Roam with Me: Oxford, Mississippi

 This post is about two of my favorite activities -- roaming and reading. And taking lots of photos of literary things!

This is a photo of William Faulkner's bedside bookcase. I recently visited his home in Oxford, Mississippi. It's called Rowan Oak, and he named it that after the rowan tree of Scotland and the live oak of America.

It sits on 33 acres of woodland, and you can walk a trail that connects his house to the University of Mississippi, which I did. It's a beautiful home and ideal for a writer.

There is a five dollar cash-only admission fee to tour the house, but there's a lot to see and appreciate inside, especially for an author and book lover like me. It was a treat to see the rooms in which he wrote his books as well as the room in which he hosted events and the bedrooms where he, his wife, and their daughter slept. 

This and the photo below show Faulkner's library. Above the mantel is a portrait of him done by his mother, Maud Butler Falkner in 1929 -- no, I didn't misspell her last name; William Faulkner added the "u" to his last name in 1918.

This is Faulkner's office, which was added on to the house by Faulkner in 1950. The typewriter sits on a small table that he preferred to use all the time. His mother gave him the table, and he would drag it outside to write also. 

 Below are photos of the plot outline of his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, "A Fable," that he wrote on the walls of the office with a graphite pencil and a red grease pencil. 

So far, Faulkner's works have been ones I've struggled to read, but I want to read more, if not all, of his 19 novels and numerous stories. He won the Pulitzer two times -- in 1963 for his final novel, "The Reivers," and in 1955 for "A Fable." He also won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949. These attest to the power of his writing.

His Nobel acceptance speech is on display at Rowan Oak. 

His speech is exemplary, but I also appreciate his approach to the writing life summer up in the quote below.

In the house is an area where you can listen to Faulkner's speech and you can listen to him pronounce Yoknapatawpha, the Mississippi county he created and used in many of his writings.

The grounds around the house are beautiful and heavily wooded. I highly recommend walking the trail that snakes through the acres between Rowan Oak and the university campus. It leads directly to the art museum on campus.

After visiting Rowan Oak, walking the woodland trail, and viewing some of the art in the museum, the next stop in Oxford was Square Books, one of the premiere independent bookstores in the country. Prior to my visit, though, I thought it was one store, but it's actually FOUR different ones, all located on the beautiful square surrounding the Lafayette Country Courthouse.

Square Books is the original store, but it expanded to add Off Square Books which handles used books, sells hobby books, and has the event space and an eclectic mix of gift items. There is also Square Books Jr. which sells children's books, and Rare Square Books which sells an amazing selection of rare books. To get to that one, you must climb what I affectionately think of as the stairway to heaven.

Since I'm a bit of a collector myself, I spent a lot of time in Rare Square Books, but I don't have the money to purchase the truly rare books. However, I did score a quality copy of The Viking Portable Library's "The Portable Faulkner" and a couple other things. 

In Off Square Books, I got John Cheever's "The Wapshot Chronicle" and "The Wapshot Scandal" in one combined edition by Harper and Row. Here are a few photos of the interior of that amazing bookstore.

At the flagship store of Square Books, I spent a lot of time in the Faulkner area trying to decide which books to buy. I already owned many of his works, so I was able to narrow it down to a couple I didn't have. Here are my purchases, including the copy that I bought at Rare Square Books.

Square Books has an upstairs section -- that's where the Faulkner books are -- that includes a coffee and soda shop. It, and its three counterparts, are worth a visit from any book lover.

This is only a small portion of the photos arrayed throughout the store of authors who have visited and held signings or events at the bookstore.

There is a walkway that cuts through part of a block on the square that Faulkner used a lot. It's now called Faulkner Alley. There is some artwork on display in it.

Oxford's main area is very walkable, and that's exactly what I did. We stayed in the Graduate, a nice hotel only a block from the courthouse square, and we walked to Rowan Oak and through the woods to the campus museum and then back to the main square. Prior to all of that, though, we walked a few blocks in the opposite direction to visit Faulkner's grave in the Oxford Memorial Cemetery. While Google Maps made it very easy for me to find his grave, the cemetery has a sign along the sidewalk that points it out as well.

The hotel has a rooftop bar which also has an outdoors patio that makes for a nice place to sit and unwind after a long day. From there, the courthouse is clearly visible and lit up at night.

A habanero mango margarita to end the day. Yum.

And one last photo of an amazing selection of classic books on a shelf at Rowan Oak.