In the world of Southern literature, Southern Gothic is by no means rare, and indeed continues to be strong, but although Southern Gothic is stange and disorienting, it isn't 'experimental', by which I mean that the form and the style don't challenge existing literary norms. But unfortunately many people simply don't see Southern literature in the same serious way that they see other literatures in the U.S., and I've banged on about north-eastern literary hegemony for some years. 
'William Faulkner. Here, September 25, 1897, was born the distinguished author, member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and recipient of the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature.'
Although Faulkner's birthplace no longer exists, a model of it is in the Union County Museum a few houses down from the street marker.
At the back of the museum, as a tribute to Mississippi's most distinguished literary son, is a literary garden, with a large number of plants mentioned in Faulkner's work, and markers showing the appropriate quotations.
Jimson Weed. 'Here. Here's you a jimson weed. He gave me the flower.' '...Ben squatting before a small mound of earth...at either end of it an empty bottle of blue glass that once contained poison was fixed in the ground. In one was a withered stalk of jimson weed...' William Faulkner, The Sound and the fury.
Bridal Wreath/Spirea. 'About this half-moon of lawn...were bridal wreath and crepe myrtle bushes as old as time and huge as age could make them'. William Faulkner, Sartoris.
'Drusilla faced Bayard, she was quite near; again the scent of verbena in her hair seemed to have increased a hundred times as she stood holding out to me, one in each hand, two dueling pistols.' William Faulkner, The Unvanquished.
'The Falkner House. Built in 1931 as the home of Murry and Maud Falkner, the parents of Nobel Prize winning author William Faulkner. [William had added the "u" some years previously.] The house stands on land purchased in 1898 by J. W. T. Falkner, William Faulkner's grandfather.'
William Faulkner bought Rowan Oak, which had been empty for several years, in 1930, when it was then known as 'The Bailey Place'. It was built in the 1840s by Colonel Robert Sheegog, a planter from Tennessee. Faulkner moved in with his wife Estelle and his two step-children, Malcolm and Victoria. Their daughter Jill was born a few years later. Here, the Faulkners lived until Faulkner's death in 1962.
Three views of Rowan Oak.
Faulkner's bedroom. On the mantelpiece on the other side of the room is a prominent '64', an identifying number that Faulkner wore at a horse show.
Faulkner's office has the plot of his novel A Fable written on the wall. He sometimes took the typewriter and one of the Adirondack chairs outside to work.
The library. The painting of Faulkner is by his mother Maud Butler, and the sculpture in the foreground is by the Brazilian Marnarz, a student of Jean Arp's.
Estelle's bedroom, where she painted and bird watched. Faulkner thought air conditioning unnatural, and wouldn't allow any in the house, although Estelle had some installed immediately after his funeral.
Jill's bedroom. The painting of her is also by Maud Butler.
The servants' quarters, and once home of their much loved caretaker 'Mammy Callie'.
Original detached kitchen from the 1840s, adapted by Faulkner into a smokehouse for his hams.
The 1840s barn, which Faulkner used for storage, was later rebuilt from the original wood.
The paddock and stable, built by Faulkner for his horses in the late 1950s.
Memory House on 406 University Avenue, Oxford. This was the home of John Faulkner, William Faulkner's brother, who was also a novelist, and who wrote My Brother Bill: An Affectionate Reminiscence very shortly after his brother's death.
I take Highway 61 again (which I had previously taken to visit Port Gibson and Natchez), and am once more reminded not only of Bob Dylan's album Highway 61 Revisited, but – as I'm driving through the Mississippi Delta – also of David Cohn's famous words in his book God Shakes Creation (1935): 'The Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis and ends on Catfish Row in Vicksburg.' We've just spent three nights in Vicksburg and are headed north, but Memphis and The Peabody Duck March are just not on the itinerary: this is supposed to be a literary trail, not a record of the tourist traps of the South. No, we're on the way to Washington. County, Mississippi, that is, and more specifically Greenville, which is about eight miles west of Highway 61, and where about 30% of the population live below the poverty line: this is a world away from the $200 a night Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. But Greenville, from a literary point of view, is remarkable. Greenville Library is on 341 Main Street, and the street marker by the sidewalk opposite the entrance to the building proudly proclaims the literary talent that has come from Greenville, Mississippi:
Greenville takes an evident pride in its literary heritage. The William Alexander Percy Memorial Library is named after the writer who was Walker Percy's uncle. Walker's grandfather, and then his father, committed suicide, and following the death of his mother in a car crash, William Alexander brought up Walker and his two brothers in Greenville. Walker Percy (1916–90) wrote novels of alienation and existentialism, and his first novel, The Moviegoer (1962), was recently voted 6th best Southern novel of all time by Southern American, the literary journal of the University of Southern Arkansas. The writer Ada Liana Bidiuc said 'If a better book than The Moviegoer has been written, I'll cut off my little toe'. They talk like that in the South.
Jackson celebrates Eudora Welty's centenary, and this was a very eventful day for us. We were, as we had been for the past three days, staying in a hotel in Vicksburg, and the Welty house was within easy reach, particularly as an interstate exit was very close to the house in the centre of Jackson.
The street marker outside the house reads: 'Eudora Welty (1900–2001), one of the most acclaimed writers of the twentieth century, lived in this house for seventy-six years. The house was built by Welty's parents, Christian and Chestina Welty, in 1925. Eudora Welty wrote all of her major works here, including the Pullitzer prize-winning novel The Optimist's Daughter. Welty and her mother were devoted gardeners, and many of the flowers and bushes they planted still grow in the garden. The Eudora Welty House is a National historic Landmark.'
As the whole region had suffered torrential rains for several days – some roads in Atlanta had been severely flooded, but we managed to avoid it – this was unfortunately all that we were able to view of the garden that Welty and her mother in particular had tended so lovingly. (I might add that although by this relatively early stage of our journey the rains were coming to an end, toward late afternoon for several days, we had been subjected to almost unbelievable rainstorms when driving back to the hotel, making the journey a little longer than expected. but I must admit that I even found this somewhat enjoyable.)
I was given a leaflet entitled 'Eudora Welty Driving Tour' at the house, so took the occasion to explore places in the area associated with Welty. This is the birthplace of Eudora Welty on North Congress Street.
The plaque says:
The leaflet, although quick to point out the difference between the park Welty knew as a child and today, quotes from one of her stories, 'The Winds': 'They ran through the park and drank from the fountain. Moving slowly as sunlight over the grass were the broad and dusty backs of pigeons. They stopped and made a clover-chain and hung it on a statue. They groveled in the dirt under the bandstand hunting for lost money, but when they found a dead bird with its feathers cool as rain, they ran out in the sun [...] they floated magnolia leaves in the horse trough, themselves taking the part of the wind and waves, and suddenly remembering who they were. they closed in on the hot-tomale man, fixing their frightened eyes on his lantern and on his scars.'
The Jefferson Davis Elementary School which Welty attended is also on North Congress Street, just a few steps from her birthplace.
This restaurant was once George Street Grocery, where Welty's parents would send her on errands.
This building on Griffith Street is now the Mississippi Department of Education in this state capital, but it was formerly the Central High School where Welty was educated after the elementary school.
Welty attended this church in North Congress, the Galloway Memorial United Methodist Church.
Welty's gravestone bears a quotation from The Optimist's Daughter: 'For her life, any life, she had to believe, was nothing but the continuity of its love.
On the other side is a quotation from One Writer's Beginning: 'The memory is a living thing—it too is in transit. But during its moment, all that is remembered joins, and lives—the old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead.
The Eudora Welty Library on North State Street.
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