This novel won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 195. An allegorical story of World War I, set in the trenches in France and dealing ostensibly with a mutiny in a French regiment, it was originally considered a sharp departure for Faulkner. Recently it has come to be recognized as one of his major works and an essential part of the Faulkner oeuvre. Faulkner himself fought in the war, and his descriptions of it "rise to magnificence," according to The New York Times, and include, in Malcolm Cowley's words, "some of the most powerful scenes he ever conceived."
A Fable (Vintage International)
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From the Inside Flap
An allegorical story of World War I set in the trenches in France and dealing ostensibly with a mutiny in a French regiment.
About the Author
William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897. His family was rooted in local history: his great-grandfather, a Confederate colonel and state politician, was assassinated by a former partner in 1889, and his grandfather was a wealth lawyer who owned a railroad. When Faulkner was five his parents moved to Oxford, Mississippi, where he received a desultory education in local schools, dropping out of high school in 1915. Rejected for pilot training in the U.S. Army, he passed himself off as British and joined the Canadian Royal Air Force in 1918, but the war ended before he saw any service. After the war, he took some classes at the University of Mississippi and worked for a time at the university post office. Mostly, however, he educated himself by reading promiscuously.
Faulkner had begun writing poems when he was a schoolboy, and in 1924 he published a poetry collection, The Marble Faun, at his own expense. His literary aspirations were fueled by his close friendship with Sherwood Anderson, whom he met during a stay in New Orleans. Faulkner's first novel, Soldier’s Pay, was published in 1926, followed a year later by Mosquitoes, a literary satire. His next book, Flags in the Dust, was heavily cut and rearranged at the publisher’s insistence and appeared finally as Sartoris in 1929. In the meantime he had completed The Sound and the Fury, and when it appeared at the end of 1929 he had finished Sanctuary and was ready to begin writing As I Lay Dying. That same year he married Estelle Oldham, whom he had courted a decade earlier.
Although Faulkner gained literary acclaim from these and subsequent novels—Light in August (1932), Pylon (1935), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), The Unvanquished (1938), The Wild Palms (1939), The Hamlet (1940), and Go Down, Moses (1942)—and continued to publish stories regularly in magazines, he was unable to support himself solely by writing fiction. he worked as a screenwriter for MGM, Twentieth Century-Fox, and Warner Brothers, forming a close relationship with director Howard Hawks, with whom he worked on To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and Land of the Pharaohs, among other films. In 1944 all but one of Faulkner's novels were out of print, and his personal life was at low ebb due in part to his chronic heavy drinking. During the war he had been discovered by Sartre and Camus and others in the French literary world. In the postwar period his reputation rebounded, as Malcolm Cowley's anthology The Portable Faulkner brought him fresh attention in America, and the immense esteem in which he was held in Europe consolidated his worldwide stature.
Faulkner wrote seventeen books set in the mythical Yoknapatawpha County, home of the Compson family in The Sound and the Fury. “No land in all fiction lives more vividly in its physical presence than this county of Faulkner’s imagination,” Robert Penn Warren wrote in an essay on Cowley’s anthology. “The descendants of the old families, the descendants of bushwhackers and carpetbaggers, the swamp rats, the Negro cooks and farm hands, the bootleggers and gangsters, tenant farmers, college boys, county-seat lawyers, country storekeepers, peddlers—all are here in their fullness of life and their complicated interrelations.” In 1950, Faulkner traveled to Sweden to accept the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature. In later books—Intruder in the Dust (1948), Requiem for a Nun (1951), A Fable (1954), The Town (1957), The Mansion (1959), and The Reivers (1962)—he continued to explore what he had called “the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself,” but did so in the context of Yoknapatawpha’s increasing connection with the modern world. He died of a heart attack on July 6, 1962.
Faulkner had begun writing poems when he was a schoolboy, and in 1924 he published a poetry collection, The Marble Faun, at his own expense. His literary aspirations were fueled by his close friendship with Sherwood Anderson, whom he met during a stay in New Orleans. Faulkner's first novel, Soldier’s Pay, was published in 1926, followed a year later by Mosquitoes, a literary satire. His next book, Flags in the Dust, was heavily cut and rearranged at the publisher’s insistence and appeared finally as Sartoris in 1929. In the meantime he had completed The Sound and the Fury, and when it appeared at the end of 1929 he had finished Sanctuary and was ready to begin writing As I Lay Dying. That same year he married Estelle Oldham, whom he had courted a decade earlier.
