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As prestigious annual awards continue to go to bigger and bigger books like The Luminaries, The Goldfinch, All the Light we Cannot See, etc., there are still novellas being quietly put onto the shelves. Michael Bible's debut novella Sophia hit the stands late last year and is weird and wonderful. There seems to be this feeling that in order to be important, a book must be long and sprawling. But I'd like a thread that celebrates powerful literature that can fit into your back pocket, and I don't just mean for readers who still wear JNCO jeans. What are your favorite novellas? One of mine is The Crying of Lot 49, a hugely popular work that many people recommend as a starting point for Thomas Pynchon. It's even forums-favorite Jonathan Franzen's preferred Pynchon. Novellas also give short story writers like George Saunders and Alice Munro a place to write longer pieces without having to churn out the full length required to merit a standalone novel. They can write complex stories that are exactly the length they need to be. blue squares fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Feb 12, 2016 |
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Feb 12, 2016 15:26
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Also, this shouldn't just be a recommendation thread for novellas. Do you have opinions on novellas? Never read them, think they just don't compare to bigger works? Think they are better because they contain only what is necessary? And if you think novellas are too short to truly invest anyone in the characters, think back to school when you read Of Mice and Men.
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Feb 12, 2016 15:41
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"The novel" is an extremely stupid concept and "novella" is, like, extended third hand stupidity
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Feb 12, 2016 15:42
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^fartdick Novellas are cool. I like them just cause it's a good way to break up my reading schedule of massive-rear end books along with poetry collections. My favorites are The Old Man and the Sea by Ernesto and Train Dreams by Denis Johnson. Also Jesus' Son if you'd count that. There is this quality to some novellas that I feel like the author is being indecisive, though. I get if a novella happens organically, like the author tells the story and it's perfectly in between novel and short story -length, but sometimes it sort of feels like they just extended a short story that doesn't have any business being that long and other times there feels like so much more story could be put in there (like the aforementioned Train Dreams). The Crying of Lot 49 felt almost like a novel to me in terms of it's completeness. And it's pushing 175 pages, I think?
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Feb 12, 2016 15:59
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WAY TO GO WAMPA!! posted:
"Pynchon had written that he was in the middle of writing a "potboiler". [Crying Lot of 49] When the book grew to 155 pages, he called it, "a short story, but with gland trouble", and hoped that [Candida] Donadio could "unload it on some poor sucker.""
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Feb 12, 2016 16:30
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I was introduced to Novella by a friend who gave it to me on whole wheat toast and it was delicious. I cannot imagine going back to Peanut Butter again. Anyways recent Nobel laureate Patrick Modiana has essentially his entire output in Novella form and its all worth reading
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Feb 12, 2016 16:59
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It's my preferred format for narrative prose. I'm not a fan of big, Dickensian books where I need a flow-chart to keep all the characters and their connections straight. My favourites are usually of an existentialist bent. An Offering for the Dead is the best I've ever read. The most recent one I read was Monsieur by Jean-Philippe Toussaint which was very good. Toussaint is the Belgian Nicholson Baker.
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Feb 12, 2016 18:07
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I was introduced to Novella by a friend who gave it to me on whole wheat toast and it was delicious. I cannot imagine going back to Peanut Butter again. I read a story in Tin House by this guy and it was fascinating. I'll check out one of his books from the library iccyelf posted:My favourites are usually of an existentialist bent. Do you like Camus? The Stranger is only 120 or so pages WAY TO GO WAMPA!! posted:There is this quality to some novellas that I feel like the author is being indecisive, though. I get if a novella happens organically, like the author tells the story and it's perfectly in between novel and short story -length, but sometimes it sort of feels like they just extended a short story that doesn't have any business being that long and other times there feels like so much more story could be put in there (like the aforementioned Train Dreams). I, as a lapsed writer of fiction, can tell you that there is enormous pressure on writers NOT to write novellas. There is no less salable length of fiction one could write. Every writers' forum on the internet has people posting about how their book is too short and that no agent would ever even look at it and asking for help to expand it. So I don't think anyone would write a novella UNorganically. There is no reason to force a story to become one and therefore make it almost unpublishable by magazines and publishing houses. Essentially, writing a novella is a brave act. It is to deliberately ignore all of the financial constraints put upon writing and instead produce this thing that almost no one will read or even want to read. blue squares fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Feb 12, 2016 |
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Feb 12, 2016 18:35
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Writing gets worse the longer it gets so novellas are maybe the second worst form of writing. That said, Cesar Aira is very good and doesn't really write anything longer than 150 pages.
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Feb 13, 2016 01:06
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Everyone has to read Welcome to Orphancorp I'm not loving around, it's like five bucks, read it now. It's about 15-20000 words. Easy Look here's a link http://www.amazon.com.au/WELCOME-OR...e+to+Orphancorp Buy it Read it Love it
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Feb 13, 2016 01:17
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Did you write that book?
