Top Cities

1/26/2016--I am suspending updating on this page for the time being as I am finding it difficult to keep track of the totals for the many lower-rated cities that may or may not be rising in the ranks.

1. London, England.............................70

2. Paris, France....................................41
3. Rome, Italy......................................24
4. Moscow, Russia...............................17
5. St Petersburg, Russia.......................10
6. Edinburgh, Scotland..........................8
    Florence, Italy...................................8
    New York, NY, USA........................8
9. Cambridge, MA, USA......................7
    Springfield, IL, USA........................7
11. Bangkok, Thailand...........................5
     Berlin, Germany..............................5
     Duxbury, MA, USA.........................5
     Plymouth, MA, USA.......................5
     Washington, DC, USA....................5
16. Athens, Greece...............................4
     Concord, MA, USA........................4
      Jerusalem, Israel.............................4
     Marseilles, France...........................4
     San Francisco, CA, USA................4
     Sauk Centre, MN, USA..................4
     Stockholm, Sweden........................4
23.Alexandria, Egypt...........................3
    Bergamo, Italy.................................3
    Copenhagen, Denmark....................3
    Gort, Ireland.....................................3
    Granada, Spain.................................3
    Houghton, England..........................3
    Milan, Italy......................................3
    Milwaukee, WI, USA.....................3
    Portland, ME, USA.........................3
    Providence, RI, USA......................3
    South Berwick, ME, USA...............3

William Faulkner

The Faulkner books that were chosen for the encyclopedia reading list were The Sound and the Fury (1929), Sanctuary (1931), Absalom, Absalom (1936) and Requiem For a Nun (1951). A half-century on, there is little controversy about his greatness compared with nearly anyone else in American literary history. The shadow of his work is still a formidable presence to a good many working literary people at least my age and over, in the south especially of course, but even to a northerner his books still strike one immediately as possibly--we are still far too given over to nihilism for the most part to really believe this-- having real meaning and importance for one's life.

In my own career to this point I have rather surprisingly only read The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom, and the celebrated short story "A Rose For Emily". Absalom, Absalom impressed itself upon me as a masterpiece, and I wrote about it briefly on the mother blog a few years back. The Sound and the Fury I have read twice. The first time was in high school, in unison with Joyce, which were the first instances where I began to grasp, doubtless because it is so blatantly apparent in these authors, that there was such a thing as literary technique, and as such I thought it a most remarkable book. The second I was still rather young, age 25, and while I found some of the narrative devices a little wearisome I still admired the prose a great deal. Faulkner is one of the most painterly of authors, and his descriptions of light, and shadows, and dusty roads, and Harvard dormitories in winter, and sweaty pillows and such, have remained with me throughout all the long years since I read about them. "A Rose for Emily" did not have as strong of an impact on me, probably because I don't understand it completely enough, but its construction and prose did give the sense of having attained a kind of perfection of the miniature form, especially in its time.

Oddly, through most of my 20s and 30s I thought of myself as not liking Faulkner much because of the grotesqueness of his characters and his themes, and because of a general prejudice I held towards southerners. I suppose I still don't think of him as someone I can exactly like in a general way. There are things about him I like in my own way, and I could I share that liking with people who were more or less akin to me in temperament. I'm outside that whole Southern literary culture scene and mentality, and I can't really approach him that way.

Here is my personal library of Faulkner books, which as you can see is pretty paltry. The Faulkner Reader contains the full Sound and Fury, so I've got three copies of that at least.

Faulkner was born on the corner of Jefferson & Cleveland Streets in New Albany, Mississippi, in the northeastern part of the state. Interstate 22 passes right through town. I can't figure out if the birth house is still standing, but one block away, at 114 Cleveland Street, stands the Union County Heritage Museum, which naturally has a section devoted to the author, though he only lived in New Albany for fourteen months. 

The main city associated with Faulkner is Oxford, home of the University of Mississippi and by all accounts a charming place to visit. It appears to be 15 or 20 miles off of the Interstate (55, in this instant). Houses and museums of authors, even major ones, are closing as tourist attractions left and right due to lack of interest and associated funding problems, but Faulkner's house, "Rowan Oak", is evidently the top attraction in that entire part of Mississippi, to the point of making many would-be pilgrims self-conscious or embarrassed about going there. Here is a pretty good video one tourist made while there:

Other Faulkner-related sites that might be worth a dropping by if one were hanging around town for a few hours include the College Hill Presbyterian Church where he was married--the church dates to 1846 and was also used by General Sherman's army as living quarters, and the statue of the 1949 Nobel Prize winner in front of the courthouse. Yes, a statue is not terribly exciting in itself, but I find them useful as landmarks, as they tend to be located in the livelier and most attractive parts of town, which guys like me have trouble finding on their own sometimes. 

Faulkner is also buried in Oxford, at St Peter's cemetery. I'm sure the location of the grave is well-marked.

I was actually on my way to Oxford, Mississippi in May, 2003 to see some of these places, and I got to just south of New Madrid, Missouri, when the three long beeps of the Emergency Broadcast System, without the usual disclaimer of the test, interrupted the radio program we were listening to and announced that there was a tornado warning for some county or other--Scott County, perhaps?--which meant nothing to me. However, about ten seconds after the announcement, we passed a sign reading "You are entering Scott County", and about two minutes after that, the wind began to pick up considerably and the rain coming down in a highly dramatic manner. That was the last occasion that I ever purposely stayed in the cheapest hotel available without any regard to quality. After pulling off the highway in that toe of Southeastern Missouri I eschewed all of the standard brand names in favor of a pokey little dump called, imaginatively, "Budget Hotel". Though I had by this time retreated from my former vow to never pay more than $50 a night for a hotel room, I was then still holding the line at 100. In truth while I probably would have noticed all of the things that were awful about it, I considered in those days that my station in life required that I endure the soggy carpets, the dirty towels, the teeming insects and the unscrubbed blood in the sinks, until such time as I had proven myself worthy of rising above such accommodations. While I never actually accomplished this, and remain uncomfortable with the most modest suggestion of bourgeois luxury, let alone anything really swanky, the Budget Hotel in Tornado Alley was the last inn of its class I have ever been suffered to stay in unvetted. The next morning the sky remained forbidding and the forecast indicated continued tornado activity all across northern Mississippi along our planned route. So reluctantly I submitted to turning around and heading back towards Chicago, and have still never been to Mississippi, though I do think that is one place I still may get to someday.

The house where Faulkner lived at 624 Pirate's Alley in New Orleans is now a bookstore and literary meeting place/flophouse of some kind. It seems like it would not be a bad place to stop in if one happened to be in town (and of course was young/good-looking/talented/had a personality/was clever/understood literature and something of life, etc. My advices do not apply to losers).

I can't any actual film footage of Faulkner speaking, even though he lived until 1962, though above is a recording of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

As far as the college standings go, Faulkner attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters and I thought he attended Harvard very briefly as well. However I have decided for my purposes here to institute a (admittedly arbitrary) 2-year rule for a college to get its full credit for a great writer, so no points are awarded here.

The dates of my reading/beginning these Faulkner books, for my own personal reference are:
The Sound & the Fury: High School Senior Year 1987-88, and again June 15, 1995
"A Rose For Emily" September 28, 1998
Absalom, Absalom: October 30, 2005