Tennessee Williams scholar, is shown at his home March 12, 2008.
Holditch, a professor at the University of New Orleans, took his enthusiasm for Williams to the streets by organizing walking tours to show visitors the French Quarter addresses associated with the Pulitzer Prize winner’s life and work. By conducting these excursions, “Kenneth brought to public attention Tennessee Williams’ life and reverence for New Orleans,” said Peggy Scott Laborde, past president of the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival.
The first festival was held in 1987; Holditch was the chair of its program committee. He also co-founded festivals celebrating Williams in Columbus, Mississippi, and Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Holditch – he never used William, his first name – was born in Ecru, Mississippi. He spent his youth in several Mississippi towns, including Tupelo, where, Sealy said, his schoolmates included Elvis Presley.
He first came to New Orleans with his parents when he was a teenager, said Philip Centanni, a friend who worked with Holditch on Williams tours. “He had read the works of Lyle Saxon and became enamored with the city. He imbibed the spirit of New Orleans. He loved the city; it was one of his motivating factors.”
Kenneth Holditch, right, a University of New Orleans professor of English and Tennessee Williams scholar, sits on a Tennessee Williams Festival with Lois Smith, left, and Edward Albee at the Royal Sonesta Hotel on March 26, 2010.
Williams and William Faulkner, a former French Quarter denizen who won a Nobel Prize in literature, “wrote the things that he wanted to write,” said Lawrence Gobble, a friend who is president of New Orleans’ Williams festival. “He had a love for the richness of life, for the story behind the story.”
Another New Orleans author whom Holditch studied was John Kennedy Toole, who won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1981 for “A Confederacy of Dunces.” Toole’s mother, who died in 1984, bequeathed to Holditch the manuscript of “The Neon Bible,” which her son had written years before “Dunces,” with the admonition that it never be published. Ultimately, a judge sided with the heirs to Toole's mother's estate, who wanted the book published, so Holditch stewarded the book into print, even writing its introduction.
Holditch obtained a bachelor’s degree with honors in English at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College), followed by master’s and doctoral degrees in English at the University of Mississippi, where he wrote his dissertation on the development of techniques in John Dos Passos’ novels. According to university records, Holditch’s 1961 doctorate was the first that Ole Miss had awarded in that subject.
The university honored him in 2015 by creating the Holditch Scholars Award, which is given annually to the author of the best dissertation in the English Department.
Move to New Orleans
After teaching at Christian Brothers College in Memphis for three years, he moved to New Orleans in 1964 to join the English Department at what was then called LSU in New Orleans. He taught there until his retirement in 1996.
Kenneth Holditch, a University of New Orleans English professor and Tennessee Williams scholar, is shown in 1989.
Among his students was Valerie Martin, who won acclaim for novels and short stories. She dedicated “Sea Lovers,” a collection of stories, to “Dr. Kenneth Holditch, who got me started.”
“He was my first literature teacher, He was my first writing teacher,” she said in an interview “He took me seriously from the start. It stayed that way all of my life. … He was very important to me.”
Another Holditch student was Centanni, who marveled at Holditch’s ability to recite poems he hadn’t read in years. He was, Centanni said, “as gifted as any actor with the feeling he brought his renditions of dialogue, monologues and songs to life.”
Creature of habits
Holditch was a creature of habits, which included celebrating his birthday, in Antoine’s Restaurant’s Rex Room, with a dinner that recreated the menu in Frances Parkinson Keyes’ novel “Dinner at Antoine’s.” On the bill of fare were oysters on toast and pressed duck. To prepare the latter dish, bones and meat were crushed in a duck press while guests watched as blood spurted into a glass container, Gobble said. The blood was used as a thickener for the roux in which the duck breast was cooked, along with cognac, wine and spices.
Watching this performance “was like being in a vampire movie,” Gobble said, “but I would not give up the whole experience.”
Holditch, a man of strong opinions, liked to have things done a certain way – his way, friends said. Brobson Lutz, a friend, called him “a genuine New Orleans curmudgeon.” The New Orleans writer Christine Wiltz recalled that he stormed out of a festival board meeting – she was on the board – and refused to speak to her for years until he said, “I forgive you.”
“If you were on his side, he’d do anything for you,” Gobble said, “but if you ever crossed him, you wished you hadn’t.”
'Willing to make enemies'
“He was willing to make enemies,” Martin said, “but to his friends, he was kind.”
“When one of us would perform an ordinary act of kindness, he would repay us by softly proclaiming, ‘You’ll get another star in your crown when you get to heaven for that,’” Centanni said.
For instance, Holditch, who owned rental properties, refused to raise the rent he charged tenants he liked, Gobble said:. “He was very committed to the richness of people and who they were and would grab on to that.”
Holditch’s works include “Tennessee Williams and the South,” “The Last Frontier of Bohemia: Tennessee Williams in New Orleans” and, with Richard Freeman Leavitt, “The World of Tennessee Williams.” He and Mel Gussow edited the Library of America’s “Tennessee Williams: Plays 1937-1955.” He edited and published The Tennessee Williams Literary Journal for five years and reviewed books for The States-Item and The Vieux Carré Courier newspapers. He and Marda Burton wrote “Galatoire’s Biography of a Bistro.”
A friend of the New Orleans artist George Dureau and a collector of his works, Holditch wrote the introduction to a 1977 retrospective of Dureau’s work at the Contemporary Arts Center.
Holditch, a co-founder of the William Faulkner Society, was honored by a host of organizations and institutions, including Duke University, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the Saints & Sinners Festival and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters.
Survivors include two cousins, Mary Margaret Roberts and Robby Holditch. Funeral arrangements are incomplete.
CORRECTION: Earlier versions of this story mischaracterized the publication of "The Neon Bible."