Rowan Oak, Faulkner’s home. , Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
A The guy who didn’t even graduate from high school. When in school, he achieved a D grade in English. Nevertheless, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, two Pulitzer Prizes, and the National Book Award twice. It was William Faulkner (1897–1962) who has been described as the most important American writer of all time. He himself describes his literary achievements: “I had a wonderful gift, uneducated in every formal sense, without even very literate, let alone literary companions, yet the things I created ” He was a prolific writer with 19 novels, 20 screenplays, six collections of poetry, over 125 short stories and numerous essays. He donated a portion of his Nobel Prize money to establish a fund to nurture and support budding writers, which later became the PEN/Faulkner Prize for Fiction. Faulkner used stream of consciousness in his narratives, influencing great Latin American writers such as Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel García Márquez.
Faulkner wrote, “To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.” For me, moving to Oxford, Mississippi was a dream come true.
My daughter-in-law, Diana, spent her childhood summers in Oxford, a beautiful small town, the “cultural mecca of the South”. Diana’s family was very close to William Faulkner. Faulkner once traded houses with John Brown, the great-grandfather of Diana’s stepmother, Tricia Lee Brown. During my last trip to America, we had the privilege of visiting Oxford, the La Fayette County seat in Mississippi, the fictional Yoknapatawfa, Faulkner’s “apocryphal county”. Tricia Lee helped organize a detailed tour of all the Oxford locations associated with Faulkner.
Faulkner elevated the place to what he called “the postage stamp of his native land”. It was a city where artists, thinkers, traders and farmers lived side by side. After Faulkner’s death, the creative community in Oxford flourished and became the literary capital of Southern literature. Our visit began with a visit to his grave in St. Peter’s Cemetery on a hill a few blocks from Oxford’s courtyard. A pair of pine trees identify the grave, which is marked by “the builder of Yoknapatawfa County, whose stories about his people won him the Nobel Prize”. At the grave we found a number of coins and small bottles of whiskey in honor of the writer, who was famously weak to alcohol. Every part of Oxford is reminiscent of a great writer and we spent hours at his home, Rowan Oak. Faulkner lived and wrote at Rowan Oak and it is now a landmark. Faulkner named it after the rowan tree, a symbol of protection and peace.
The beautifully kept house and surroundings are maintained by the University of Mississippi. We spent hours in the quiet, enjoying Faulkner’s creative aura. Rowan Oak is visited annually by 30,000 people. The 33-acre heavily wooded property included the house, a barn, a garden, a stable, a kitchen, a smoke house, and a sunken patio. Every article belonging to Faulkner remains intact, including furniture, his typewriter, used whiskey bottles, and handwritten notes.
On September 25, 1997, Oxford honored the author by dedicating a statue to him, “We the citizens of Yoknapatawfa acknowledge our debt to his genius.”
Close to Faulkner Alley, opposite City Court, is the iconic bookstore, Square Books, with a special Faulkner corner. The University of Mississippi library has a large section dedicated to Faulkner. It was on the university campus that Faulkner worked as a postal worker and was allegedly fired for reading books while on the job! The University of Mississippi also hosts an annual Faulkner Conference in July.
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