Southern style

I could hear the roof. It was still raining. …
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

It is difficult to identify the one American writer I most admire. When William Faulkner is at the top of the list other authors immediately spring to mind: James Baldwin, Willa Cather, Herman Melville. Then the list grows from there. Notwithstanding, William Faulkner always makes the short list.

My dog-eared copy of The Sound and the Fury is filled with notes, highlighted paragraphs and awkwardly drawn boxes around words that are repeated in one or two graphs. Faulkner’s use of sensuous language, “smelling the rain” or “hearing the roof,” and his long rambling sentences are poetic. One of the places I have wanted to visit is Rowan Oak, the house in Oxford, Mississippi where Faulkner lived and did most of his writing.

Last week I made that trip. It began in New Orleans visiting the William Faulkner bookshop located just off an alley on Jackson Square in the French Quarter. In 1925, Faulkner rented rooms in the house when he moved to New Orleans and it is where his writing career began. Now a lovely independent bookstore, The William Faulkner Bookshop has become a literary landmark.

The drive from New Orleans to Oxford is almost six hours, fortunately broken up with a stop for lunch at Rick’s Diner Inn in Goodman, Mississippi, a small hamlet with a population of just over 1,200. Almost every town in Mississippi has some literary connection and Goodman is no exception, as it was the home of David Herbert Donald, a Pulitzer-winning historian.

Rowan Oak, situated on forty acres of land just a few miles from the Square in downtown Oxford, was the Faulkner’s home from 1930 until his death in 1962. Faulkner’s daughter, Jill Faulkner Summers, sold it to the University of Mississippi in 1972. There is a trail, approximately five miles long, that meanders through the woods from Rowan Oak to the campus of the University.

The house is left as it was when Faulkner was living there. In his office and writing room his small manual typewriter is set up on a simple wooden table so he can look out across the expansive grounds. The plot outline for The Fable is written in his hand on the wall.

Southern style is radically different from our northern style. The cultural influences of the French who settled much of Mississippi in the mid-1700’s, the Spanish who came later, then the British and the many Africans, have collectively made major contributions to the Delta region.

This cultural integration, combined with fresh fish from the Gulf, has contributed to extraordinary food. The rhythm of music, gospel, blues and jazz, just seems to hang in the air. The many planation’s and stately houses, now either restored as historic homes or renovated as private residences, remind us of the elegant Southern lifestyle. All framed, of course, by the complicated under belly of the South that is ever present. The poverty, the racial inequality and the lingering prejudice. Leading to stories and fascinating characters, of course.

The homes of writers have a similar ambiance. Like Faulkner’s home in Oxford, Emily Dickinson’s home in Amherst, Massachusetts and Robert Frost’s farmhouse on Sugar House in Franconia, New Hampshire, the rooms are spare, and there are simple writing desks and large windows that open onto a landscape of nature. The Frost homestead also has a trail where one can walk and read lines posted along the way from Frost’s poems.

Touring Faulkner’s home we notice a radio in the room that was Jill Faulkner’s bedroom. Apparently, she and her father had an argument over this because he didn’t want a radio in the house. One can only smile. What would he think of our various devices and enormous television screens with the screeching cacophony of political diatribes constantly being broadcast. Somehow one can picture William Faulkner sitting quietly, a pipe in his mouth and a tall Bourbon over ice on a side table, leaning over his small black Underwood Standard or Remington typewriter. Even now.