crazy in Oxford

Lynda Edwards looks at the Oxford/William Faulkner tourism phenomena.

OXFORD, Miss. — The Tokyo fashionista in Rock & Republic jeans raced as fast as her snakeskin stilettos could carry her toward the bronze statue of William Faulkner lounging on a bench.

She perched gingerly next to the statue and snatched a magenta camera from her Aqua Man backpack. Her boyfriend photographed her snuggling with the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner.

The Mississippi novelist would cringe if he were flesh. The hard-drinking, often prickly Faulkner 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 sellers lists. Yet Faulkner draws thousands of tourists annually to Oxford, the beautiful Mississippi town in the middle of nowhere that inspired his work. Like rock 'n roll legend Elvis in Tupelo, Faulkner is a one-man cottage industry.

I found this checking up on what Lynda Edwards was doing, after reading CAAF's Edna Buchanan/Miami post this morning. (Which is absolutely right on the money: buy the book, read the profile, worship the woman.) Lynda Edwards worked for the Miami New Times years ago and wrote a phenomenal story (later optioned by Clive Barker) about the mythology of homeless kids in the city. It gets linked to every once in awhile here and there and rightly so. She's a fine writer. You can look up most of her big stories at New Times here, and I particularly recommend her story about obeah, "Put That Corpse to Work for You!".

She's working for the Associated Press now, in Biloxi it seems, and still turning out the odd gem like that Faulkner story. But I'm guessing that however rich the material is in Mississippi, it's milk chocolate to dark over what you could turn up in Miami.

worm "First Few Desperate Hours," The Mountain Goats

namecheck George Rowe the "Just Fine but Very Expensive" Dog