Stanford, the prestigious university in Palo Alto, California, is mentioned in Requiem for a Nun as one of the places at which the novel's hypothetical non-Southern reader may have been educated: "yourself the stranger, the outlander from B.A. (or perhaps even M.A.) at Harvard or Northwestern or Stanford" (205).
Charleston, a major port on the Atlantic Ocean, is where Fort Sumter is located, and where the first shots of the Civil War were fired - a historical event that is referred to in several of the fictions. Charleston itself appears as a location in several others, including The Mansion. In that novel Charles Mallison visits a Harvard classmate named Spoade to "see what a Saint Cecilia Ball looks like" (229); the upper class Saint Cecilia Society was known for its formal balls.
Although Faulkner himself never got to the Western Front during World War I, quite a few of his characters fight or serve as non-combatants in wartime France; France during the wars of the 20th century has separate Location entries. After they are marrried in Paris in Requiem for a Nun Temple Drake and Gowan Stevens honeymoon at Cap Ferrat (Cape Ferrat), a very exclusive community on the Mediterranean in the south of France, in a villa built by a prince for his mistress.
In Requiem for a Nun Kansas City (along with "Chicago and Boston and Philadelphia") is cited as an epitome of municipal political corruption (192). Kansas City was probably best known for its steak, which is why in The Town it is the source of the beef that Mrs. Widrington feeds her Pekingese
In Flags in the Dust, Calcutta - as the name of the city in India named Kolkata was anglicized - is where Joan Heppleton met and married her second husband, a young American working for the Standard Oil Company. (See also "India" as an entry in this index.)
Although Joe Christmas never knows it, he was born in this Arkansas homestead, where his mother Milly lived - and died - with her parents, Eupheus (Doc) Hines and his wife. Light in August does not provide many details about this location, but does identify Hines as the foreman of a small sawmill nearby, which is probably the economic basis for a small town. It is presumably at that town that the traveling circus stops, which is where Milly meets the man who (supposedly) is Joe's biological father.
After Popeye is arrested while driving through Alabama in Sanctuary, he asks his jailors "the name of this dump"; the narrative says "They told him," but for some reason it withholds the name from us (310). The town is presumably a county seat; it is large enough to have a courthouse and a District Attorney, and - after Popeye is tried and convicted in this town for a murder he didn't commit - to hang him. (See also the entry for Alabama in this index.)
Birmingham (1930 population 260,000) is the largest city in Alabama. It is while driving through it in Sanctuary, on his way from Memphis to Florida, that Popeye is arrested for a murder he didn't commit. Birmingham is probably also the Alabama location that Faulkner calls "Mills City" in "Elly." There is no "Mills City" in the real Alabama. The one in the story is the same distance from Jefferson that Birmingham is from Oxford.
Florence, one of the several towns where Hawkshaw worked for one year as a barber in "Hair," is a real town in northwestern Alabama. In The Reivers the train that carries Corrie and Otis from Memphis to Parsham is ultimately going to Florence too.
In one of the many passages where Jason lists his grievances to himself, he compares Harvard, where "they teach you how to go for a swim without knowing how to swim," to "Sewanee," where "they dont even teach you what water is" (196). Affiliated with the Episcopal Church, Sewanee: The University of the South is located in Sewanee, Tennessee - but it's not clear why Jason thinks of it in this way, or at all. He resents the money his parents spent to send Quentin to Harvard, but there's no evidence anyone in the family went to Sewanee.
