I believe that my personal preference with regard to novels is toward those which possess such an intricately-structured chaos that ultimately make sense by the end of the novel. Looking back, I think that Absalom, Absalom! is my most favourite novel because of how it ties the loose ends so well at the end of the novel. I think that the novel is Faulkner at the peak of his powers: he is both extremely dense, and yet extremely sensible. Everything absolutely makes sense at the end of it, and the broken images, jarring shifts in time and purported excursions actually cohere into a beautiful, tragic whole. The same can be said to a lesser extent in his Sound and the Fury. Of course, Faulkner is also pretty good as a minimalist as evidenced by his As I Lay Dying. This dynamism led, among others, Albert Camus to recognize Faulkner as the eminent American novelist of all time. It would have been all right had Fable been as well-constructed as Absalom, Absalom! was. Alas, both brilliance and bathos could be seen in Faulkner here: the prose is extremely rambling at times, that, despite being a relatively seasoned reader of Faulkner (at 13 works and counting), I had a hard time deciphering what he wanted to discuss in the first place. It became eventually worse when I couldn’t see much of a point with his discursions. The ending was frustrating precisely because the novel could have been cut in half and yet still have made a whole lot of sense (or nonsense). The story is, essentially, simple. A corporal convinces twelve men of his not to continue fighting the war which led to the whole battalion stop fighting. This causes the other side, the Germans, to also stop fighting the war and a temporary truce is made after the two sides realize that it takes an aggressor to even have a war. One of the other twelve men betrays the corporal: the corporal is shot dead, left by his followers, along with two other thieves. Marthe and Marya bear witness to the occurrence alongside a prostitute who was answered for by the corporal because of his kindness. The division commander is ordered killed by the generalissimo. The former dies as if a hero: he is shot in his front, by his own men, with a German pistol. Before killing the corporal, however, the generalissimo tempts the corporal to retire to the countryside and abrogate his mission. The corporal declines – and is thus killed. The story is, of course, partly a retelling of the story of Jesus Christ. The thesis is that if a Christ-like figure existed in the 20th century, he’d have been shot dead. It’s similar to the thesis of Dostoevsky’s Idiot. Unlike Dostoevsky’s work, however, this lacked in clarity, plot, and storytelling. There was little coherence right until the end of the novel, and editing could certainly have been done to make the story more readable and fluid. Instead, what I read was a jumbled mishmash of a retelling with little to show for it. I agree with a fellow reviewer of mine: if one sought to read easy, accessible Faulkner, I suggest As I Lay Dying; if one sought to read intricate, difficult, but rewarding Faulkner, I recommend The Sound and the Fury, and, if that was to one’s taste, Absalom, Absalom!, which I believe is his greatest work. If one sought to be frustrated and angry with a difficult and unrewarding work, one should try A Fable. I’ve been such a masochist lately.
Pulitzer 1955 - I finished this two days ago and have been thinking about this review since. When I started the Pulitzer reading I figured there would be some books I didn't like. Fortunately on average it seems to be about 10% - I've ready about 45 and there had been three I didn't like so I was due. And boy was I due. A Fable was Faulkner's 15th book and his first of 2 Pulitzer winners. The other, The Reivers, was for his last book 10 years later - I enjoyed the Reivers...it was readable. A Fable is a book that Faulkner considered his opus and is a retelling of the last days of Christ set in WW I. I had to look that up as I didn't necessarily get it out the book and even knowing this I had a hard time seeing it except in some obvious places. I ended up reading this in 3 parts - I read the first quarter of the book and was getting discouraged so I read the next book in line, went back and read the next quarter, then another book and then powered through the second half just to be done with it. I've read dense novels with tough language and liked them but I felt that Faulkner was just showing off here. If he didn't have a thesaurus next to him during the writing then I applaud his use and knowledge of vocabulary, although not of grammar. The guy didn't like periods, at all. His sentences rambled on for sometime a full page through the use of semi-colons, colons, hyphens, etc. He could have easily broken these into several sentences. However these things in and of themselves were not what made this nearly unreadable to me. It was more that he would describe things over 3 different ways in the same sentence, the same action, the same item, etc. And doing this repeatedly in the same "sentence" I lost track of what he was trying to say and got bogged down in the minutia. After reading this book I felt like Faulkner was just beating me over the head. I'm not sure which Faulkner is the real Faulkner style but I don't think I'm going to read any more to find out.On the 1 star I had started out with 2 - thinking 1 for readability and 1 for language. However after looking through my other reviews and seeing a couple I gave 2 and 3 stars to I dropped this back to just the 1 star.
