The typical critical reaction when the novel first appeared in expressed consternation and confusion: not surprisingly, perhaps, many reviewers castigated Faulkner for yoking together two such seemingly disparate narratives; others, although more sympathetic to his resolute experimentalism, remained oblivious to the links between the two sections.
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF. Skip to main content. This service is more advanced with JavaScript available. And he will not answei , he thought No He null not answer, this man of ultimatums, upon whom for the rest of his hp will yearly devolve the necessity for decrees which he knows befoj ehand he cannot support, who would have denied the promise she did not ask yet would perform the act and she to know this well, too well, too well — this face impeccable and invincible upon which all existing light in the room will have seemed to gather as though in benediction, affirmation not of t ighteousncss but rightness, having been consistently and tnconft overftbly light ; and withal tragic too, since in the being right there was nothing of consolation nor of peace.
Now it would be time He rose from the bench and fol- lowed the cuive of blanched oyster shells between the massy bloom of oleandei and wygelia, jasmine, japomca, and orange, towards the exit and the street, beneath the noon The cab came up, slowing into the kerb, the driver opened the door.
The one for Mobile. The coast. The door closed, the cab went on, the scaling palm tiunks began to flee past. OLD MAN When the woman asked him if he had a knife, standing there in the streaming bedticking garments which had got him shot at, the second time by a machine-gun, on the two occasions when he had seen any human life after leaving the levee four days ago, the convict felt exactly as he had in the fleeing skiff when the woman suggested that they had better hurry.
The can in the boat! He saw the deer again, or another one That is, he saw a deer — a side glance, the light smoke-coloured phantom in a cypress vista then gone, van- ished, he not pausing to look after it, galloping back to the woman and kneeling with the can to her lips until she told him better. It had contained a pint of beans or tomatoes, something hermetically sealed and opened by four blows of an axe hee , the metal flap turned back, the jagged edges razor-sharp. Then he drank too; they ate the other fragments which had been charring and scorching on willow twigs; it was foil mght now.
But at least the boat has stopped long enough to give me a chance to turn it around. He waked at dawn, the light faint, the sky jonquil-coloured; the day would be fine The fire had burned out; on the op- posite side of the cold ashes lay three snakes motionless and parallel as underscoring, and m the swiftly making light others seemed to materialize: earth which an instant before had been mere earth broke up into motionless coils and loops, branches which a moment before had been mere branches now become immobile ophidian festoons even as the convict stood thinking about food, about something hot before thev started But he decided against this, against wasting this much time, since there still remained in the skiff quite a few of the rock-like objects which the shanty woman had flung into it, besides thinking this no matter how fast nor successfully he hunted, he would never be able to lay up enough food to get them back to where they wanted to go.
So he returned to the skiff, paying himself back to it by his vine-spliced painter, back to the water on which a low mist, thick as cotton batting though apparently not very tall, deep lay, in which the stern of the skiff was already beginning to disappear although it lay with its prow almost touching the mound The woman waked stirred. He spent the next six days seeking n, while the tree burned through and fell and burned through again at the proper length and he, nursing little constant mnmng flames along the flanks of the log to make it paddle- shaped, nursing them at night too, while the woman and baby it was eating, nursing now, he turning his back or even returning into the woods each time she prepared to open the a ed tunic slept in the skiff.
He learned to watch for stooping awks and so found more rabbits and twice opossums, they ate some drowned fish which gave them both a rash and then a violent flux and one snake which the woman thought was turtle and which did them no harm, and one night it rained and he got up and dragged brush, shaking the snakes he no onger thought.
Then something else came up and began to nudge at his ankle the iog, the oar, it was even as he groped frantically for die skiff, hearing the swift rustling going to and fro inside the hull as the woman began to thrash about and scream. He poled towards it, thrusting aside the snake-looped branches, the bottom of the skiff resounding famdy to thick solid plops, the woman shrieking steadily. Then the skiff was clear of the trees, the mound, and now he could feel the bodies whipping about his ankles and hear the rasp of them as they went over the gunwale.
He drew the log in and scooped it forwards along the bottom of the boat and up and out; against the pallid water he could see three more of them in lashing convolutions before they yarns e utup! I wish I was a snake so i could get out too! Then something bellowed tremend- ously above his head, he heard human voices, a bell jangled and the sound ceased and the mist vanished as when you diaw your hand actoss a frosted pane, and the skiff now lay upon a sunny glitter of brown water flank to flank with, and about thirty yards away from, a steamboat.
