It’s Not Even Past: William Faulkner In Present-Day Oxford

By Tyler Malone

I was racing against time. Specifically, the clock. I had hours of sunlight left, but not much time before Rowan Oak would close for the day. Rowan Oak is the house in which writer William Faulkner lived in Oxford, Mississippi, from 1930 until his death in 1962. Now owned and operated by the University of Mississippi, the house museum closes at 4:00 PM.

I had stopped at Elvis Presley’s birthplace in nearby Tupelo on my drive toward Oxford, and that had slowed me down considerably. 4:00 PM was only a little over an hour away. The clock read 2:39, then 2:40, then 2:41, etc....