What do You think about A Fable (1977)?
i recall this one but vaguely...though the setting is the world war numbered one. of all the faulkner stories i read when i didn't have a clue though the one clue i was trailing was read faulkner...this one holds the most interest now for the subject matter. these republicans in the trenchs opposed by the democrats in the trenches over across the way, well, seems that two soldiers one on each side to give up the ghost of partisanship and pow-wow. see what gives. a kodak moment.dan rather was too busy looking for paperwork to indict george and he missed the boat. a foreign news-angle caught it on film...dated...that's why it glows. check it out.
—wally
This is probably the only novel that ever appeared EXACTLY the way Faulkner wanted it to appear, and it was the only one whose tepid reception really bothered him. In fact, despite its Pulitzer, the book's relative lack of success (in my opinion) is what caused him to retreat into the relatively childish stories of his later career. The down side to Faulkner's insistence on placing each word meticulously though, is that it generates a VERY difficult book to read. At times, it is almost like reading Cicero or some other Latin master because the sentences are so sprawling and each word means something.After Go Down, Moses; Faulkner's "major period" is behind him. He will never again explore his fictional county in Mississippi with the same depth as "Absalom" and "Sound and the Fury", turning instead to events far beyond those borders. This novel is the product of a nearly ten year obsession, unlike the Mississippi masterpieces which were often dashed off and printed before they could be properly edited. It is the only work of his that left a physical impression on his house, where he took to inscribing exhaustive notes on the woodwork of Rowan Oak that are still visible. So, to At the end of the day, like If I Forget Thee Jerusalem, this is the *style* of Faulkner at its most mature, even if the material is not his most familiar. The biblical parallels can't be missed, but rather than reading it that way, it might be more useful to consider it an act of exhaustion. The last truly "High Modern" book written by that one of that period's grand exemplars, who were soon to abandon it and never return. It is richly informed by the life events of William Faulkner and his generation, one which was essentially "at war" from 1914-1945, whether or not they ever got to the trenches. It must be read slowly, and savouringly. Near the beginning, General Gragnon has his driver pause underneath a resting battery and listen to the sound of a lark whose song is like "four metal coins dropping into a cup of soft silver," and flashes back to the General's childhood in the Pyrenees listening to birds, and then flashes forward again back to the war. These are the images that make Faulkner's most mature style breathtaking. He so richly imagines his characters and their thoughts and their desperation, that at the novel's conclusion the reader has a vested interest in the brutal outcome. Five Stars, and bravo Mr. Faulkner.
—Russell
At nine o'clock one morning in the spring of 1918, a regiment of the French army - every man below the rank of sergeant - refuses to take part in a futile assault on the German position. Strangely, the German line opposite fails to take advantage of the situation with a counter-attack, and by noon that day no guns are fired along the entire French line. By three o'clock in the afternoon, the entire western front has fallen silent. It emerges that a saintly French corporal, together with his twelve apostles, has been making the rounds of the Allied forces (and apparently the German forces too) spreading by word and deed a gospel of non-violence and universal brotherhood. The troops, it seems, have understood that they can stop the killing simply by laying down their arms. Naturally, this is anathema to the military hierarchies on both sides, who (tipped off by the Judas among the disciples) are already making covert plans to resume hostilities. The generals, after all, have a living to make and a war to run. "A Fable" is an allegorical novel about the conflicting impulses that exist within each one of us. The French corporal represents man's inextinguishable impulse towards unconditional love and brotherhood; or, to put it another way, he's the "champion of an esoteric realm of man's baseless hopes and his infinite capacity - no: passion - for unfact". Like Jesus, the corporal holds out the light of selfless love to humanity, but he's doomed to suffer the consequences. For within every man, too, lives the desire to get on in the world, an egotism which produces conflict, wars and armies. This impulse - represented in the novel by supreme Allied general, who is the corporal's father and the author of the quote above - will always conquer in the world of brute facts, will always prevail, but the example that Christ and Faulkner's corporal offer to humanity can never be extinguished. "I'm not going to die," says one of the corporal's disciples at the end of the book. "Never." "A Fable" is a difficult, audacious and profound book. If complex meditations on the human condition are your idea of a good time, give this one a try.
—KeithTalent
