Faulkner puts southern town on the map

OXFORD, Miss. -- The young Japanese woman in jeans and high heels took her seat alongside a bronze statue of William Faulkner and snuggled up to pose for a picture. If it were the real Faulkner, he would cringe. The hard-drinking, often prickly novelist hated the casual touch. His messy, spectacular novels are as thorny as he was. His mile-long sentences and fated characters seem unfashionable for today's best-seller lists.

Yet Faulkner draws thousands of tourists annually to Oxford, the beautiful Mississippi town that inspired his work. Like rock 'n' roll legend Elvis in Tupelo, Miss., Faulkner has become a one-man cottage industry.

"Tourism exploded in the last two years even though Faulkner's home, Rowan Oak, was closed for renovations," said Oxford tourism director Max Hipp.

"They walked the grounds, looked at Faulkner memorabilia at Ole Miss, soaked up Oxford's atmosphere. Maybe it's a fascination with what's left of the Deep South and the Southern psyche. So much of the region has been malled and Wal-Mart-ized. Downtown Oxford still looks a lot like it did when Faulkner used it as a stage for his characters."

Many stores that once sold sorghum, muslin and ringworm medicine have become restaurants serving Godiva chocolate bread pudding or shops selling children's silk jogging suits. Yet Oxford doesn't peddle Faulkner as a pop icon. There are no gift shops packed with Faulkner bathmats, "Sound and Fury" musical mugs or "Light in August" ashtrays.

Courthouse square is framed by creamy white- and red-brick buildings laced with Corinthian columns, a site Faulkner would recognize as home. In his novels, he renamed Oxford "Jefferson," the biggest town in imaginary Yoknapatawpha County. Fans love navigating his fantasy landscape.

During the University of Mississippi's 31st Annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference in late July, Korean students retraced the steps of the author's character Linda Snopes, the Spanish Civil War heroine with hyacinth-colored eyes. A Parisian couple searched for the store where Faulkner's sex-crazed Thomas Sutpen bought construction supplies for his wilderness palace.

"You hear accents that gave Faulkner his rhythms, see beauty and also some of the poverty that shaped his work," said Paul Rose, a Manhattan art gallery owner.

"You absorb more than scenery. This is the Bible Belt but you pick up a bittersweet mood that God is watching because he enjoys a good story and fascinating personalities, not because he'll jump in and solve things."

The University of Mississippi has unveiled plans for a 5,000-square-foot, $12 million Faulkner museum. A path from the museum will carve through a pine and oak forest sliced by ravines to Rowan Oak's magnolia-shaded lawns. Rowan Oak got a $1.34 million renovation courtesy of state and federal grants. Admission is free.

Faulkner's original furniture fills the home. Cards covered in red greasepaint and graphite are pasted on his office walls. Faulkner wrote "The Fable" plot outline by hand on the cards so he could glance up from his typewriter if he got tangled in his own prose.

Rowan Oak curator William Griffith points out recent guest book signatures by a Japanese Esquire editor and a group of Korean students.

"We got 20,000 visitors last year and I'm sure we'll have more in 2004," Griffith said. It's a feat, considering Oxford has about 12,000 residents.

Griffith attributes some of the tourism surge to Faulkner's new popularity in China and across Asia, especially Japan. Faulkner wrote about the South as a defeated nation scarred by racism, a theme that resonates with a nation just now confronting its World War II conduct.

The university, particularly its football program, always generated dollars for Oxford. But Mayor Richard Howorth sees this spurt in tourism as a new trend: wealthy retirees and second homeowners buying small-town gems rather than urban condos. He has some qualms about Oxford's successful Retirement Attraction Program.

Program director Christy Knapp is swamped with queries. "I'd say our biggest competition for retirees is Florida, North and South Carolina," she said. "Most of my queries come from California, New York, Texas, Michigan and Florida."

The influx seemed a godsend for merchants. But some worry that soaring property values will force them out.

Howorth owns Square Books, a beloved bookstore where John Grisham, who moved from Oxford to Virginia about a decade ago, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Ford occasionally drop in for coffee.

"Property values increased ridiculously; my wife and I couldn't buy our house if we were moving here now," Howorth said.

A 1,200-square-foot home now costs about $104,000, too pricey for cashiers, waiters and barkeeps who are tourism's rank and file. Howorth discovered only three of Oxford's 56 police officers own homes in the city.

New York City's Greenwich Village is Oxford's cautionary example. The bohemian enclave was so charming that prices soared beyond the reach of the artists, writers and blue-collar workers who made its streets vibrant and colorful. So Howorth is consoled that gritty pubs like the ones that nourished writers Willie Morris and William Stryon thrive in downtown Oxford.

One bar has a Dean Martin quote instead of the menu scrawled on its chalkboard: "You aren't drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on."

Across the street, The Levee tapes drink specials to the window: the Mullet, Toxic Waste, Monkey Blood. A hand-lettered poster by the door said: "You are now leaving a bar. Do you need to call

". A picture of yellow cab is below for those too bombed to read on.