A Fable
New York: Random House, 1954. First Edition, First Printing. Cloth. Near Fine / Very Good+ with Mylar. Item #5119
A First Edition, First Printing (so stated) of William Faulkner's Award-winning book. The volume is in near fine condition with a very minor bump on front bottom corner and minor soiling on the page edges. The dustjacket has slight wear at the edges and is missing a small piece on the top dustjacket spine and shows some signs of shelf wear. The original price ($4.75) is intact on the inside jacket. A fine collectible title for the literary library.
Faulkner, one of America's premier authors of novels, plays, poems and essays, also won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 and the National Book Award again in 1951 for "Collected Stories." His best-known other works include "The Sound and the Fury," "The Reivers: A Reminiscence," "As I Lay Dying," and many others.
"A Fable" was Faulkner's first large title published after his Pulitzer Prize in Literature award. Though described in The Atlantic (1954) by critic Charles Rolo as "a heroically ambitious failure," Faulkner won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for the title. Faulkner also revealed that he spent well over a decade working on the novel, going so far as wall-papering his study with his plot and structure outlines, and that he wished to be remembered for "A Fable." When speaking to Jean Stein in a 1956 interview, Faulkner referred to failure and writing: "All of us failed to match our dream of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible."
The marvelous Gabriel Garcia Marquez was quite open about his love for William Faulkner's works. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, "The Solitude of Latin America" (1982), Marquez referenced Faulkner and his quote, "I decline to accept the end of man."
Price: $323.00 other currencies