If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem

Last updated
First edition cover WildPalms.jpg
First edition cover

If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem is a novel by the American author William Faulkner published in 1939. The novel was originally published under the title The Wild Palms, which is the title of one of the two interwoven stories. This title was chosen by the publishers, Random House, over the objections of Faulkner's choice of a title. Subsequent editions have since been printed under the title If I Forget Thee Jerusalem (1990, following the "corrected text" and format of Noel Polk), and since 2003 it is now usually referred to by both names, with the newer title following the historically first published title and in brackets, to avoid confusion: The Wild Palms [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem].

Contents

Like four other Faulkner novels ( Soldiers' Pay , Mosquitoes , Pylon and A Fable), the novel is not set in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County.

Plot

The book consist of two different stories, told in non-linear fashion in alternating chapters, which contain both parallels and contrasts.

Wild Palms starts in New Orleans in 1937 with Harry, an impoverished and virginal intern finishing his training in a hospital. At a party he meets Charlotte, who abandons husband and two children to run away with him.

With little money and few employment prospects, they drift through Chicago to a cabin in Wisconsin and then a mine in Utah. There Charlotte falls pregnant and they decide to go to the Mississippi coast. When she dies after he tries an abortion, he is sentenced to 50 years' hard labor. Charlotte's husband visits and slips him a cyanide pill.

Old Man starts on a prison farm in Mississippi in 1927, where a convict has served time since his early teens. When the river overflows its levees, he is ordered to take a skiff and rescue people from rooftops. He saves a woman late in advanced pregnancy. The force of the current drives them downstream. He manages to land on a hillock, where the woman gives birth to the child. Later, an official motor boat appears, taking skiff, convict, woman and baby to New Orleans. They sneak away, and the convict paddles the skiff against the current until he is able to leave woman and baby near a place she knows. He carries on up to the prison, where 10 years are added to his sentence for escaping. [1]

Cultural allusions

Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges translated the complete novel into Spanish as Las palmeras salvajes (1940). The Wild Palms is quoted in Jean-Luc Godard's 1959 film, Breathless ("À bout de souffle"), when Patricia claims to prefer to take "grief rather than nothing"; the same quote is cited in the 1986 John Hughes comedy Ferris Bueller's Day Off , when Principal Rooney "consoles" Sloan while waiting in front of the school.[ citation needed ] It also appears in the movie Im Lauf der Zeit , 1976, by Wim Wenders in which one of the protagonists, a truckdriver, is reading his paperback copy of the book every now and then, and in the movie Perfect Days , 2023, by Wim Wenders.[ citation needed ] Agnès Varda claimed in her film The Beaches of Agnès that the structure of Faulkner's novel directly inspired her first feature, La Pointe Courte .[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wim Wenders</span> German filmmaker

Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German filmmaker, playwright, author, and photographer. He is a major figure in New German Cinema. Among the honors he has received are prizes from the Cannes, Venice and Berlin film festivals. He has also received a BAFTA Award and been nominated for three Academy Awards and a Grammy Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Faulkner</span> American writer (1897–1962)

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.

<i>Light in August</i> 1932 novel by William Faulkner

Light in August is a 1932 novel by the Southern American author William Faulkner. It belongs to the Southern gothic and modernist literary genres.

<i>Absalom, Absalom!</i> 1936 novel by William Faulkner

Absalom, Absalom! is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, first published in 1936. Taking place before, during, and after the American Civil War, it is a story about three families of the American South, with a focus on the life of Thomas Sutpen.

<i>The Sound and the Fury</i> 1929 novel by William Faulkner

The Sound and the Fury is a novel by the American author William Faulkner. It employs several narrative styles, including stream of consciousness. Published in 1929, The Sound and the Fury was Faulkner's fourth novel, and was not immediately successful. In 1931, however, when Faulkner's sixth novel, Sanctuary, was published—a sensationalist story, which Faulkner later said was written only for money—The Sound and the Fury also became commercially successful, and Faulkner began to receive critical attention.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Mississippi Flood of 1927</span> 1927 flood of the Mississippi River

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States, with 27,000 square miles (70,000 km2) inundated in depths of up to 30 feet (9 m) over the course of several months in early 1927. The period cost of the damage has been estimated to be between $246 million and $1 billion, which ranges from $4.2–$17.3 billion in 2023 dollars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Murrell (bandit)</span> American criminal

John Andrews Murrell, the "Great Western Land Pirate", was a 19th-century bandit and criminal operating along the Natchez Trace and Mississippi River, in the southern United States. He was also known as John A. Murrell, and his surname was commonly spelled as Murel and Murrel. His exploits were widely known, and he became a legendary figure in fiction, film and television in the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yoknapatawpha County</span> Fictional Mississippi county created by William Faulkner

Yoknapatawpha County is a fictional Mississippi county created by the American author William Faulkner, largely based on and inspired by Lafayette County, Mississippi, and its county seat of Oxford. Faulkner often referred to Yoknapatawpha County as "my apocryphal county".