Commit suicide? Lay alongside and come aboard. Come aboard! Do you expect me to hang here on stem engines till hell freezes? I m going arc man. The man who had spoken last turned and appeare to con verse with a third man in the pilot house.
Then e o or down at the skiff again. Come along and get some- thing to eat. Your boat is all right now. Then you can eat. Gobble them down, boy! Plenty of good red blood too. You know what that means? He could not move either, though he felt fine, he felt better than he had m ten days. This time he choked and spat a gout of blood, his nose now had no more feeling than a toe-nail, other than it felt about the size of a ten-inch shovel, and as cold.
You lasted a good two seconds Now you can eat something. Or do you think that win send you haywire again? But after his hill-billy country fashion and kind he would not ask, because to his raising asking information was asking a favour and you did not ask favours of strangers, if they offered them perhaps you accepted and you expressed gratitude almost tediously recapitulant, but you did not ask So he would watc 1 and wait, as he had done before, and do or try to do to the best of his ability what the best of his judgement dictated.
So he waited, and in mid afternoon the steamboat chuffed and thrust through a willow-choked gorge and emerge from it, and now the convict knew it was the River. But he did not ask, he just waited. Maybe it mas Carrollton he said, he thought It begun with a C. But he did not believe that either He did not know where he was, but he did know that this was not anywhere near the Carrollton he remembered from that day seven years ago when, shackled wrist to wrist with the deputy sheriff, he had passed through it on the tram - the slow spaced repeated shattering banging of trucks where two railroads crossed, a random scattering of white houses tranquil among trees on green hills lush with summer, a pointing spire, the finger of the hand of God.
But there was no river t ere. Now the doctor stood up and looked at the convict. And now he told about that - the intent eyes as dispassionate as ice behind the rimless glasses, the clipped quick-tempered face that was not accustomed to being crossed or lied to either.
Them clothes. Anybody would know them. That doctor knowed. He could hear them again - the thuck-thuck-thuck on the water where an instant before he had been. But he was not thinking of the bullets. He had forgotten them, forgiven them He was thinking of himself crouching, sobbing, panting before running again - the voice, the indictment, the cry o final and irrevocable repudiation of the old prim?
They shot at me. But you will take Carnarvon m preference to New Orleans. The doctor looked at him, the magnified pupils like the heads of two bridge nails. I tried to rob a train. It's like he is watching the way my hair grows on my head. To decide what was wrong, what you failed to do. Qmte, the doctor said in that affable, clipped voice.
He put , the cigarettes away. This ain't Canollton neither. He told it - of the next eight or nine or ten days, he did not remember winch, while the four of them - himself and the v. But he remembered it, but quietly now, with the cigai now, the good one the Warden had given him though not lighted yet in his peaceful and steadfast hand, remembering that first morning when he waked on the thin pallet beside his host the woman and baby had the one bed with the fierce sun already latticed through the warped rough planking of the wall, and stood on the rickety porch, looking out upon that flat fecund waste, neither earth nor water, where even the senses doubted which was which, which rich and massy air and which mazy and impalpable vegetation, and thought quietly.
Hnd until I can go on again, until I can find where I am and how to pass that town without them seeing me, I will have to help him do it, so we can eat and live too, and I don t know what he had a change of clothing too, almost at once on that rst mormng, not telling any more than he had about the s an the levee how he had begged, borrowed or bought from t e man whom he had not laid eyes on twelve hours ago an wit whom on the day he saw him for the last time he stil cou exchange no word, the pair of dungaree pants which even t Cajan had discarded as no longer wearable, filthy, utto ess, the legs slashed and frayed into fringe hke that on an i 90 hammock, m which he stood naked from the waist up an holding.
He remembered that too: that first morning when turning m the sunrise from the rickety platform he saw the hide nailed drying to the wall and stopped dead, looking at it quietly, thinking quietly and soberly.
Tout Tat gent sous k ml de Dieu! He would have to move on soon, thinking the convict , A. U this ditrn foolishness mil stop soon and I can get on back , and then suddenly he found that he was thinking. Will have to go get on back , and he became quite still and looked about at the rich strange desert which surrounded him, in which he was temporarily lost in peace and hope and into which the last seven years had sunk like so many trivial pebbles into a pool, leaving no ripple, and he thought quietly, with a kind of bemused amazement.
