The premiere of “Intruder in the Dust” at the Lyric Theatre, by Phil Mullen, University of Mississippi.
In 1949, William Faulkner walked from his home at Rowan Oak, up South 11th Street to the building that had once been his family’s stables, to the now Lyric Theatre, for the MGM world premiere of the motion picture made from his novel, Intruder in the Dust.
There had been parades, political rallies, pep rallies, public hangings, and movie stars on and around The Square, but never anything like this. Oxford was plucked from its relished obscurity. School dropout Billy Falkner’s evolution into American literary master William Faulkner had been a journey traveled on both a public and private front. In world literary history, he had gone from little known to making newspaper and magazine headlines from Paris to Tokyo. At home in Oxford, the trip to respectability took a slower road. It was not a proper way to earn a living and support his wife and child, it was said. He drank too much, it was rumored. Some sneered dismissively, but would later stare questioningly at a man they knew they had misunderstood.
Granddad said there were a lot of folks Mr. Faulkner didn’t give a damn about, and many others he
cared deeply for but, in the end, he was just a man, and as he walked up S. 11th toward the Lyric, when he
saw the glow of the spotlights, when he came in sight of the crowd, when Oxford caught sight of him and the director wheeled and struck up the band, when he made the corner onto Van Buren, to cheers and calls, then he and his hometown both knew that another line in their dual histories had been drawn. From the time two hours later when Mr. Faulkner stepped back out onto that Van Buren sidewalk, he would be the sole author of his story in Oxford.
