OXFORD, Miss. -- Five decades after his death, William Faulkner still draws literary pilgrims to his Mississippi hometown, the “little postage stamp of native soil” he made famous through his novels.

Oxford inspired the fictional town of Jefferson that was a frequent setting for his stories, and it’s commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Nobel laureate’s death Friday with several events that include a tag-team reading of his novel, The Reivers, beginning about daybreak.

Roughly 25,000 people a year visit Faulkner’s antebellum home, Rowan Oak, which is now owned by the University of Mississippi. The author’s meticulous handwriting appears on the walls of his downstairs office. Using pencil, he outlined events of his 1954 novel, A Fable.

William Griffith, the Rowan Oak curator since 1999, said writing was a “demon-driven” task for Faulkner.

“You’re going to hear about the agony and the sweat and the difficulty and the compulsion,” Griffith said. “You’re not going to hear anything about how great it was, how relaxing and beautiful it was. None of that. He just did what he had to do to get it done.”

Oxford’s lure is similar to that of Key West for fans of Ernest Hemingway and Salinas, Calif., for devotees of John Steinbeck.

“I’ve just always wanted to see this,” Lisa McDanels of Rocky River, Ohio, said as she and her husband toured Faulkner’s home. “You think, ‘Oh, he walked here.’ ”

The two-story Greek Revival home was built in 1848, and Faulkner bought it in 1930. It sits a mile from the town square, but feels isolated because it’s encircled by woods – oaks, magnolias, cedars, dogwoods and honeysuckle. Griffith said the home retains its character, with one important addition – climate control.

Faulkner added central heating in the 1930s but scorned air conditioning, despite summer temperatures that reach the 90s and stifling humidity. In The Reivers, a character groused, “there are no seasons at all any more, with interiors artificially contrived at sixty degrees in summer and ninety degrees in winter, so that mossbacked recidivists like me must go outside in summer to escape cold and in winter to escape heat.”

The day after Faulkner died, his wife, Estelle, had a window-unit air conditioner installed in her upstairs bedroom.

Ole Miss bought Rowan Oak in 1972 from the Faulkners’ daughter, Jill. The house was renovated from 2001 to 2003, and central air conditioning was added.

Faulkner was known for sitting on the square to observe Oxford’s small-town comings and goings. In 1997, to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth in nearby New Albany, Oxford dedicated a Faulkner statue in front of its own City Hall. Now, tourists snap photos by the life-sized bronze.

Faulkner and his wife are buried in St. Peter’s Cemetery, north of the square, and fans pay tribute by pouring bourbon on the gravesite.

Donald Kartiganer, professor emeritus of English who held the Faulkner studies chair at Ole Miss, recalled taking Salman Rushdie on a private tour of Rowan Oak in 2006. When Rushdie saw Faulkner’s writing table and typewriter, his voice fell into hushed reverence and he asked if he could sit there. Kartiganer said yes.