Faulkner’s Home Reopened
after Extensive Restoration
William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak, closed to visitors since
December 2001, reopened July 25 after a nearly $1 million
restoration. The noon reopening of the Greek Revival house
and grounds was appropriately timed to kick off the 31st
annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference.

The reopening marks the end of the second phase
in a three-phase restoration project. The completed work includes new electrical wiring and plumbing, a museum-grade climate control system, foundation support, wall
repairs, painting, and reproduction wallpaper. The work was
funded with $500,000 from the state and a $363,000 grant
from the U.S. Department of Interior. The final phase,
landscaping and restoration of outbuildings, begins this fall.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is
providing a $479,000 grant for the work.

“The home is going to be in good shape for years to come,”
said William Griffith, Rowan Oak curator. “The restoration
ensures visitors from around the world the opportunity to
experience Faulkner’s life at Rowan Oak.”

Built by a pioneer settler in the 1840s, the house was
purchased by Faulkner in 1930, and it was his home until his
death in 1962. The author’s daughter, Jill Faulkner Summers, sold the house and the surrounding 31 acres to Ole Miss in 1972. The house was last restored in 1980.

Originally known as the Bailey Place, the estate was renamed
Rowan Oak by the Nobel Prize-winning author for the legend
of the Rowan tree, which is recorded in Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough. According to the story, Scottish peasants placed a cross of Rowan wood over their thresholds to ward off evil spirits and give the occupants a place of refuge, privacy, and peace. Just as Faulkner experienced these qualities while writing and living on the estate, these features continue today under the cedars and hardwoods, Griffith said.

In 1952, Faulkner added a small office to the house and
inscribed on the wall the outline for the Pultizer Prizewinning
novel A Fable. The office remains as it was at the
time of his death. Besides adding the office, Faulkner erected
a brick wall on the east side of the house to ward off staring
strangers, constructed a stable, and added brick terraces.

The grounds of Rowan Oak are open to visitors during
daylight hours, and the home is open 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.
Tuesdays through Saturdays and 1:00-4:00 p.m. on Sundays. For guided tours, including assistance related to a disability, call 662-234-3284.

TOBIE BAKER

Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha
July 24-28, 2005
“Faulkner’s Inheritance”s.

As much as the fictional character closest to him–Quentin
Compson–William Faulkner was “an empty hall echoing with
sonorous defeated names . . . a commonwealth . . . a barracks
filled with stubborn back-looking ghosts.” The names and ghosts, of course, were not just those of the Old South and the war fought on its behalf, but the world that grew up in the wake of their passing: a New South still harboring some of the values of the Old, a Falkner family history fostering comparably divided loyalties, a Modernist revolution in thought and art prepared to challenge all loyalties, North and South.

The 32nd annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference
will attempt to take the measure of Faulkner’s “inheritance”: the varied elements that went into his making and the making of his work. Obviously the range is great. What events of Southern and North Mississippi history, what aspects of the personal life, what ideas in the intellectual ferment of Modernism figure most strikingly in the fiction he wrote? What do we as readers most need to know of the world Faulkner inhabited—political, social, cultural–in order to best understand that fiction? How does “inheritance,” as a theme, function in his fiction?

In commenting once on his work, he spoke, uncharacteristically, of “the amazing gift I had,” and wondered “where it came from . . . why God or gods or whoever it was, selected me to be the vessel.” The aim of this conference will be to explore, in somewhat more mundane
terms, “where it came from” and what–given that “amazing
gift”–Faulkner made out of what he was given.

We are inviting both 50-minute plenary addresses and 20-
minute papers for this conference. Plenary papers consist of
approximately 6,000 words and will be published by the
University Press of Mississippi. Conference papers consist of
approximately 2,500 words and will be delivered at panel
sessions.

For plenary papers the 15th edition of the University of
Chicago Manual of Style should be used as a guide in
preparing manuscripts. Three copies of manuscripts must be
submitted by January 15, 2005. Notification of selection will
be made by March 1, 2005. Authors whose papers are
selected for presentation at the conference and publication
will receive (1) a waiver of the conference registration fee
and (2) lodging at the University Alumni House from
Saturday, July 23, through Thursday, July 28.

For short papers, three copies of two-page abstracts must be
submitted by January 15, 2005. Notification will be made by
March 1, 2005. Authors whose papers are selected for panel
presentation will receive a waiver of the $275 conference
registration fee.

All manuscripts and inquiries should be addressed to
Donald Kartiganer, Department of English, The University
of Mississippi, University, MS 38677. Telephone: 662-915-
5793, e-mail: dkartiga@olemiss.edu. Panel abstracts may be
sent by e-mail attachment; plenary manuscripts should only
be sent by conventional mail.