Monthly Archives: May 2014

Oxford, Mississippi

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RowanOak-Approach

A week ago Wednesday was Carol’s and my anniversary, so we decided to take a day trip up to Oxford, MS, primarily to take a couple more things off my bucket list—visit Square Books in downtown Oxford and, what the heck, make a pilgrimage to William Faulkner’s beloved home, Rowan Oak. Two more things off our list of things to do before/if we leave the state.

Square Books is one of those places that people tend to moan the disappearance of, except so far I can tell, local independent bookstores are doing just fine. The ones I know have been around for decades and show every sign of being around for decades more. The only picture of the actual store I have has Carol in it, and I’ve been threatened with bodily harm if I post it, so I won’t. I’ll just say that the place is a bibliophile’s dream, and it left me a bit depressed. I’m still working out why.

After that it was off to Rowan Oak. I do see why he loved the place—the grounds are lovely, the house was at once grand and still homey. I know you’ve all heard the story of the time Faulkner was in Hollywood and finally told his bosses he needed to work from home, he couldn’t concentrate in his studio office. So they said fine, assuming he meant his rented digs in Hollywood, but of course he meant Rowan Oak, and he was on the next train out of there.

Faulkner-BedroomFaulkner-Office-MantelFaulkner-Wall-Notes

I haven’t taken too many pictures, because all I had was a camera phone with really crappy battery life, the light was poor, and the battery was dying even as I got these few. Most won’t need explanation, but I did get one shot of the walls of Faulkner’s home office. Apparently he had the habit of writing blocks of continuity/daily notes on the walls. The shot was hard to get, but you might be able to see a little bit.

The last shot is just of a really old and mystical osage orange growing in front of (and I feel weird even saying it) the servants’ quarters. In some ways Faulkner’s world seems hundreds of years in the past, but it wasn’t that long ago. What’s the adage? “The past isn’t gone. It isn’t even the past.”

Note: My apologies to anyone who gets this twice. I was having problems with the pictures and had to redo the whole thing to get them to display properly.

Faulkner-Osage-Orange

Drying Out the Well

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WRITING 02The subject came up on the Mythic Café group on FB—the fact that there are some writers, in order to protect their individual voices, stop reading in order not to be influenced by other writers. I can understand isolating yourself somewhat if you’re working on a particular project. After all, when I’m writing fiction, I have a very hard time reading it, or at least reading anything remotely like what I’m working on. I don’t pretend to understand how it works, but the part of my brain that recognizes and appreciates a particular branch of the fantasy tree, at least for reading pleasure, completely shuts down. Which is why, as much as I enjoy the periods when I get more reading done, they’re usually possible simply because I’m not writing, which becomes a problem if it goes on for very long. So in general I don’t read nearly as much fiction as I used to, and I do read a lot more non-fiction.

But to stop reading entirely? Get serious. That’s rather like saying, “I’m going to become a guitar player. Therefore, I will no longer listen to guitar music so as not to pollute my style.” You simply cannot miss the point in a greater and more profound fashion. How do you know what you like? How do you learn what moves you? And more to the point, how do you learn to understand and incorporate the techniques of your betters into your own playing if you don’t study and internalize them? For writing it’s exactly the same. Assimilating your influences and incorporating, synthesizing them into your own unique style is what makes your style.

You may start with a lake, but cut off access to rivers and creeks and rain and pretty soon all you have is a dust bowl. That situation won’t float anyone’s boat.