Sunday, May 13, 2012

A Rose For Emily

While I was visiting Oxford I stopped into a bookstore. I'm an author, and I was trying to convince his book store owner to sell my book in her store. She and I got to talking. I told her I was obsessed with Faulkner and had come to Oxford to learn more about the town that Jefferson was at least partially modeled after. This opened up the conversation to where Faulkner got his ideas for his characters. This bookstore owner then claimed that she knew the woman that inspired him to create Emily, from "A Rose for Emily." She claimed that he hated this woman, and that this woman who was the real life person of Emily, was the wife of some lawyer that he knew.

I have no way to verify this claim, and I've heard other accounts of who the real Emily is, so I don't necessarily believe her story, but I was certainly intrigued. Such a small town as Oxford, everyone probably knows everyone and such a rumor probably doesn't come from nowhere. The name of that bookstore was Square Books, and it sat right on the square. It is said that William Faulkner and his friend used to walk around that square trying to sell his books and poems. Talk about self-promoting. I bet Faulkner would have loved the internet. I loved being there on that square in Oxford.

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