The Wild Palms by William Faulkner
Published 1939 · 429 pages · 85,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is The Wild Palms to read?
The Wild Palms scores 49 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 62 out of 100
- Faulknerian literary vocabulary ranging from romantic intensity to flood-country vernacular.
- Sentence structure: 68 out of 100
- Long, rhythmic Faulknerian sentences, particularly in the flood sequences, with sustained intensity.
- Abstraction: 48 out of 100
- The alternating structure itself argues about passion and endurance, with Harry's final statement crystallizing the theme.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- Two compressed novellas with distinct casts, settings, and tonal registers, alternating without transition.
- Narrative indirection: 52 out of 100
- The alternating structure forces readers to hold two unconnected stories in mind and construct the thematic counterpoint.
- Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
- The river, the prison, Charlotte's sculptures, and Harry's surgical instruments all carry heavy symbolic meaning.
- Ironic distance: 42 out of 100
- The juxtaposition of romantic tragedy and comic survival creates structural irony, though each story is told straight.
- Resolution withholding: 28 out of 100
- Both stories resolve — Charlotte dies, the convict returns to prison — though the thematic argument remains open.
- Structural complexity: 55 out of 100
- Two unrelated novellas interleaved chapter by chapter, requiring the reader to construct the counterpoint.
How The Wild Palms is regarded
The Wild Palms holds a literary regard score of 66 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.