The Wild Palms as a signifier

I have preferred in the past to call the novel The Wild Palms by William Faulkner by that name – The Wild Palms. Evidence suggests that Faulkner wished for the title to be If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, since the narrative consists of two stories, one entitled “The Wild Palms” and one entitled “Old Man,” presented in alternating chapters, and Faulkner wanted a collective title encompassing the two (Singal, Daniel J. William Faulkner:  The Making of a Modernist, 240-241). The Biblical reference (Psalm 137: 5-6) directs the reader to a comparison of the right hand to the left, thus invoking comparison of the two stories. But calling the novel by the title of one of the two stories forces the reader to make that comparison without need of a classical reference. Classical references are nice, but in this case the 1939 publishers wanted something with a more direct title, and they inadvertently made the reader do the work of contrasting the stories as they are presented in alternating chapters with “The Wild Palms” having the first and the last chapters.

The matter is not so earth-shattering except that reading is an act between reader and text, and that can be its own type of devastation. If the text forces the reader to make decisions that may be against the author’s intent, that can only be a worthwhile thing in the grand scheme of interpretation. Those who promote author’s intent may disagree, but my worldview has always favored the moment-by-moment pleasure of the text (a Barthes reference that betrays my semiotic propensity.)

In this discussion, though, I mean to show how The Wild Palms in its two-part structure is a needed influence over subsequent stories, such as A.S. Byatt’s Angels & Insects discussed in my last blog.

Such an influence is predicated in the world of film, a world Faulkner was familiar with from his work in Hollywood (see Kawin, Bruce A., Faulkner and Film). But the influence I need to cite here is one of which Faulkner probably had limited knowledge, the French New Wave of the 1950s. The French filmmakers, however, paid Faulkner, and specifically The Wild Palms, a great homage in their beginnings, particularly with early films of Agnes Varda, Jean-Luc Godard, and Jean Truffaut (Neupert, A History of the French New Wave Cinema). Agnes Varda acknowledges Faulkner’s influence in the two-part structure of her early New Wave film (some say the earliest example of French New Wave) La Pointe Courte, 1954 (Neupert, 60), wherein she juxtaposes two stories that seemingly do not overlap except in the setting they take place. Godard and Truffaut in their groundbreaking Breathless, 1960, likewise acknowledge The Wild Palms to the point of having the character played by Jean Seberg carry a paperback copy of the novel as she is walking down the street in her first shot. The viewer notes the film’s narrative as a juxtaposition. A frenzied fast-paced crime story co-exists with a lengthy one room scene in the middle of the film. In this exhausting trial of patience, Seberg’s character and the criminal, played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, have a quiet, introspective look at their dual-natured relationship, realizing how different they are from each other (Neupert, 214-215).

The French New Wave Cinema remains an important milestone in the malleability of Modernism to the counterculture of the 1960s. If we can view this aesthetic of film as a part of a creative reaction to Modernism, if not an entire change in “-isms,” then we can assert that Faulkner’s The Wild Palms had an impact, a directional aesthetic toward a dual fragmentation that shows a unity inherent in the two juxtaposed parts of the artwork.

I know of no other work that creates this impact as effectively as does The Wild Palms. Therefore, when a novelist such as A.S. Byatt whose direct homages appear to come from the naturalism of Hardy and the Victorian fantastic of Dickens coupled with the adventurism of Conrad, creates a work she calls “Two novellas,”  Angels & Insects carries a whole new dimension. This dimension is now Faulknerian, but a neo-modernism that derives from Faulkner’s work. This dimension moves from one type of Modernism to another, if not away from Modernism altogether.

The French New Wave cinema showed us that The Wild Palms is now a signifier, it points the way toward a new way of thinking. Doubles no longer indicate a type of structure; they mean the reflection of two objects (narratives) which would otherwise appear diverse. The reader no longer looks solely in the mirror, though indeed the reader still does that also. But the objects bend and stretch, creating new ways of perceiving a world which otherwise would disintegrate in non-connection.

 

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Works Cited

Kawin, Bruce A., Faulkner and Film. Frederick Unger Publishing, 1977.

Neupert, A History of the French New Wave Cinema. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2002.

Singal, Daniel J. William Faulkner:  The Making of a Modernist. Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1997.