Robert Louis Stevenson's Fables: A Reader's Orientation
A short collection of moral tales, arguments dressed as stories, and one meeting with characters from Treasure Island.
Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson is a compact set of short pieces, filed here under Literature. As stored on this site it runs to seventeen numbered chapters, most of them only a page or two long, each a self-contained tale or dialogue. The titles give a fair sense of the range: THE SINKING SHIP, THE TWO MATCHES, THE DEVIL AND THE INNKEEPER, THE HOUSE OF ELD, THE FOUR REFORMERS, THE READER, THE TOUCHSTONE. There is no continuous story running across the chapters; a reader can begin anywhere and stop anywhere without losing a thread.
What the collection contains
These are fables in the older sense: small stories that carry an argument. Some use ordinary figures, such as a sick man and a fireman, a reader and a book, a missionary among islanders. Others reach into legend and belief, with a catechist warning a boy about thunderbolts, or a house of yellow reeds tied with black sinnet. The tone shifts from piece to piece, sometimes dry and comic, sometimes grim, sometimes turning on a plain moral question. A short exchange between characters is often the whole of a chapter, as when a book answers back to the man who has thrown it down.
“You need not hurt me,” said the book; “you will only get less for me second hand, and I did not write myself.”
XI.—THE READER.
The opening chapter, THE PERSONS OF THE TALE, sits slightly apart from the rest. In it, two figures from Treasure Island, Long John Silver and Captain Smollett, step out of that book after its thirty-second chapter and talk over their situation as characters in a story. It is a playful start, and it sets a note of argument and self-awareness that several of the later pieces also strike.
Who it suits and how to begin
This is a book for a reader who likes short forms and does not need a plot to carry them along. Because each chapter stands on its own, it reads well in small sittings, and it rewards a reader willing to sit with a point rather than race for an outcome. Anyone who enjoys the fable and the parable, or who wants a brief and unusual side of Stevenson, will find enough here. A reader looking for a long, absorbing narrative will not find one, and should know that going in.
- Very short chapters, each complete in itself, that can be read in any order.
- A mix of everyday figures and material drawn from legend and belief.
- An opening that borrows two characters from Treasure Island for a conversation.
- A tone that moves between the comic, the plain-spoken and the severe.
For a sense of the plainer, sharper pieces, THE SICK MAN AND THE FIREMAN is a good early test: a single conversation, an unsettling turn, and a hard edge to its reasoning. If that manner appeals, the rest of the collection will hold interest; if it does not, little later on will change the reader's mind. The pieces are best met one at a time, given a moment's thought, and then set aside before the next.
The book, free to read
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