Finished: A Fable (Faulkner). Another complicated, exhausting, amazing Faulkner book. A Fable won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Of course, that didn't make it any easier to read. Like any of the Faulkner books I've read, the sentences were so complicated, and so long, and the thoughts so comprehensive and prone to excruciatingly long tangents that you can never, I mean never, let your mind wander to something simple like "oh, did I remember to take the chicken out to thaw?" No sir, you cannot do that and keep understanding what you're reading, lol. Anyway, this was not my favorite of the Faulkner books, but I'm so, so glad I read it. There were many profound statements and actions in the soul of this book, about several different participants in World War I.

   'One regiment,' the runner said. 'One French regiment. Only a fool would look on war as a condition; it's too expensive. War is an episode, a crisis, a fever the purpose of which is to rid the body of fever. So the purpose of war is to end the war. We've known that for six thousand years. The trouble was, it took us six thousand years to learn how to do it. For six thousand years we labored under the delusion that the only way to stop a war was to get together more regiments and battalions than the enemy could, or vice versa, and hurl them upon each other until one lot was destroyed and, the one having nothing left to fight with, the other could stop fighting. We were wrong, because yesterday morning, by simply declining to make an attack, one single French regiment stopped us all.'

There were two basic stories for me. One...what happens when one division of an army ,who has been fighting in the trenches of the World War I front line for four years, decides to disobey the command to attack the enemy AND the enemy decides not to fire either? What happens is a peace of a few days, and even the wary belief of the soldiers that pulled off the act that just maybe they ended the war. What happens when the bigwigs don't like their defiance is atrocious.

Two...who is the mysterious corporal, with his twelve fellow (and following) soldiers, who somehow manages to get the word to over 3000 men to carry out this plan...is he the second coming of Christ? Is he Christ come back to give us one more chance to listen to him for peace instead of war? If so, his plan doesn't work. The bigwig generals on both sides don't like the fact that the men have caused such a pause in the war. There are too many grander things at stake in the game of world domination, politics, etc. to let the mere fighting and dying soldiers decide to make the war stop.

So, of course, the corporal is executed. Not, however, before one of his twelve betrays him to the big generals. And, not before one of his twelve denies him three times. This correlation between the corporal and Christ is what this book is known for, and it's a fascinating read. Still, very complicated though! Sometimes I wasn't even sure which character was thinking or talking without going a few pages back to see if I missed something. The conversation between the corporal and the general in charge of all the allied forces was so mesmerizing...largely due to the fact that we find out the general is, in fact, the corporal's biological father. The general tries to get the corporal to leave town before he has to execute him, but then he'd be abandoning his twelve (now eleven minus the traitor) men. More so, he'd be abandoning the cause. Of course, the corporal refuses, and the father ends up sacrificing the life of his son....hmmm.

The depths of many characters are explored, but sadly not really the depth of the corporal. Two much time is spent on this huge tangent back in the United States with a horse thief and his preacher friend who end up in the war. Their back story is wayyyy too long. Anyway, I continue to be so impressed with Faulkner, even if he does get a little too verbose for my tastes. It's really hard to criticize someone who could write so brilliantly otherwise. There are books dedicated to studying Faulkner's writing and one essay in particular I read after trying to decipher the ending of the book. I really liked the statement this one essay made which was about another major character, the Runner:

The Sentry is killed, and the Runner barely survives, losing half of his body in the process, but it is enough for him to return at the end of the novel to reiterate one final time, at the Old General’s funeral ten years after the Armistice, what it means to stand up for one’s convictions. He represents the third member of what Faulkner termed a “trinity of conscience,” who as a group represent three ways of reacting to the horrors and injustices of war: by nihilism, passivity, or action. The runner, Faulkner says, is a “living scar, who in the last scene says, ‘That’s right; tremble. I’m not going to die—never.’ i.e., there is evil in the world and I’m going to do something about it” (Essays 271). Even though the Runner failed in his attempt to end the war, what matters is that he not only tried, he continues to try even ten years later.

I know a book has made a huge impact on me when I take the time to then go and research the author's deeper meaning. :-) Overall...4 out of 4 for Faulkner so far! My favorite still being The Sound and the Fury.