Yes I jeckon I had done forgot bow good making money was. Being let to make it So he used no gun, his the knotted rope and the Thuringian mace, and each morning he and the Cajan took their separate ways in the two boats to comb and creep the secret channels about the lost land from or out of which now and then still other pint-sized dark men appeared gobbling, abruptly and as though by magic from nowhere, in other hollowed logs, to follow quietly and watch him at his single combats — men named Tine and Toto and Theule, who were not much larger than and looked a good deal like the muskrats which the Cajan the host did this too, supplied the kitchen too, he expressed this too like the rifle business, in his own tongue, the convict comprehending this too as though it had been English o not concern yourself about food, O Hercules.
Catch alligators; I will supply the pot 5 took now and then from traps as you take a shoat pig at need from a pen, and varied the eternal rice and fish the convict did tell tins: how at night, m the cabin, the door and one sashless window battened against mos- quitoes - a form, a ritual, as empty as crossing the fingers or knocking on wood - sitting beside the bug-swirled lantern on the plank table in a temperature close to blood heat he would look down at the swimming segment of meat on his sweating plate and think, It must be Theule.
At first he refused to believe it, not that he felt that now he had served out and discharged his apprenticeship to mis- chance, had with the birth of the child reached and crossed the crest of his Golgotha and would now be, possibly not per- mitted so much as ignored, to descend the opposite slope free- wheeling. That was not his feeling at all What he declined to accept -was the fact that a power, a force such as that which had been consistent enough to concentrate upon him with deadly tmdeviation for weeks, should "With all the wealth of cosmic violence and disaster to draw from, have been so barren of invention and imagination, so lacking in pride of artistry and craftsmanship, as to repeat itself twice Once he had accepted, twice he even forgave, but thiee times he simply declined to believe, particularly when he was at last persuaded to realize that this thud time was to be instigated not by the blind potency of volume and motion but by human direction and hands: that now the cosmic joker, foiled twice, had stooped in its vindictive concentration to the employing of dynamite He did not tell that.
What is it he is trying to tell me? He did not look back. They watched him, already paddling rapidly, or the woman did, the convict had already turned. Then, No No. Let s get out of here. These are more boats than I ever believed existed, a maritime race of which I also had no cognisance or perhaps not thinking it but just watching as the launch opened the shored gut of the ship canal, the low smoke of the city, beyond it, then a wharf, the launch slowing in, a quiet crowd of people watching with that same forlorn passivity he had seen before and whose race he did recognize even though he had not seen Vicksburg when he passed it - the brand, the unmistakable hall-mark of the violently homeless, he more so than any, who would have permitted no man to call him one of them.
And something to cat too Maybe your kinfolks will come for you by that time. It w as apparently enough for the new- comer, however. But I never did find that bastard on the cotton- house. You did it? But I thought n W? Then at that word he became aware of his heart, as though all profound terror had merely waited until he should prompt himself He could feel the hard black wind too as he blinked after the floundering fight until it passed through the hedge and vanished, he blinked steadily in the black wind, he could not stop it.
My lachrymae are not functioning, he thought, hearing his roaring and labouring heart As though it were pumping sand not blood, not liquid, he thought. Trying to pump it. But no sound came from beyond it, no sound in the hall but the wind murmuring against the door of the barren rented hall where he stood, quiet with listening, thinking quietly, I guessed wrong.
Steady now. Careful now When she comes back this time she mil have to begin to hold on. Then he saw it begin: the I. Not yet. You can hear me. Go back. Go back, now. Only he lost her. He watched it: the dot growing too fast this time, no serene minnow but a vortex of cognizant pupil m the yellow stare spinning to blackness while he watched, the black shadow not on the belly but m the eyes. Her teeth caught her lower lip, she rolled her head and tried to rise, struggling against the flat of his hand on her breast.
Tell him to give me something Quick. She lay back and began to thresh from hip to hip, still threshing as he untwisted the gown and drew it down and covered her. Just a little while. The ambulance will be here soon, but you must stay here and hurt now. Do you hear? He took a soiled handkerchief from his hip and leaned to her but she rolled her head away from his hand.
Now get to hell out. I want to see you go. I want to watch you. Get to hell out. Go quick. He began to move towards the door. But remember, you will have to hold on by yourself then. When anybody with one mail-order stethoscope could give me something Come on. Where are they?
