Oxford, Part II: "Faulkner Country"

A Just and Holy Cause?

Traveling to Oxford, Mississippi, with a handful of non-Southerners, I ruminated on the South's relationship with time and place. Upon entering the Square from the Memphis airport, one of my friends said, "Man, stuff happened here." And yet we know stuff happens everywhere. What's the difference?

I grew up stopping at almost every historical road sign on byways of the south. I weaned myself off of it a bit while living in Europe, because you'd never get where you were going because you'd always be reading about what happened before. But even the monuments in the south are monuments themselves. Take this obelisk dedicated to Confederate Soldiers, erected in the early 20th century.

I just read a book review in the Wall Street Journal by Barton Swain about Tracy Thompson's "The Mind of the New South," and several of the passages stuck with me. One particular section discussed Southerner's obsession with the past as well as the fatigue of, as the author of the article writes,

the sanctimonious browbeating and ridicule constantly issuing from the entertainment industry, academia and the national news media? Most Southerners are prepared to live with the incessant reminders that their history and culture were corrupt from the beginning. What they aren't prepared to do is go looking for more such reminders.

Oxford Cemetery

The Garden & Gun article mentioned in an earlier post about Oxford muses that Faulkner would be turning in his grave if he saw the state of his beloved "postage stamp of native soil." Part of the change has to do with tearing down the old and putting up the new. Certainly most American cities could take a page from Portland's city planning, but should we drape all our pasts behind ropes and monuments?

Perhaps it's due to my Southernness, perhaps I can contribute it to my English major nature, but I was the only visitor to make a Faulkner Haj. Other than watching a beloved friend get married, this was the top of my list of things to do in Oxford. Using a little pamphlet included in the wedding baskets, I went on a run through the square, past Faulkner's grandparents' house (the Falkners, the author added the "U" after returning from a stint in the Canadian military. Make of that what you will) and on down to Rowan Oak, the home of William Faulkner for over thirty years.

British and American Oxford notes

In his 1936 book Absalom! Absalom! Faulkner wrote, "Maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished. Maybe happen is never once but like ripples  maybe on water after the pebble sings, the ripples moving on, spreading, the pool attached by a narrow umbilical water-cord to the next pool..."

This quote has stuck with me ever since I took an American Literature class with professor Jim Hans at Wake Forest University. I definitely think that Faulkner's writing would have remained obscure to me without his guidance through some of the more difficult passages. Granted, those are few of the shortest sentences Faulkner ever wrote, but still. Even in 2013, we're weighed down by history. It's almost paralyzing if we let it.

What I never needed help appreciating, was Faulkner's ability to describe what it felt like to be in the South. While I was in Oxford, I was reading Light in August, and I began to underline passages that struck me. Here are a few:

Beyond the open window the sound of insects has not ceased, not faltered.

...feeling the intermittent sun, the heat, smelling the savage and fecund odor of the earth, the woods, the loud silence.

He remembers it now, sitting in the dark window in the quiet study, waiting for twilight to cease, for night and the galloping hooves. The copper light has completely gone now; the world hangs in a green suspension in color and texture like light through colored glass.

Rowan Oak

  As if I'm accustomed to hearing galloping hooves.

Cedar lined driveway

So, I went solo to Rowan Oak, the actual physical place where Faulkner wrote those words. I walked through his gardens, tip toed around his back patio and peered through his kitchen window. I failed to bring $5, so I was not able to enter those hallowed halls. I was pained with nostalgia, watching students and professors read from books around the house. I wanted to eavesdrop and crash the course.

Faulkner walked here

Faulkner ate here

So the next day, before the wedding, I took a little trip to Square Books to peruse the Faulkner section. There must be one, right? Now I had heard quite a bit about this bookstore. It's the Powell's books of the south. First I walked into a small book store, and it was only children's books. Then I walked clockwise around the square until I found another square books. Ahh, this must be it. I ambled up and down the rows, but it still felt amiss. While there was a little homage to Garden & Gun magazine, I found no Faulkner section and not even a fiction section. I was confused. I asked for directions.

Clearly I wasn't from around here, because the lovely lady explained I was in the home and style section of the store. If I would just exit the front door and walk three doors down, I would find the main store and an ample Faulkner section. Just like my first trip down Hawthorne Boulevard in Portland, when I went into the wrong Powell's. The lady in Oxford was a little less condescending.

Faulkner Mecca

Boy, oh, boy did I find the gold mine. The holy grail. The pirate's booty of a true American literature devotee. A just and holy cause. After perusing several titles, I opted for a book entitled Faulkner and Love: The Women Who Shaped His Art. I'm barely half way through, but it's a good read for a historian and literary buff. I know that my old Professor would be scoffing at all the historical/revisionist/political bent to Faulkner's work, and I'm scoffing along with him in some parts. The pictures, dates and family trees are the most interesting to me so far.

As it turns out, Faulkner's mother was Maud Butler and she has the same birthday as me: November 27. I couldn't help but feel connected to her. I may just have to name my future daughter Maud in honor of our connection. Of course I haven't read that chapter. I could be both embarrassed to be a Butler as well as a Sagittarian.

As the weekend culminated in the actual wedding that brought the Pacific Northwest to the Southeast, I was illuminated by the father of the bride that the ceremony would take place on Faulkner Ridge. Apparently he participated in hunting parties here. Perhaps nothing ever happens and is finished.

The view from Faulkner Ridge

Now I'm back in Portland, and I've taken up reading several other books, one notably by Eckhart Tolle, the author of The Power of Now. Here in Portland you can't drive too far without reading a bumper sticker that touts his phrase, "All you have is now." Of course Eckhart lives in British Columbia—the Pacific Northwest. Wouldn't it be interesting to get Faulkner and Tolle in a room?