DEL.ICIO.USFor the Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/20/05
OXFORD, Miss. — "I can invent much more interesting people than God can," William Faulkner once claimed. So can this town, apparently, seeing as how so many of the Nobel laureate's characters were based upon folks who once roamed it.
Faulkner was born in New Albany, Miss., in 1897. Just before his fifth birthday, his family moved up the road to Oxford. As a young man he wandered the East and South, including a stretch in New Orleans, where he composed his first novel, "Soldier's Pay," while getting some poetry out of his system and pellets out of his BB gun (often aimed at nuns leaving St. Louis Cathedral). But he soon returned to his home of Oxford and married an old girlfriend in 1929. There he employed his "own little postage stamp of native soil" to create "Yoknapatawpha County" with "Jefferson" (Oxford) at its heart.
 Photos by Oxford Tourism Council | |||
| William Faulkner bought this house in 1930 and named it Rowan Oak for a Scottish legend about the protective powers of the rowan tree. | |||
 | |||
| The courthouse is a National Historic Landmark. | |||
 | |||
| A bronze statue of William Faulkner sits on a bench in front of City Hall, looking out over the square the acclaimed author once roamed. | |||
 | |||
| Oxford's red-brick City Hall anchors the east side of the charming square, which includes the historic courthouse and well-known independent bookstore Square Books. | |||
|  | ||
|
EMAIL THIS
PRINT THIS
MOST POPULAR"The one house rule was that when you heard the typewriter clicking, you had to tiptoe," says Dean Faulkner Wells, Faulkner's niece, whom he raised as a daughter. The smell of cedars floats through Bailey's Woods, quiet as ever behind her uncle's home. In 1930, Faulkner bought and restored the white clapboard house that predates the Civil War, and named it Rowan Oak for a Scottish legend about the protective powers of the rowan tree (although there were never any such trees around).
Bare floors and wood furniture imbue the home with warmth. And it is just that: a home, not a theme park, in stark contrast to Graceland — the home of another Mississippian who grew up not too far away in Tupelo. Faulkner was not one for change, refusing his wife Estelle's request to redecorate in a manner more befitting an international celebrity. His plot outline for "A Fable," which took him 10 years to write, garnering both a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, still scrolls across his study wall in pencil just as he left it.
Like it or not, though, the rest of Oxford has changed. Tucked off a bend in Taylor Road, Rowan Oak is now in a neighborhood of sprawling homes. Fortune magazine listed the town as one of the top places in the world to retire. And each fall, when classes commence at the University of Mississippi (aka Ole Miss), 13,000 students double the town's size.
There is something for everyone, from quiet walks to packed nightclubs.
Until 25 years ago, Ole Miss meant football, not literature. Archie (Manning), not William, was the talk of the town. Well, things have changed, as has Oxford's view of Faulkner. Once townspeople spat at the mention of the reclusive, often intolerant writer. But he is now a source of pride, and revenue.
"Yoknapatourism" will reach a fever pitch this year on Faulkner's birthday, Sept. 25. To commemorate the reopening of newly renovated Rowan Oak, there will be a marathon reading of Faulkner's masterpiece, "Absalom, Absalom!," followed by a birthday celebration, all underneath the cedars in Mr. Bill's back yard.
Acclaimed author Pat Conroy dubbed Oxford "the Vatican City of Southern letters" with good reason — not many cities of its size can claim even a handful of published authors. Oxford seems to have one on every corner.
"There's a climate in Oxford that sustains writers," says Dean Faulkner Wells. "There are people here who love the written word so much they will put up with all kinds of [nonsense] from the men and women who create those words."
When Richard and Lisa Howorth opened Square Books in 1979, 17 years after Faulkner's death, the independent bookstore initiated Oxford's literary resurgence. The store has since become a mecca for authors and readers worldwide. A year later, Willie Morris (author of "North Toward Home") attained the position of writer-in-residence at Ole Miss.
Then Barry Hannah ("Airships") arrived and, a few years later, soon-to-be best-selling author John Grisham. Although Morris has passed away and Grisham has moved away, dozens of published authors have claimed Oxford as home, from Donna Tartt ("The Secret History") to Julie Smith ("New Orleans Mourning"), living inconspicuously among lawyers, bankers and baseball-capped frat boys.
"They come to that magic circle of the courthouse [hoping] that there may still be a little bit of Pappy left," Wells says.