It was the other one. Not that Wilbourne bastard. But the heart , he thought. Give me the bag. What do you carry? Give him the bag if he wants it and can do anything with it. Let them both die. But not in this house Not in this town. Put that thing down and give her whatever it is so she can get out of that bed.
I never yet saw one man fail to back up another, provided what they wanted to do was just enough. H had thought about something now, but maybe we had better wait. Of course she will Go on. Get it out. Doctor Richardson will be there and I will follow in my car.
It was on rubber-ty red wheels; with the hatless youth pushing it seemed to cross the room and vanish into the hall with incredible rapidity, as though sucked there and not pushed the very wheels making a sucking sound on the floor , by no human agency but by time perhaps, by some vent-pipe through which the irrevocable seconds were fleeing, crowding; even the night itself All right, the officer said.
It went through the hall too that way, sucked through, where the wiry man now had a flash- hght, the usible dark wind chuckled and murmured into the open door, leaning its weight against him like a black palpy hand, he leamng into it, on to it.
There would be the porch, the steps beyond. He likes it. Just take it easy. They enteied, an office, a desk, another man m sterilized cap and tunic seated at the desk with a blank form and a fountain pen. He was older than the first one He did not look at Wilbourne either. The pen flowed smooth and crisp. He said, still writing, without looking up. Rouse one more time. So I could - we could The other looked at him The eyes were cold. They were not impatient, not quite palpably patient. Then the 4 J man at the desk spoke.
Because I would know I would. Using a knife. But you think of a place like a hospital. All full of beds every which way you turn. You know how it is. How you think. They must be They are stronger than m are Above all this Above clowning. And now the second doctor or sur- geon — the one of the fountain pen - came out of the office and down the corridor, the skirts of his tunic sucking and snicking behind him too.
He did not look at Wilbourne at all, even when Wilbourne, watching his face, rose as he passed and stepped towards him, about to speak, the officer rising hur- riedly too, surging up. Then the doctor merely paused long enough to look back at the officer with one cold brief irascible glance through the glasses.
He went on, his smock flicking. That was Doc Richard- son himself. Maybe I could stand at the door yonder and smoke. You can watch me from there. Up the corridor, beyond an elbow, he could hear the voices of two nurses, two nurses not two patients, two females but not necessarily two women even, then be- yond the same elbow one of the little bells tinkled, fretful, peremptory, the two voices murmuring on, then they both laughed, two nurses laughing not two women, the little queru- lous bell becoming irascible and frenzied, the laughter con- tinuing for half a minute longer above the bell, then the rubber soles on the linoleum, hissing faint and fast, the bell ceased.
It was die sea he smelled; there was the taste of the black beach the wind blew over m it, m his lungs, up near the top of his lungs, going through that again but then he had expected to have to, each fast strong breath growing shallower and shal- lower as if his heart had at last found a receptacle, a dumping- place, for the black sand it dredged and pumped at: and now he got up too, not going anywhere, he just got up without in- tending to, the officer at the entrance turning at once, snapping the cigarette backward.
But Wilbourne made no further move and the officer slowed; he even paused at the light-slashed door and flattened his hat brim against it, agamst the crack for a moment Then he came on. He came on, because Wilbourne saw him, he saw the officer as you see a lamp-post which hap- pens to be between you and the street because the rubber- tyred door had opened again, outward this time.
It's the same one who didn't look at me, be thought. Only she is looking at me non'. Then he got up, it was all right, the officer rising too, the nurse looking at him now. Only it was more than this. It was more than just a slackemng of joints and muscles, it was a collapsing of the entire body as undammed water collapses, arrested for the moment for him to look at but still seeking that profound and primal level much lower than that of the walking and up- fight, lower than the prone one of the little death called sleep, lower even than the paper-thin spurning sole, the flat earth itself and even this not low enough, spreading, disappearing, slow at first then increasing and at last with incredible speed: gone, vanished, no trace left above the insatiable dust.
The nurse touched his arm. The stretcher whispered into motion again, wheeling sibilantly, sucking through the door again where the officer now stood with his hat m his hand Then it was gone. He could hear it for a moment longer. Then he could not The nurse reached her hand to the wall, a button clicked and the hum of the blower stopped.
It was cut short off as if it had run full-tilt into a wall, blotted out by a tremendous silence which roared down upon him like a wave, a sea, and there was noth- ing for him to hold to, picking him up, tossing and spinning him and roaring on, leaving him blinking steadily and pain- fully at his dry granulated lids.
