Southern Living Magazine Scenic Route brings many literature lovers through Clarksdale

VIDEO INTERVIEW IN POST

Literati from all over America have been traveling a well-beaten Mississippi path from Jackson to Clarksdale and on to Oxford—Faulkner’s stomping grounds and his home Rowan Oak.

Alabama Ladies Sharon Price from Ozark and Melanie Horn from Dothan, recent guest of Clark House and on the Southern Living Magazine Scenic Route Mississippi Literary Trail. Photo by DELTA BOHEMIAN

In the January 2012 issue of Southern Living magazine, the travel section featured, “The Scenic Route: Mississippi’s Literary Trail.”

As a result, well over a score of literature lovers have stayed in Clarksdale’s Clark House Residential Inn as they traipse the trail from Eudora Welty’s Tudor home in Jackson—where she spent more than 70 years penning timeless Southern literature—to Falkner’s Oxford.

The Southern Living literary route recommends:

In Jackson:

Stay at the Old Capitol Inn
Eat at the Mayflower Café
Visit Lemuria Books, the Eudora Welty home and the Margaret Walker Center

In Yazoo City:

Eat at Ubon’s BBQ
Visit Willie Morris’s grave at Glenwood Cemetery

In Greenwood:

Visit TurnRow Book Co.

In Clarksdale:

Stay at the historic Clark House Residential Inn where many rooms are named for Tennessee William’s characters, and after a continental breakfast, walk next door to the Cutrer Mansion, said to have been the inspiration for Belle Reve in a Streetcar named Desire.
Eat tamales at Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero Blues Club.
Visit St. George’s Episcopal Church, where the playwright Williams lived for a while with his family as a child (In Clarksdale on Sunday, stop by the church and hear an excellent homily given by the rector, Jason Shelby).

In Oxford:

Visit Faulkner’s home Rowan Oak, shop the Faulkner section at Square Books on the downtown square, drive past Maud Faulkner’s home on the way to the Thompson-Chandler home (model for the Compson home in The Sound and the Fury), before ending up at Faulkner’s grave in St. Peter’s Cemetery, where it is customary to have a pull of whiskey (Jack Daniels was the Nobel Prize-winning author’s favorite) before leaving the bottle as a gift. Not a bad trail fellow Delta Bohemians. And…

Don’t forget to bend the innkeeper’s ear—it’s a big one—at the Clark House! If he doesn’t know the answer, he will make one up—hopefully not making Welty, Faulkner, and Morris shiver violently in their graves. Poor William used to serve Willie bottles of Moosehead Beer in the late 80’s at the Gumbo Company in Oxford. Surely, a prolific drinking buddy will forgive one Poor William for hyperbole not in keeping with the excellent standards set by the hosts of Mississippi writers renowned the world over? Surely? Well?

WATCH THE VIDEO INTERVIEW

A photograph of Clark House Residential Inn in Clarksdale featured in Southern Living Magazine January 2012 issue.

Southern Living Magazine January 2012 cover which features Clark House and Clarksdale in the Scenic Literary Route article.