A Fable
First edition cover | |
Author | William Faulkner |
---|---|
Cover artist | Riki Levinson[1] |
Language | English |
Published | 1954 (Random House) |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
Preceded by | Requiem for a Nun |
Followed by | The Town |
A Fable is a 1954 novel written by the American author William Faulkner. He spent more than a decade and tremendous effort on it, and aspired for it to be "the best work of my life and maybe of my time".[2] It won the Pulitzer Prize[3] and the National Book Award.[4] Historically, it can be seen as a precursor to Joseph Heller's Catch-22.
Synopsis
The book takes place in France during World War I and stretches through the course of one week in 1918. Corporal Stefan, who represents the reincarnation of Jesus, orders 3,000 troops to disobey orders to attack in the brutally repetitive trench warfare. In return, the Germans do not attack, and the war stops when soldiers realize that it takes two sides to fight a war. The Generalissimo, who represents leaders who use war to gain power, invites his German counterpart to discuss how to restart the war. He then arrests and executes Stefan. Before Stefan's execution, the Generalissimo tries to convince the corporal that war can never be stopped because it is the essence of human nature.
Following the execution of the Corporal, his body is returned to his wife and his sisters, and he is buried in Vienne-la-pucelle. However, after the conflict has resumed, the Corporal's grave is destroyed in a barrage of artillery. The spirit of the Corporal has transferred to a British message runner, who eventually confronts the old Generalissimo.
Critical analysis
In his contemporary review of A Fable, Philip Blair Rice noted that the novel returned Faulkner in subject matter to the one general subject that engaged him besides Mississippi: the First World War.[5] Dayton Kohler, in his contemporary analysis of the novel, discusses an approach to the novel through myth.[6] Ernest Sandeen has elaborated in detail on the parallels between the corporal and Jesus Christ.[7] Julian Smith has noted similarities between A Fable and Humphrey Cobb's novel Paths of Glory.[8] Frank Turaj has examined opposing images and themes in terms of the dialectic in the novel.[9] Thomas E Connolly has discussed the relationship of the three main plots of the novel to each other.[10]
Richard H. King has interpreted A Fable as the one major attempt by Faulkner to depict political action in his novels, and has characterized the novel as "Faulkner's failed political novel".[11] Robert W Hutten noted Faulkner's reworking of material originally from the story "Notes on a Horse Thief" into A Fable.[12] William J Sowder has analyzed in detail the character of the Generalissimo.[13]
Awards
References
- ^ Modern first editions - a set on Flickr
- ^ Blotner, Joseph, Faulkner: A Biography (one volume edition). University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, Mississippi, USA), ISBN 1-57806-732-4, p 576 (2005).
- ^ a b "Fiction". Past winners & finalists by category. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2012-03-28.
- ^ a b "National Book Awards – 1955". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-31. (With acceptance speech by Faulkner and essays by Neil Baldwin and Harold Augenbraum from the Awards 50- and 60-year anniversary publications.)
- ^ Rice, Philip Blair (Autumn 1954). "Review: Faulkner's Crucifixion". The Kenyon Review. 16 (4): 661–664, 666–670. JSTOR 4333535.
- ^ Kohler, Dayton (May 1955). "A Fable: The Novel as Myth". The English Journal. 44 (5): 253–260. doi:10.2307/809492. JSTOR 809492.
- ^ Sandeen, Ernest (January 1956). "William Faulkner: His Legend and His Fable". The Review of Politics. 18 (1): 47–68. doi:10.1017/s0034670500023573. JSTOR 1404940. S2CID 145246768.
- ^ Smith, Julian (November 1968). "A Source for Faulkner's A Fable". American Literature. 40 (3): 394–397. JSTOR 2923777.
- ^ Turaj, Frank (Spring 1966). "The Dialectic in Faulkner's A Fable". Texas Studies in Literature and Language. 8 (1): 93–102. JSTOR 40753888.
- ^ Connolly, Thomas E (July 1960). "The Three Plots of A Fable". Twentieth Century Literature. 6 (2): 70–75. doi:10.2307/440699. JSTOR 440699.
- ^ King, Richard H (Spring 1985). "A Fable: Faulkner's Political Novel?". The Southern Literary Journal. 17 (2): 3–17. JSTOR 20077762.
- ^ Hutten, Robert W (May 1973). "A Major Revision in Faulkner's A Fable". American Literature. 45 (2): 297–299. doi:10.2307/2924456. JSTOR 2924456.
- ^ Sowder, William J (Spring–Summer 1963). "Faulkner and Existentialism: A Note on the Generalissimo". Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature. 4 (2): 163–171. doi:10.2307/1207153. JSTOR 1207153.
Awards | ||
---|---|---|
Preceded by The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow | National Book Award for Fiction 1955 | Succeeded by Ten North Frederick John O'Hara |
- v
- t
- e
- His Family by Ernest Poole (1918)
- The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (1919)
- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1921)
- Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (1922)
- One of Ours by Willa Cather (1923)
- The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson (1924)
- So Big by Edna Ferber (1925)
- Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (1926; declined)
- Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield (1927)
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1928)
- Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin (1929)
- Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge (1930)
- Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes (1931)
- The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (1932)
- The Store by Thomas Sigismund Stribling (1933)
- Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Pafford Miller (1934)
- Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson (1935)
- Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis (1936)
- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1937)
- The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand (1938)
- The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1939)
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1940)
- In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow (1942)
- Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair (1943)
- Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin (1944)
- A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (1945)
- All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1947)
- Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener (1948)
- Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens (1949)
- The Way West by A. B. Guthrie Jr. (1950)
- The Town by Conrad Richter (1951)
- The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk (1952)
- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1953)
- A Fable by William Faulkner (1955)
- Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor (1956)
- A Death in the Family by James Agee (1958)
- The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (1959)
- Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (1960)
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1961)
- The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor (1962)
- The Reivers by William Faulkner (1963)
- The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau (1965)
- The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter (1966)
- The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (1967)
- The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron (1968)
- House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (1969)
- The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford (1970)
- Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (1972)
- The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (1973)
- No award given (1974)
- The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (1975)
- Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow (1976)
- No award given (1977)
- Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (1978)
- The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (1979)
- The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (1980)
- A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1981)
- Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike (1982)
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1983)
- Ironweed by William Kennedy (1984)
- Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (1985)
- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1986)
- A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (1987)
- Beloved by Toni Morrison (1988)
- Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1989)
- The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos (1990)
- Rabbit at Rest by John Updike (1991)
- A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (1992)
- A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (1993)
- The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (1994)
- The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (1995)
- Independence Day by Richard Ford (1996)
- Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (1997)
- American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1998)
- The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1999)
- Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2001)
- Empire Falls by Richard Russo (2002)
- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2003)
- The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2004)
- Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2005)
- March by Geraldine Brooks (2006)
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2007)
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2008)
- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (2009)
- Tinkers by Paul Harding (2010)
- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2011)
- No award given (2012)
- The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson (2013)
- The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (2014)
- All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2015)
- The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2016)
- The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2017)
- Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2018)
- The Overstory by Richard Powers (2019)
- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (2020)
- The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (2021)
- The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen (2022)
- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver / Trust by Hernan Diaz (2023)
- Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips (2024)