It was just outside his window, bigger, more shabby, when he and the officer passed beneath it to enter, with no wmd to cause it it had set up a sudden frenzied clash- ing as though they had startled it, and twice more during the night while he stood, shifting his hands from time to time as that portion of the bars which they clasped grew warm and began to sweat on his palms, it clashed again m that brief sudden inexplicable flurry.
He poured from the doth sack into the creased paper as he knew, vithout being able to remember at all when and where he had seen the process, it should be done, , watching in mild alarm as the tobacco sprayed of? His hands were shaking badly now; he filled the second paper with a terrific concentration of will, not of desire for tobacco but just to make the cigarette, he deliberately raised his elbows from his knees and held the filled paper before his calm unshaven faintly haggard face until the trembling stopped But as soon as he relaxed them to roll tile tobacco into the paper they began to tremble again but this time he did not even pause, turning the tobacco carefully into the paper, the tobacco raining faintly and steadily from either end of the paper but the paper turning on He had to hold it in both hands to lick it and then as soon as his tongue touched the paper his head seemed to catch from the contact the same faint uncontrollable jerking and he sat for an instant, looking at what he had accomplished - the splayed raddled tube already half empty of tobacco and almost too damp to take fire.
It took both hands to hold the match to it too, it not smoke but a single thin lance of heat, of actual fire, which shot ' into his throat.
I just had to watt. They will let you out this morning. It s the same three hundred dollars You carried it long enough to have gained adverse possession. It should get you a long way Far enough, anyhow. Understand that. Rittenmeyer ceased. He was not looking at Wilbourne; he was not looking at anything. I think I do. He took an immaculate handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his face carefully with it and Wilbourne noticed too that the morning breeze from the sea had dropped, gone on, as if the bright, still cumulus-stippled bowl of sky and earth were an empty globe, a vacuum, and what wind there was was not enough to fill it but merely ran back and forth inside it with no schedule, obeying no laws, unpredictable and coming from and going nowhere, like a drove ofbndleless horses in an empty plain.
He was not going ' to look back. The other turned and came back and took up the neat fold of notes. After a moment he looked at Wilbourne. Only if he had just told vie why. Wilbourne thought Maybe I would have.
Only he knew he would not have. Yet he continued to think it from time to time while the last days of that June accomplished and became July - the dawns while he listened to the heavy beat of the shrimper engines standing down the river tov ards the Sound, the brief cool hour of morning while the sun was still at his back, the long glare of brazen afternoons while the salt- impinged sun slanted full and fierce into lus window, printing his face and upper body with the bars to which he held - and he had even learned to sleep again, finding sometimes that he had slept between two shiftings of his hands upon the sweat- ing bars.
If we had known it we could probably have lived there for the four days and saved ten dollars, thinking. Four days. It could not possibly have been just four days. Only that can?
Not of meat, there is always plenty of meat. They found that out twenty years ago preserving nations and justifying mottoes - granted the nations the meat preset ved are worth the preserving with the meat it took gone. But memory. Surely memory exists independent of the flesh. But this was wrong too. It wouldrft know what it was it remembered. That was the second time he almost got it. But it escaped Vum again. But he was not trying yet, it was still all right, he was not worried; it would return when the time was ready and even stand still to lus hand.
You should know that Arraign the accused. And now Wilbourne heard it from behind him - the long expulsion, the sigh. What have I done? What in the world can I have done in my life? One more outbreak like this and I will clear the room 1 Disaim that man! A plea? For this man? This man who wilfully and deliberately performed an opera- tion on your wife which he knew might cause her death and which did? Then he sank slowly back, his head jerking as the heads of old men do But his voice was quite calm, cold.
Do you wish to be held m contempt? From outside the sound beat on, rising and falling. That afternoon it rained again, a bright silver curtain roaring out of nowhere before the sun could be hidden, galloping on vagrom and colt-like, going nowhere, then thirty minutes later roaring back, bright and harmless in its own steaming footsteps But when, shortly after dark, he was returned to his cell, the sky was ineffable and stainless above the last green of twilight, arching the evening star, the palm merely murmuring beyond the bars, the bars still cool to lus hands though the water, the rain, had long evaporated So he had learned what Rittenmeyer meant And now he learned why He heard the two pairs of feet again but he did not turn from the window until the door had opened then clanged and clashed to and Rittenmeyer entered and stood for a moment, look- ing at him Then Rittenmeyer took something from his pocket and crossed the cell, the hand extended.