Although Faulkner gained literary acclaim from these and subsequent novels—Light in August (1932), Pylon (1935), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), The Unvanquished (1938), The Wild Palms (1939), The Hamlet (1940), and Go Down, Moses (1942)—and continued to publish stories regularly in magazines, he was unable to support himself solely by writing fiction. he worked as a screenwriter for MGM, Twentieth Century-Fox, and Warner Brothers, forming a close relationship with director Howard Hawks, with whom he worked on To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and Land of the Pharaohs, among other films. In 1944 all but one of Faulkner's novels were out of print, and his personal life was at low ebb due in part to his chronic heavy drinking. During the war he had been discovered by Sartre and Camus and others in the French literary world. In the postwar period his reputation rebounded, as Malcolm Cowley's anthology The Portable Faulkner brought him fresh attention in America, and the immense esteem in which he was held in Europe consolidated his worldwide stature.
Faulkner wrote seventeen books set in the mythical Yoknapatawpha County, home of the Compson family in The Sound and the Fury. “No land in all fiction lives more vividly in its physical presence than this county of Faulkner’s imagination,” Robert Penn Warren wrote in an essay on Cowley’s anthology. “The descendants of the old families, the descendants of bushwhackers and carpetbaggers, the swamp rats, the Negro cooks and farm hands, the bootleggers and gangsters, tenant farmers, college boys, county-seat lawyers, country storekeepers, peddlers—all are here in their fullness of life and their complicated interrelations.” In 1950, Faulkner traveled to Sweden to accept the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature. In later books—Intruder in the Dust (1948), Requiem for a Nun (1951), A Fable (1954), The Town (1957), The Mansion (1959), and The Reivers (1962)—he continued to explore what he had called “the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself,” but did so in the context of Yoknapatawpha’s increasing connection with the modern world. He died of a heart attack on July 6, 1962.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
For the patient, a treasure,
This review is from: A Fable (Paperback)
I must agree that, at times, the experience of reading _A Fable_ is much like feeling one's way through a very dark tunnel. However, there is indeed a light at the end of that tunnel; as with many of Faulkner's works, the individual stories that make up the novel dont come together until the last hundred or so pages. It takes a very patient reader to glean the important details from the beginning and middle of the novel, and to remember those details when they emerge again later in the book. One must also be fairly well-acquainted with Christ's passion in order for a true understanding of the correlation to reveal itself (which, in many places, it didn't for me). Contrary to the book's selling-points, Faulkner is not merely retyping the Christ story in _A Fable_. He's updating a myth (or "fable," if you will), and using his narration to describe humanity's condition in mid-century (cf. many paragraphs w/ 1950 Nobel Prize speech). This is a long, tedious, and fanatically detailled narrative, but a great novel that pays off with a terrific closing 50 pages for the patient reader. Both the new and the acquainted should be prepared for Faulkner at his most brilliant and difficult.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A forgotten classic of Faulkner,
By A Customer
This review is from: A Fable (Paperback)
It seems every modernist attempted to write a great work concerning the great war (except fitzgerald, who didnt get to go himself). Faulkner's attempt may be second only to Hemingway's "A Farwell to Arms." "A Fable" is classic, which won the pulitzer prize,has long been overlooked simply because it represents a change from Faulkner'susual subject matter. In reality though, it may be his second greatest work behind "the sound and the fury." THis work is a brillian anti-war novel that looks at wars affects both on soldiers and civilians, and even on religion. A must read for any fan of Faulkner or modernism.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book is much better than the reviews suggest.,
By
This review is from: A Fable (Hardcover)
I am not entirely sure why this book recieved some of the lousy reviews it did. This book is brilliant, it requires more from the reader than passive reading, so if you are looking for a story you don't have to think about look elsewhere. Anyone familiar with post-Great War literature will find this book to be par for the course. Dos Passos's "Three Soldiers", comes easily to mind. Don't pay attention to the other reviews, this book won awards for a good reason. If you read the book and find yourself frustrated go back and reread sections. Literature is not always meant to be read in a passive state. This book requires active reading and should not be taken lightly. This book does carry a message about the horrors of war, but also our own individual responsibilty in allowing those horrors to go forward.
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