Status Updates From A Fable

Out of my three active reads and three inactive ones (yes, I'm currently reading six books) this is my least favorite and the first National Book Award winner I'm not head over hills for. It started wonderfully with a unique premise but the past 150 pages of different vantage points of the same event is wearing me down.

That bit about snarling!

Here, dig it:

"...he not moving yet, immobile and still frozen in the ravelling fading snarl and the faint thin sulfur-stink of burning wool from the skirt of his tunic."

That shit got me bricked up, lawd've mercy!

Remember for later:

222 and 223 are full of amazing quotes about the fleeting, frail, and limited nature of life, of human experience and existence. No matter how tough and or weak and or smart and or mindless and or lazy and or popular and or powerful, you're still going to die. Dig it

Stories within stories will always being hot to my bookworm heart. Books like Andrew Davidson's THE GARGOYLE, and Ruff's LOVECRAFT COUNTRY, remain favorites for that reason. I came to love the style in King's IT, as that was my first taste of its decadent and varied possibilities, which I then went on to use as a device for my novel THE LAST FREAKSHOW.

Flashback time! Not even Faulkner can resist the pull of past things 🤣

Next chapter is 80 pages. Longest yet has been 47. This is definitely getting split up. Great book so far, but it can also be exhausting at times.

The metaphor of white phosphorus eating away at the sidcott like war eats away at men has me floored.

This book has such a rad premise:

What would happen if everyone in a war just stopped fighting?

A fable, indeed.

Stunning writing. 61 pages wherein next to nothing happens and I wasn't a bit bored? Masterful ahh book.

Faulkner's novels are far better than his short stories.

Also, did you know he was guilty of stolen valor? He never saw combat during the war, but when he returned home he told everyone he had been injured in combat.