I thank you. I do thank you I wish I knew I would do the same for you in my turn. Of course, Wil- bourne thought. That last day in New Orleans. He piomised her. Sht said, Not that bungling bastard Wilbowne, and he promised her. And that was it That was all. It fell into the quiet pattern and remained just long enough for lnm to see it, then flowed, vanished, gone out of all remembering forever and so there was just memory, forever and inescapable, so long as there was flesh to titillate.
And now he was about to get it, think it into words, so it was all right now and he turned to the window and, holding the open box carefully beneath and pinching the tablet in a folded cigarette-paper between thumb and finger he rubbed the tablet carefully into powder on one of the lower bars, catching the last dust in the box and wiping the bar with the cigarette paper, and emptied the box on to the floor and with his shoe-sole ground it into the dust and old spittle and caked creosote until it had completely vanished and burned the cigarette paper and returned to the window It was there, waiting, it was all right, it would stand to his hand when the moment came.
Not just me. Let it be anyone, thinking of, remembering the t. With all the old graveward-creeping, the old wrinkled withered defeated clinging not even to the defeat but just to cm old habit; accepting the defeat even to be allowed to cling to the habit - the wheeling lungs, the troublesome guts incapable of pleasure.
But after all memory could still five in the old wheezing entrails and now it did stand to his hand, incontrovertible and plain, serene, the palm clashing and murmuring, dry and wild and faint and m the night, but he could face it, thinking, Not could.
Will I want to. So it is the old meat after all, no matter how old. A young medical student, in debt from birth and a remarkable woman of decisive action and words. The tall convict has his woman too, he takes her into his boat, a stranded woman great with child, and they search for any mercy they can along the river.
The convict is so ignorant of everything outside of his prison that his common struggles against the elements become like dazzling mythology. Faulkner makes you feel the suffering of the convict, who really becomes no wiser in his adventures, but what he has is the stamina of the long-suffering prisoner. Eventually he is hunting for ancient reptiles with a Cajun of the Atchfalaya.
You can imagine how puzzling and scary this would be to someone who never heard of alligators or Cajuns, largely because Faulkner dispenses with all conventions of perspective and lets you feel the story from many angles.
A very unique and remarkable book. I never knew Faulkner was capable of this. Thanks to Steve Harris for getting me interested in reading this. Initial review: Wow.
Empathize this: a woman dashes away from her two children and husband for "freedom" and dysfunctional "love", even, or especially, when it means living hand to mouth. A "doctor" relinquishes his freedom for her and risks his life for that shadowy bond that may enable his escape from life and responsibility. And a convict is tossed about on the raging flooding Mississippi, yet constrained to act morally and ethically, simultaneously rising above, and being restrained by, his s Initial review: Wow.
And a convict is tossed about on the raging flooding Mississippi, yet constrained to act morally and ethically, simultaneously rising above, and being restrained by, his shackles and limited freedom.
By the end both men must live through memories only, but only one enjoys the freedom and near-celebration of a fresh stogie, bringing forth images of Red Auerbach at the climax of a Celtics championship. There are two stories here, alternating chapters, Wild Palms, and Old Man. The Old Man is the raging flooding Mississippi and the novel definitely brings Twain to mind and Huck Finn's distant uncontrolled travels.
Wild Palms has a touch of Garcia Marquez mixed with modern film noir. Combined, there's an interesting mix of the modern and rural, with gas lamps, pistols, alligators, country doctors, and chain gangs. The book probably shouldn't be reduced to any one or two morals.
What I finally enjoyed about it is, again, Faulkner's real life characters and his spitting-image of despair, loss and our often utter bewilderment in the face of life's challenges and freedoms. There's abortion and death and life on the run, but ultimately this is a memorable celebration and depiction of life as it is [psychologically] lived. A further note, the first chapter excited me, he expressed the inner thoughts and psychology of characters seamlessly, just like The Sound and the Fury, with italics and other techniques.
The middle seems unnecessarily long in both parts, and some sentences are not easy to understand, of course. The final chapters of each part raise the drama and clarify some further meaning.
So, it could be more enjoyable, but it's definitely worth reading, enjoying and pondering for Faulkner fans. Some further comments after reading again: -Faulkner seems to be a master of portraying differentiated psychologies, and in that way this novel is even more fascinating than The Sound and the Fury.
