The Wild Palms: [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem] (1939)

On Apr 14, 1952, I said of this book: "The Wild Palms rather disgusting at timesthough such parts are matched by Faulknerian eloquence." I finished the book on16 April but made no further comment on my reading of it. ( )

Another book I read when I was too young, and now I can remember not much more than that I liked it.

Um dos livros mais conhecidos de Faulkner, em parte pela frase "Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain." Formado por duas novelas entrelaçadas. ( )

A couple meet, she is married with children , he is a poor naive medical student. They fall in love and run away.
She is an artist. He wants to keep their love pure, above middle class conventions such as security. This absolute idea leads to stupid behavior and eventually he performs an abortion on her which kills her. This is largely a novel of an idea, hardly a novel, more an argument of ideas. The characters are not developed. The pot is simple and obvious. There is an effort to capture ' consciousness' of a person when a crisis is occurring. ( )

Faulkner brings together two disparate novellas and creates a distinct whole. The result is more than the sum of its parts. The narratives of "The Old Man" and "The Wild Palms" don't match up exactly, since they aren't directly related.

I would recommend this book to readers interested in Faulkner, since the novel is more commercial and more mainstream in its style.

"Wild Palms" also has the memorable quote: “Between grief and nothing I will take grief." This occurs with the bohemian couple on the run. The quote also appears in Jean-Luc Godard's classic New Wave film "Breathless," also about two bohemians on the run.

"Wild Palms" foreshadows modern American cinema, especially the ones featuring somewhat-interrelated storylines, everything fro Steven Soderburgh's "Traffic" to "Babel" and "Crash" (not the David Cronenberg one).

While more accessible to readers, Faulkner is also daring enough to let the reader decide how the two storylines fit together. It isn't explained, not should it be. Sometimes the reader has to make their own decisions and not have everything spelled out for them by The Author. These demands on the reader elevate the novel to something above the standard romantic potboiler. ( )