Review of The Wild Palms by William Faulkner

​The Wild Palms by William Faulkner is a novel comprised of two completely separate narratives, ‘The Wild Palms’ and ‘The Old Man’, which are spliced together after each chapter.
 
‘The Wild Palms’ follows a man who becomes wooed by a married woman, and they form a plot to leave the town and be together. The woman, Charlotte, directs and desires this move, first going to a hotel with the man, Harry. When they form the plan, they don’t have the money to execute a disappearance. Suddenly, Harry finds a wallet with the money, phones Charlotte, where they decide to get train tickets out of New Orleans to Chicago. On the ride, Charlotte’s husband joins them where he allows Harry to take Charlotte away from him, but that he'll keep an eye on her. After this, both Charlotte and Harry think the money will last them awhile, with Harry taking on a job at a hospital and Charlotte selling her puppets. But things turn sour, and their money runs out so they hop from place to place trying to survive. First to a cabin where a friend stocks them food, then to a worker’s camp in the winter, and finally to Florida. However, during the worker’s camp in Utah, they meet another couple and live with them, where eventually the woman asks Harry to perform an abortion on her. When he finally does, Charlotte forgets her cleaning items in the cold, and so learns that she too has become pregnant. It’s only when they hear back from the woman, does Charlotte ask for Harry to perform an abortion on her. Harry freaks out, and at first tries to do anything to stop the pregnancy, going so far as pleading a brothel for their abortion medicine. Eventually, after Charlotte’s pleading, he performs the abortion, but it goes awry. They get out of Utah, and travel to Florida where Charlotte is suffering at a hotel owned by another doctor. One night, when Charlotte becomes weak, Harry must call the doctor for help, only to be detained because he first performed an abortion, and then later being responsible for her death. In the end, Charlotte’s husband returns to Harry and hands him a pill of cyanide in jail.
 
‘The Old Man’ follows a convict who was arrested on an attempted train robbery gone awry. This was because what the convict read in books about robberies was totally different than real life, thus bungling it. While in prison, a massive flood rips through due to a levee breaking from a storm. The convict, along with the rest of the prison are taken to the levee where they are sent to row boats and rescue people stranded from the flood. When the convict and his partner get sent out to rescue a woman and a farmer, their boat flips and the convict regains control, and collects the woman who is pregnant. However, from other people’s vantage points, the convict looked like he drowned. For many days, the woman and the convict row around the flood encountering people who give them food, but are skeptical of them, a town that shoots at them while the convict tries to surrender, a paddle boat that takes them in but has other wishes for their labor, an alligator pelt farmer, a sugar cane plantation, and finally back to a police officer where the convict begs to be taken back to the prison. Along the way, the woman’s child is born on a mound of earth with snakes. But when the convict returns, instead of being reward for his efforts in taking care of the boat and the pregnant woman, he’s given 10 more years in prison.
 
There is a reason why Faulkner has become a mainstay in the literary canon. It’s because the language and flow of these two narratives are unparalleled. There’s situational humor with the convict in ‘The Old Man’ being washed down the river, and every time he tries to be detained to go back to the prison, he’s shooed away. While in ‘The Wild Palms’ the scene of Harry in the brothel desperate for abortion pills is quite an interesting scenario. Even on the sentence level, which Faulkner is known for, is so meticulous but grand. In fact, one of my favorite sentences of all time is from ‘The Wild Palms’, “And when he (the doctor), came home at noon she had the gumbo made, an enormous quantity of it, enough for a dozen people, made with that grim Samaritan husbandry of good women, as if she took a grim and vindictive and masochistic pleasure in the fact that the Samaritan deed would be performed at the price of its remainder which would sit invincible and inexhaustible on the stove while days accumulated and passed, to be warmed and rewarmed and then rewarmed until consumed by two people who did not even like it, who born and bred in sight of the sea had for taste a fish a predilection for the tuna, the salmon, the sardines bought in cans, immolated and embalmed three thousand miles away in the oil and machinery of commerce.” What a doozy of a sentence, which I found funny in that the doctor’s wife cooked a huge vat of gumbo in spite of her husband even though the both of them dislike it to canned fish. This is Faulkner’s magic: to create a winding, almost hypnotic syncopation of language. Though, both end grimly: men stuck in prison. One for doing something the love of his life begged for. The other, for doing the right thing and getting more time for it. There’s something to be said of the terrible reality of systems and how even as we do our best, they react in ways we do not expect. I can understand why these two stories are linked, how the narratives don’t necessarily follow each other, but instead they are in some conversation. One of blind love. One of blind faith. Both of survival. I am in awe of these stories in every way and it is no wonder Faulkner has stayed a common household name.
 
Final Rating: 5/5