There are three major characters that have had extremely limiting periods of development - two doctors that are both essentially handed down their futures by their own fathers, doctors themselves, and a convict who was thrown into prison by the age of The three all have regrets, and none of them truly act independently until a woman comes into their lives. The older doctor has gone with the flow, but is married without children, and is lifeless. The younger doctor, months shy of a full MD status, is rudderless, seemingly not wanting to conform or act without freedom, but not having the wherewithal or motivation to do so, until he meets Charlotte, who is married with children, and is apparently going stir crazy in her freedom-less prison of four.
You could say he knows when to choose to fight and when not to, but always resulting in differing degrees of pride and freedom. There is something biblical to this novel, besides a great flood and the subtitle, and it seems to be wrapped up in the distance from the simplicity of Eden versus a complex godless self-conscious conforming modernity.
One couple is childless, one baby is born, and one abortion performed. Also, maybe related, Faulkner repeats his male impotence theme here, men being impotent in so many struggles, great and small. Charlotte is the strongest character and appears fearless, yet seems driven by something that's not quite healthy. This is a pretty rich novel. I read it a second time and found that I preferred reading one story and then the other, rather than reading them intertwined.
Wild Palms is the richer psychological story, but Old Man has some great passages. Definitely recommended. Jul 03, Bloodorange rated it liked it Shelves: us , library. This is a respectful but exhausted 3,5. To me, this book is a meditation on responsibility - two major characters are thrown in situations where they feel compelled to care for something or someone outside themselves -a pregnant woman about to deliver in one case, love in another.
This is highlighted by two minor characters in the Wild Palms section of a novel, a Conradian to a degree engineer in an ore mine and a husband of the protagonist's lover, who attempts to give the latter a way out of This is a respectful but exhausted 3,5. This is highlighted by two minor characters in the Wild Palms section of a novel, a Conradian to a degree engineer in an ore mine and a husband of the protagonist's lover, who attempts to give the latter a way out of the predicament he found himself in, out of what I see as loyalty to his wife.
The female protagonist of The Wild Palms section is not a very fortunate creation. She is supposed to be a force of nature, like the flood in the Old Man section, but we end up with a character I would happily see poisoned. The two sections are narrated in two very different ways, one - The Wild Palms - using 'regular' narrative time, another - Old Man - using very slow narrative time, which is not fun to read.
Nov 23, Steve rated it it was amazing Shelves: fiction , 2d-readings-the-good-stuff. This is a Faulkner must-read, but not without some problems. The alternating stories - which seem to have no surface relationship whatsoever, is daring and artsy stuff. But does it work? The "Wild Palms" portion tells the story of two lovers, one who is married, who cast everything to the wind in order to live a bohemian life devoted to Love.
I noticed one reviewer commented that theirs was a selfless love. Quite the contrary. O This is a Faulkner must-read, but not without some problems. Oh, within their bubble, Charlotte and Harry are as devoted to each other as Dante's Paolo and Francesca. And like those two, Harry and Charlotte are immolated within their own choices, their own lusts. The impact on others is never a real consideration, as they act out, with heroic resolve, their devotion - to Love.
There are passages within the Wild Palms portion that are simply soaring in their beauty. It will have you recalling A Farewell to Arms, especially the part that takes place in the Western mountains.
Old Man, which is much anthologized and thus regrettably removed from the context of this novel, in contrast to the tragic Wild Palms, is almost like low comedy - Faulkner style. There is of course powerful writing - especially the great descriptions of the Flood, that sounds like a King James appendix from Genesis.
What's interesting is how the characters of Old Man are never really revealed as they are in Wild Palms. The poor convict, who shepherds the woman and her infant child along, is always having bad stuff happen to him. And he deals with it. And the woman herself, you hardly even know. She's a presence, a responsibility, a reminder if you will, of perhaps a higher order that we as humans should respond to. The two operate as archetypes more than multi-faceted characters, but archetypes have great power, as any reader of the Bible knows.
On the other hand, Charlotte and Harry serve only themselves, and we are intensely aware of every shift in emotion -- and its cause. Faulkner clearly was aware of this contrast, and how you chew on it will determine what you think of the novel - and it is a novel, not just two separate stories. Faulkner links the two with Hope, as Harry makes a choice while looking through the prison bars at the end: Grief is better than nothing, which is a no-brainer for the convict of Old Man.
What is also interesting is how Faulkner timed the portions. Wild Palms, which starts the book, takes place in Old Man takes place in Only ten years separates the two, but the time of Old Man is already nearly a mythic one, much like the Old Testament.
