23 November 2009

New Albany, Mississippi: William Faulkner: Literary Landmarks of the Southern United States, #13

'William Faulkner. Here, September 25, 1897, was born the distinguished author, member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and recipient of the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature.'

Although Faulkner's birthplace no longer exists, a model of it is in the Union County Museum a few houses down from the street marker.

At the back of the museum, as a tribute to Mississippi's most distinguished literary son, is a literary garden, with a large number of plants mentioned in Faulkner's work, and markers showing the appropriate quotations.

Jimson Weed. 'Here. Here's you a jimson weed. He gave me the flower.' '...Ben squatting before a small mound of earth...at either end of it an empty bottle of blue glass that once contained poison was fixed in the ground. In one was a withered stalk of jimson weed...' William Faulkner, The Sound and the fury.

Bridal Wreath/Spirea. 'About this half-moon of lawn...were bridal wreath and crepe myrtle bushes as old as time and huge as age could make them'. William Faulkner, Sartoris.

'Drusilla faced Bayard, she was quite near; again the scent of verbena in her hair seemed to have increased a hundred times as she stood holding out to me, one in each hand, two dueling pistols.' William Faulkner, The Unvanquished.

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