<i>The American Friend</i> 1977 film

The American Friend is a 1977 neo-noir film written and directed by Wim Wenders, adapted from the 1974 novel Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith. It stars Dennis Hopper as career-criminal Tom Ripley and Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Zimmermann, a terminally ill picture framer whom Ripley coerces into becoming an assassin. The film uses an unusual "natural" language concept: Zimmermann speaks German with his family and his doctor, but English with Ripley and while visiting Paris.

Old man, Old Man or The Old Man may refer to:

<i>Lumière and Company</i> 1995 film

Lumière and Company is a 1995 anthology film made in collaboration between forty-one international film directors. The project consists of short films made by each of the filmmakers using the original Cinématographe camera invented by the Lumière brothers.

John Ashley Brown Jr. was an American from New Orleans who was convicted of first-degree murder and incarcerated on death row in Louisiana State Penitentiary for 12 years. He was one of six inmates featured in the 1998 documentary entitled The Farm: Angola, USA. He was executed in 1997 for the murder of Omer Laughlin in New Orleans in 1984.

<i>Requiem for a Nun</i> 1951 novel by William Faulkner

Requiem for a Nun is a work of fiction written by William Faulkner. It is a sequel to Faulkner's early novel Sanctuary, which introduced the characters of Temple Drake, her friend Gowan Stevens, and Gowan's uncle Gavin Stevens. The events in Requiem are set in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County and Jackson, Mississippi, in November 1937 and March 1938, eight years after the events of Sanctuary. In Requiem, Temple, now married with a child, must learn to deal with her violent, turbulent past as related in Sanctuary.

The murder of Shalhevet Pass was a shooting attack carried out in Hebron, West Bank, on 26 March 2001, in which a Palestinian sniper killed 10-month-old Israeli infant Shalhevet Pass. The event shocked the Israeli public, partly because an investigation ruled that the sniper had deliberately aimed for the baby. According to Deborah Sontag of the New York Times, the murder became a "potent Israeli symbol as an innocent victim of the raging violence."

Seth David Morgan was an American novelist, who published one book, Homeboy (1990), and was working on a second novel when he died. He was Janis Joplin's fiancé at the time of her death in October 1970.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Willie McGee (convict)</span> African American man executed in 1951

Willie McGee was an African American man from Laurel, Mississippi, who was sentenced to death in 1945 and executed on Tuesday, May 8, 1951, after being controversially convicted for the rape of a white woman on November 2, 1945. McGee's legal case became a cause célèbre that attracted worldwide attention, as it was roundly decried as a miscarriage of justice in the Jim Crow south.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Faulkner bibliography</span>

William Faulkner (1897—1962) was an American writer who won the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a stand-in for his hometown of Oxford in Lafayette County, Mississippi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C-Murder</span> American rapper (born 1971)

Corey Miller, better known by his stage name C-Murder, is an American rapper. He initially gained fame in the mid-1990s as a part of his brother Master P's label No Limit Records, primarily as a member of the label's supergroup, TRU. Miller went on to release several solo albums of his own through the label, including 1998's platinum Life or Death. C-Murder has released nine albums altogether on six different labels, No Limit Records, TRU Records, Koch Records, Asylum Records, RBC Records, and Venti Uno.

The Metz Gang was a notorious drug ring founded by Glenn Metz and his brother Cordell "Jethro" Metz; Glenn Metz is currently serving life in prison. From 1985 to mid–1992, The Metz Gang distributed approximately 1,000 kilograms of cocaine in the New Orleans metropolitan area and, in furtherance of the conspiracy, committed murders, attempted murders, and other violent crimes. In 1993, Metz, his wife, and several of his henchmen were convicted and charged in a 22 count indictment with various charges arising from a narcotics conspiracy. In 2016, President Barack Obama commuted the life sentence of Danielle Metz, wife of Glenn Metz.

Old Man (<i>Playhouse 90</i>) 8th episode of the 3rd season of Playhouse 90

"Old Man" is an American television play broadcast on November 20, 1958, as part of the CBS television series, Playhouse 90. The production, starring Sterling Hayden and Geraldine Page, was adapted by Horton Foote from the short novel "Old Man" by William Faulkner. It was nominated for three Emmy Awards: for most outstanding program of the year; for best single performance by an actress (Page); and for best writing of a single dramatic program one hour or longer (Foote).

References

  1. Foster, Ruel E.; McHaney, Thomas L. (November 1976). "William Faulkner's "The Wild Palms": A Study". American Literature. 48 (3): 406. doi:10.2307/2924891. ISSN   0002-9831. JSTOR   2924891.