In the best way possible, it was the same thing every day.
Yesterday's final day of the summer Faulkner class at Politics & Prose--and the last day of discussing his nuanced 1939 novel, The Wild Palms--was both an ending and a beginning. There was the usual engagement, energy, enthusiasm--even when not everyone liked it, but they were at least eager to discuss it. We also clarified some of the links between the two separate stories, and there was a slight "aha" moment when I noted the most direct (albeit implied) link between the stories: the protagonist of each winds up in the same place, Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, by summer 1938. (With the two stories of a novel set 10 years apart, the links are nearly always implied or symbolic.)
We discussed whether the Harry and Charlotte characters in "The Wild Palms" story--pretty melodramatic by design--have desire, lust, love, or "Love" between them. (They're essentially like teenagers who think they're in "love," one of the students remarked.) This story also shows Faulkner being aware of other writers and the larger culture--such as a handful of references to Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway. For example, there is playful this nod to A Farewell to Arms:
"These doctors and nurses....What a fellow hears about hospitals. I wonder if there's as much laying goes on in them as you hear about."
"No," Wilbourne said. "There never is any place."
"That's so. But you think of a place like a hospital. All full of beds every which way you turn....And after all doctors and nurses are men and women."
This is part of the more modern awareness Faulkner shows in the story, with a dash of humor to balance out the melodrama.
The tall convict in the "Old Man" story, whether a misogynist or simply terrified of women (as another student said), seemed the most compelling character in the novel. He's innocent and honest (almost to the point of naivete) and has a strong sense of duty. A lot of the story's humor comes from his naive honesty, such as when he--an involuntarily escaped convict--voluntarily surrenders:
"Yonder's your boat, and here's the woman. But I never did find that bastard on the cottonhouse."
At this point, he's come to the end of a long journey which started with his being charged to rescue a woman (pregnant, though he didn't know it at first) in a tree and a man stuck on a cottonhouse during the great Mississippi River flood of 1927. Ironically, this 'escaped' prisoner, who had all the freedom he wanted, chooses to return to the structured routine of prison.
Our conversations about the books were always enlightening and entertaining. By the end, the majority of the class felt Light in August was the most Faulknerian of our three novels. I pretty much agree, though As I Lay Dying seems equally, if a little differently, Faulknerian.
Here's hoping for more of the same thing in the fall class, when we tackle Go Down, Moses, The Mansion, and The Reivers.
http://www.politics-prose.com/william-faulkner-later-works-2
