First time visiting? Start with the
Prologue, then follow the Chapters in the Archive list on the right sidebar,
going from the oldest to the newest.
I think I’ve
just read a book, but I can’t be sure. I know I read all the words, and in the
right order, but I couldn’t tell you what the book was actually about.
It wasn’t
because of the vocabulary, though a few words sent me scrambling for the OED, a
tome of miniscule type that still beats Google every time. (I looked up defalcate, for example, which as it turns
out has nothing to do with bodily functions.) And it wasn’t because the plot
was overly convoluted; it’s not like there were seven kingdoms and an iron
throne, after all, or a mobius of characters invented by Keyser Söze. And nothing at all was timey-wimey.
If you've never had this feeling before, then permit me this analogy: Have you ever found
yourself behind the wheel of a car having suddenly wondered where you were for
the last fifteen minutes or so? You know you’ve been driving, but all you know for
sure is that you have a subtle but unimpeachable sense of something passing you
by.
That’s how I
felt after turning the last pages of Faulkner’s A Fable.
Faulkner is a
tough read, certainly, but not James-Joyce tough; he doesn’t just string
letters together and pretend they’re words and, while some passages are riveted
with run-ons and semicolons, there’s nothing like, say, the “Penelope” section
that closes Ulysses. It also wasn’t
my first foray into Faulknerian territory; I had read, though many years
earlier, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom, all of which, if
memory serves, I understood.
Admittedly I
began handicapped. My copy wore no jacket, and therefore no inside flap’s brief
summary. Nor was there an erudite introduction scribed by some English professor
fighting for tenure at a mid-list Iowa university. None of that bothered me
much, though. I knew a Faulkner novel required easing into.
After about
twenty pages I re-checked the book see if I’d missed something, a blurb on the
frontispiece perhaps, or a brief afterword—anything that might give me some
hint at a plot. Other than knowing the book was set in France during World War
II, I had nothing.
I cheated,
heading to Wikipedia (the twenty-first century version of Cliffs Notes) and
read the brief description: The book takes place in France during
World War I and stretches through the course of one week, it began. Ah… so I didn’t even have the
right World War. And there were only two to choose from. Not an auspicious
beginning. I continued reading:
It
tells the stories of "Corporal Stefan", who is representative of
Jesus. The Corporal 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 is simply stopped when the soldiers realize that it takes two sides to
fight a war. The Generalissimo has the corporal arrested and executed; he is
representative of leaders who use war solely to make themselves stronger (he
invites the German general over to discuss how to start the war again). Before
he has him shot, the Generalissimo tries to convince the Corporal that war can
never be stopped because it is the essence of humanity.
Not the cleanest summary. In fact, it feels like
this particular Wikipedian had some trouble with the book, too.
At least I now had some idea about what was going
on and, given the book’s title, I could at least watch for any relevant metaphors.
Several soon emerged: Corporal Stefan had a team of twelve, one of whom is
later paid thirty coins for information; Stefan also seems to have some
relationship with an ex-prostitute named Mary who just happens to hang out with
a woman named Marthe.
But what do I do with the seventy-odd pages used
to describe the world’s fastest three-legged horse as it parades around the
southern United States? Or the corpse-hunting widow who can’t decide whether to
eat her only piece of bread or wield it uselessly as a weapon?
At this point I was hoping for any kind of…wait
for it…epiphany. Something to open
the skies, light the burning bush afire, part the seas. Instead I’m left with a
gnawing concern, the strangest feeling that a part of my mind has peeled away
like sunburnt skin. I wonder if it’s me,
after all, that’s the problem, that if, somehow, having entered the tail end of
my fifties, I no longer have the ability to comprehend a novel so dense. I
imagine that if I’d read A Fable back
when I’d read those other Faulkner novels I would have had a much easier time
of it, might have experienced the sudden flash of understanding and awareness that
all difficult but wonderfully written books give. It never came, though, not
this time, and thinking that years ago it might have, gives me the eeriest
feeling, one of those small quivers that often generate larger quakes.
We all know that as we get older some faculties necessarily
fade. My eyes struggle both near and far now, and my ears, battered by years of
heavy metal and progressive rock, aren’t what they used to be. It takes me
longer to do a crossword puzzle than it used to, and the witty riposte is too often
now slightly out of reach. And as I age, so do those around me, and what seems
self-evident surprisingly strikes: a father, an uncle, a friend from high
school, each a little grayer, each one step slower. You notice first the additional
wrinkles, then the occasional misspeak or a need to repeat what is no longer
clearly heard. Then you look into your own mirror in the morning and wonder at
the gap between the face before you and the ageless adolescent internally (and
eternally) embraced. But the mirror is accurate and the memory is only that; you
realize that the greying and the slower step describe you, too. The person
inside you wants only to take the many, many steps remaining, and more, but
you, the real you, aren’t just taking steps, but counting them, an unwelcome admission that there are only so many
left.
Books are meant to make us think, but when I
picked up this one I never expected to mull my own fading senses. What my difficulty with A Fable has
surfaced in me is a sense of mortality and of time—Time and how much of it remains. Time and how best to enjoy
it. Time and the one-way stream of it in which we live. I find myself clawing
at the embankments of memory now, wondering what happened to people I almost
knew decades ago, people I’ve imagined into importance; or trying to recall the
poems and lyrics that moved me once; or what it felt like to enjoy mowing the
lawn. Wondering when I’ll trade Faulkner
for obituaries. I spend more time holding hands with my wife these days. More
time petting my remaining dog. More time attempting to understand, hoping that,
like any good fable, the moral waiting at the end makes it all worthwhile.
Read since
last post:
·
A Fable,
William Faulkner (1955)
·
Death in
the Family, James Agee (1958)
·
Tales of
the South Pacific, James Michener (1948)
Currently
Reading:
·
The Color
Purple, Alice Walker (1983)
·
The
Stories of John Cheever, John Cheever (1979)
·
Honey in
the Horn, H. L. Davis (1936)
COUNT: 23
read, 64 to go
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