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Feb 13, 2016 01:26
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blue squares posted:Do you like Camus? The Stranger is only 120 or so pages. Yeah but I haven't read Camus since high-school.
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Feb 13, 2016 02:46
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blue squares posted:Did you write that book? No. I've read it though and can attest to its goodness.
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Feb 13, 2016 06:28
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blue squares posted:
Also I've tried to write fiction longer than a short story and it is tough as gently caress. My longest work is probably novella territory and my teachers pointed out the same unpublishable-length thing to me :/
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Feb 13, 2016 14:26
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Add some scifi elements (one magical realistc scene is enough), publish in sf magazine and sail to Hugo nomination in uncontested novella category, become hugo nominated author
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Feb 13, 2016 18:02
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mallamp posted:Add some scifi elements (one magical realistc scene is enough), publish in sf magazine and sail to Hugo nomination in uncontested novella category, become hugo nominated author
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Feb 13, 2016 18:53
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Let's not turn this thread into a discussion of the science fiction community. Please keep on topic
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Feb 13, 2016 19:00
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the_homemaster posted:Everyone has to read Welcome to Orphancorp This is technically speculative fiction. China Mievilles new ones is a novella.
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Feb 14, 2016 05:07
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blue squares posted:
I think this is really only the case in the US (and probably UK). In a lot of countries there's a strong element of government support for 'serious literature', which, incidentally, is one of the reasons why you see many more <200 page books coming out of these countries - even if the book doesn't sell, the publisher won't be in a hole because of that. also, from the other thread, here's my favourite short novel(la)s of the last couple of years: Season of Migration to the North (Tayeb Salih), any Maqroll novella (Álvaro Mutis), The Successor (Ismail Kadare), The Tartar Steppe (Dino Buzzati), Doctor Glas (Hjalmar Söderberg) & Christie Malry's Own Double Entry (B.S. Johnson) Burning Rain fucked around with this message at 09:02 on Feb 14, 2016 |
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Feb 14, 2016 08:50
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I typically feel that much was left unsaid in the novellas that I've read that aren't already considered classics. One particularly egregious example in the horror genre, was Mira Grant's Rolling in the Deep. A book about killer mermaids...yeah, yeah. By glossing over the struggle and subsequent deaths of every character you've spent the vast majority of the until then fun to read novella in a matter of a few pages and ending the book, it ruins it for me. The book could have been say, 30 pages longer and would have been complete, the pace wouldn't have felt like slamming on the brakes in front of a brick wall.
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Feb 17, 2016 19:54
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Talmonis posted:I typically feel that much was left unsaid in the novellas that I've read that aren't already considered classics. One particularly egregious example in the horror genre, was Mira Grant's Rolling in the Deep. A book about killer mermaids...yeah, yeah. By glossing over the struggle and subsequent deaths of every character you've spent the vast majority of the until then fun to read novella in a matter of a few pages and ending the book, it ruins it for me. The book could have been say, 30 pages longer and would have been complete, the pace wouldn't have felt like slamming on the brakes in front of a brick wall. You were surprised a novella about killer mermaids was bad? Hmm.
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Feb 17, 2016 20:13
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iccyelf posted:You were surprised a novella about killer mermaids was bad? Hmm. No, I'm surprised it was entertaining to read for most of it, only to slam into a brick wall of rushed garbage at the end. I enjoy Mira Grant's full length books.
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Feb 17, 2016 20:15
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good novellas: confusion of feelings by Stefan Zweig, Faust by Turgenev, The Clown by Heinrich Böll, the death of ivan illyich, Ensam (lonely or something like that) by august strindberg
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Feb 17, 2016 22:22
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Talmonis posted:No, I'm surprised it was entertaining to read for most of it, only to slam into a brick wall of rushed garbage at the end. I enjoy Mira Grant's full length books. That's what I said. Badly written books will do that.
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Feb 18, 2016 03:03
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There's also a big thing where people write novellas and then the publisher makes the font size as big as possible so as to market it as a novel. Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You is a great example. Going by wordcount, it doesn't qualify as a novel. But the font is big and they threw in 20 pages of author interview in the back to make it look thicker.
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Feb 18, 2016 04:31
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The place for novellas is in e-book publishing, they might not be great literature but a number of publishers put out download-only genre novellas and they do pretty well as those things go.
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Feb 21, 2016 07:38
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Novellas are frequently a treat, in my opinion. I find that authors with a very dense, wordy style tend to work best in novella form, if not short story. Lovecraft's longer works definitely demonstrate this - he builds an enjoyable atmosphere, but his writing would be unbearable in novel length. My personal favorite novellas are probably Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (also works a bit better in short form, though I love Nostromo), The Dead by James Joyce and My Work is Not Yet Done by Thomas Ligotti.
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Mar 1, 2016 15:39
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