The portion is hardly New Testament, and more likely an indictment from Faulkner. The modern world, with all its dehumanizing aspects, presses down and around Harry and Charlotte. There is No Exit - except the one they've sworn to as a couple. And there is something in that, however charged with Right and Wrong such a choice may be. At least Harry and Charlotte are still human. Read it. View all 4 comments. May 13, Eddie Watkins rated it really liked it Shelves: american-fiction. Charley Patton's 2-part song "High Water Everywhere" is about the same flood portrayed in this book.
This little factoid, realized after I finished the book, made me swoon. I couldn't finish the book the first time I tried, as I was in college and still thought in the back of my head that my girlfriend and I could just drop out and "live on love". The impossibility of this strategy so hammered home in this book really frightened me at the time, but instead of finishing the book and learning my le Charley Patton's 2-part song "High Water Everywhere" is about the same flood portrayed in this book.
The impossibility of this strategy so hammered home in this book really frightened me at the time, but instead of finishing the book and learning my lesson, I tossed the book aside and kind of half dropped out. But things haven't turned out too bad for me, though the girlfriend's long gone Jan 18, Sarah rated it really liked it.
My new favorite Faulkner. Highly recommended. Apr 25, Kay Wright rated it it was ok. I'm an Faulkner addict, slogged my way through Abaslom, Absalom, and fell in love with Light in August. When our bookclub decided to each do a classic, I found this early piece that I had missed during my quest to read all Faulkner.
I got into the early Hollywood junk and gave up but that's another story. I had read one of them, the convict who rescues the pregant woman I'm an Faulkner addict, slogged my way through Abaslom, Absalom, and fell in love with Light in August. I had read one of them, the convict who rescues the pregant woman during a flood, fifty years ago and could never find it again so I was delighted that it was here.
And as good as it was the first time. The second story, The Wild Palms, is sooooo Faulkner: lots of emoting, sacrifice for love, and strange behavior followed by tragedy.
I could never figure out why the story was written or why it is worth reading. Maybe it's never mentioned as one of his great works because it's really a minor piece.
It feels dated and the plot strains to make the reader care about the main characters. Especially because they seem to be so stupid.
As simple as many of his characters are, they are never stupid in the good Faulkner. Don't waste your time, re-read The Sound and Fury. Maybe with another reading I will understand it. The GR description, and descriptions elsewhere, tell us this is made up of two "interwoven" novels.
I think this is a poor choice of word because the two stories have nothing to do with each other. Well, almost nothing. There is a woman in each of them who is pregnant. However, the stories do not take place in the same time period nor the same location and neither has a character that appears in the other. That, to me, doesn't begin to resemble the word "interwoven".
What Faulkner has done to de The GR description, and descriptions elsewhere, tell us this is made up of two "interwoven" novels.
What Faulkner has done to deserve that word is to present these two novels with alternating chapters. I could imagine Charlotte, before she entered the novel, flirting with everyone, having affairs with some, and running through many lovers until she settled on one who could support her financially, and emotionally—until Henry came along.
I imagined him passively moving in with his older sister once his parents died and passively accepting his jail sentence after he killed Charlotte. I imagine, after he served his time, what he does would be determined by whom he met and what kind of relationship they form. Alone, Henry does not seem to drive the action of the novel.
Faulkner often puts a character into his novel who acts as a kind of narrative everyman Benjy, in The Sound and the Fury or Lena Grove in Light in August , for example to represent a person of innocent nature who, together with a person of worldly character, drive the plots of his novels. The main character in The Old Man is a convict; Harry is ultimately convicted and sent to prison for botching the abortion on Charlotte.
The prisoner saves a pregnant woman and helps with the delivery of the baby; Henry makes a woman pregnant and kills her and her baby performing an abortion. The story in The Wild Palms is intensely personal; the relationship between Henry and Charlotte almost smothers the reader. The flood in The Old Man overwhelms the characters and pulls them from their comfortable routines. Sexuality in The Wild Palms does much the same to Henry, ruining his future and ultimately killing Charlotte.
In The Old Man , time a popular subject for Faulkner is an annoyance to the prisoner who accepts his jail time. In both novels, women are the scourge of the planned out, predictable, rational lives the male characters expect to lead. Within The Wild Palms , Faulkner often uses foreshadowing.
The following example is very characteristic of the techniques he uses. One event that was not foreshadowed seems inconsistent with the narrative.
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