Actually, downtown Oxford is a magic square. And indeed everything is here, often including the writers. This day, Ace Atkins (the Nick Travers mysteries) bellies up to the bar in the Ajax Diner. Atkins lives on a farm outside Oxford and has taught at Ole Miss.
Further inside Ajax, Southern food writer John T. Edge ("Southern Belly") is digging his corn bread into black beans. He's gearing up for his eighth annual Southern Foodways Symposium, to be held Oct. 27-30 in town. Famed cooks, chefs, writers and eaters will celebrate the region's food culture. It's a not-to-be-missed weekend for those who love food more than fiction.
Around the corner, Scott Morris ("Waiting for April") sits alone at Bouré, engrossed in some arcane German novel. New Orleans' Judy Conner ("Southern Fried Divorce") is dining at a table nearby after her book signing. Hannah, who's latest fiction prize was the 2003 PEN/Malamud Award, is eating a bowl of grits in City Grocery — Oxford's best people-watching spot — wincing at the redundant bombardment of questions from some young guy interviewing him about why Mississippi has produced more authors than any other state.
M.O. Walsh sits on the balcony of City Grocery. This night he's alone, because drinking buddy Tom Franklin, whose novel "Hell at the Breech" garnered widespread critical acclaim, is busy watching reruns of "Friends" while his wife, Beth Ann Fennelly ("Open House"), is teaching a poetry class. Walsh, 28, came here to study under Hannah as one of the university's first master of fine arts creative writing students and is fast at work on a collection of stories that he hopes will etch out his own place. He's nursing a bourbon, gazing across the town square, the Confederate statue standing tall by the courthouse.
Unlike so many other Mississippi town centers, where empty buildings stand as ghostly shells, Oxford's square is thriving, with boutiques, galleries, cafes and pubs.
And while the courthouse may be Oxford's geographical center, its gravitational one is Square Books. But owner Richard Howorth has moved his office across the square to City Hall, where he serves as mayor as well.
On the bench in front of City Hall sits Faulkner's (not-so) likeness cast in bronze, gazing over the square he once roamed in his World War I Royal Air Force uniform. He claimed that he had a metal plate in his head from war injuries, although he never made it overseas or even flew a plane.
He later trod the square during his stint as a postman. "I reckon I'll be at the beck and call of folks with money all my life," he said after his forced resignation, "but thank God I won't ever again have to be at the beck and call of every [person] who's got two cents to buy a stamp."
Later in his life — when he wasn't at anyone's beck and call — he would stroll these sidewalks in his worn tweed suit, puffing on a pipe, "as unapproachable as God," as Hannah says.
The past is very much in your face here. The remains of Union and Confederate soldiers lie in a common grave behind frat row. A classroom became a morgue while Union troops looted and burned much of the town.
The bullet-riddled columns of Ole Miss' Lyceum glare white over a knoll where, in 1861, the University Greys — consisting of all students and most faculty — enlisted to fight the "war of northern aggression." Not a single one of the 136 men survived Gettysburg. A hundred years later, on almost the same spot, James Meredith was admitted to the university as its first black student, an event some call the Civil War's last battle (and the cause of those bullet holes).
History's remains fade with the day. Jazz and blues spill into the night from clubs lining the square. It's quite a change from the town's old dry days. Oxford's eclectic groups — teachers, students, writers, businessmen, lawyers, doctors, you name it — groove to the beats kicking from hot spots like Proud Larry's and City Grocery.
When the bars close at midnight (be forewarned), grab a fifth of sour mash whiskey and head down to Mr. Bill's final resting place to partake of another literary tradition. At the edge of St. Peter's Cemetery, next to a historical marker, a low stone wall provides the perfect seat around the Faulkner plot. After pouring a mouthful onto his tombstone for the old man himself, raise your bottle in salute as the stone soaks up every last drop. Then pass the bottle around, and unload your mind with friends or Faulkner's ghost under a sky where the stars stretch wide and bright.
At the top of the hill above his grave lies the circle that ended Benjy's habitual Sunday carriage ride in "The Sound and the Fury." And a bit farther along, if you look real hard, you'll spot Caroline "Callie" Barr's headstone. Sinking into the surrounding grass, the epitaph of Faulkner's nanny reads, "Her white children bless her." It is her cabin that still stands discreetly behind Rowan Oak. Faulkner dedicated "Go Down, Moses" to her and modeled the heroine Dilsey after her in "The Sound and the Fury."
Whether you agree or not that Faulkner invented "more interesting people than God," the fact remains that God's creations die but Faulkner's, and hence Oxford's, live on.
Services »
