The Little Town Where Faulkner and Football Rule
I keep winding up in Oxford, Mississippi, sometimes for business but always for pleasure.
The first time I visited, in 1987, I was a reporter covering the debut of the commemorative William Faulkner stamp (the Postal Service likes to do these ceremonies in the subjects’ hometowns). It was a big deal, not least because the Postal Service was eating considerable crow: Surely Faulkner is the only commemorative subject who was also once fired by the Postal Service, as he was in 1924 (provoking his declaration that never again would he “be at the mercy of any s.o.b. who had two cents for a stamp”).
There were lots of Faulkner scholars underfoot, and Eudora Welty gave a reading. And every surviving Faulkner relation showed up. Even Faulkner’s only child, Jill Summers, made an appearance. I was poking around Rowan Oak, Faulkner’s home, and chatting with the curator when she came in alone, went upstairs for about an hour, and then left. The curator told me it was the first time she’d been back since her father’s funeral in 1962.