Novels suck (1 Viewer)

[One of us]

I'm really pissed off with novels right now. How did they get to be the default setting for fiction? They're really hard to structure, take forever to write, and there's only a few people around who can do them properly. The idea that every writer has a novel in them, or that every story deserves to be expanded into a novel, is as ludicrous as saying that every band needs to record a triple-album, or that every tune should form the basis for, I don't know, a tone-poem or something.

I'm not saying novels are a dead loss. When they work, they can be brilliant, and can say things that other forms can't get at. But they should be seen as a niche form, not the gold standard. I've read so many books that would have worked well as short stories, or novellas, or essays, that are utterly dead as novels- they've been bulked up with so much filler and dead passages that they just leave you cold. Plus I can't count the number of times that cool ideas or characters got swallowed up in tedious, clumsy first-time-novelist plots.

On the other hand, I've found a lot of fiction I've read in shorter forms was actually more complex and thought provoking. Some of the best stuff I've read recently has been in those little Hesperus books, which fit into the palm of your hand. And the most enjoyable contemporary book I've read all year was Amy Fusselman's "The Pharmacist's Mate", which is about 90 pages long and really simply written, but more cleverly put together than most of your Booker prize longlist. I also got a buzz out of Richard Ford's book of the American Long Story (average length 30-70 pages), and I think this is a form that has really been overlooked. Maybe a cool publisher could be persuaded to commission new stuff in this form. What does anyone out there think?

 

[Rimbaud]

So basically your just saying you would rather read short stories then Novels, yes?

There`s plenty good short story writers out there, Edgar Alan Poe`s stories are always good for a laugh.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Blame the rise of the middle classes, Daniel DeFoe, Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding.

Not anything to do with girls.

 

[One of us]

So basically your just saying you would rather read short stories then Novels, yes?

There`s plenty good short story writers out there, Edgar Alan Poe`s stories are always good for a laugh.

Actually, yeah. I guess that's all I was saying.

Poe's stories are class alright. In the same style, ETA Hoffmann's are also a load of fun.

 

[jane]

Actually, yeah. I guess that's all I was saying.

Poe's stories are class alright. In the same style, ETA Hoffmann's are also a load of fun.

I forget who said it, but there's a great quote by some 17th or 18th century writer about his novel, something like, ' Pity I didn't have the time to make it shorter.'

I don't agree with you completely, but there is a lot to be said for the story, the concise piece of writing that manages to be satisfying and somehow complete. Some of the most moving things I've ever read have been short stories, or shorter novels, not because I'm lazy or don't have the attention span, but because conveying a point with a minimum of words can be more artful and challenging than some 1000-page rambler. I think that the mark of a really good writer is someone who doesn't give too much to the reader; sometimes too much description leaves little for the reader to do except consume the work, and thus does less to provoke.

I find the same goes for academic stuff: most books are better off as articles, and most articles would be better as mere abstracts. Which is probably why my thesis isn't getting written. Who the hell is going to want to read 100,000 words on this crap, when I could totally say enough in 10,000? Ugh.

 

[broken arm]

i'm not a fan of fiction.

not to say that I can't be persuaded.

 

[krystal]

i'm not a fan of fiction.

not to say that I can't be persuaded.

I'm not a fan of short stories usually.
I find them to be unsatisfying

 

[snakybus]

Jane, are you championing brevity?

do my eyes fool me?

 

[One of us]

I forget who said it, but there's a great quote by some 17th or 18th century writer about his novel, something like, ' Pity I didn't have the time to make it shorter.'

I don't agree with you completely, but there is a lot to be said for the story, the concise piece of writing that manages to be satisfying and somehow complete. Some of the most moving things I've ever read have been short stories, or shorter novels, not because I'm lazy or don't have the attention span, but because conveying a point with a minimum of words can be more artful and challenging than some 1000-page rambler. I think that the mark of a really good writer is someone who doesn't give too much to the reader; sometimes too much description leaves little for the reader to do except consume the work, and thus does less to provoke.

I find the same goes for academic stuff: most books are better off as articles, and most articles would be better as mere abstracts. Which is probably why my thesis isn't getting written. Who the hell is going to want to read 100,000 words on this crap, when I could totally say enough in 10,000? Ugh.

That’s exactly it. I guess I had a run of reading really bad or mediocre books recently, and I got to wondering if these were all just poor writers, or if they had started with a genuine spark, and it had been extinguished by the sheer technical slog of constructing a novel around it.



And after this, you go read something as light, and fierce and clever as a short story by Anne Enright, or Lorrie Moore, or Joao Cortazar, say, and you think: this is what it should all be about.



Nothing against novels really, just annoyed at their one-size-fits-all ubiquity, and would love to see the short story and novella emerge as viable alternative forms for the general public, and not just for book geeks like ourselves.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Once I read that book Pamela i decided that novels are for gays..... never mind Clarissa

 

[sarah]

Hmm regarding Milan Kundera I agree all his novels could do with having
at least 5-10 chapters chopped of the end.
The one novella of his I have read called Immortality was absolutely
brilliant.
Although Mervyn Peakes Gormenghast is one of my favourite novels
(excluding Titus Alone) I think every line in it is so carefully considered and structered
one of the moste poetic stories and dark stories I have every read.

 

[billygannon]

What was the first novel? Was it that one from Aphra Behn? Or Don Quixote? Or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

I think novels are grand.

An example of a great novel is Catch 22.

 

[MDR]

I blame it on the plunging price of paper and ink. It was better in the old days when you had your pot of ox blood and two sheets of papyrus to cover your main points.

 

[snakybus]

The first novel was "Stegasorus for food-food" by Grok the caveman

An excerpt:

"Call me Grok. Me cavewoman say "Get food-food, Grok, or no nooki-nooki for you." Me get spear....damn colour-rocks, always break when me write on cave wall...."

 

[egg_]

John-out-of-Stoat went on a big anti-novels buzz lately too ... in fact it was a general anti-fiction buzz, ironic considering he's been writing one novel or another pretty much continuously since 1993 (just about finished the first draft on number 3, fact fans - number 2 is unfinished, and number 1 was rejected by the author as 'no good' and never got read by anyone else)

Lots of modern novels are like the equivalent of your typical Tuesday night in the International Bar singer-songwriter - extremely polished and technically accomplished, but not worthwhile. I've never read a short story, though, that had the same impact on me as 'Cancer Ward' or 'Breakfast of Champions' or 'Catch 22' or 'Sexus' ... if the characters are good enough I want to spend more time with them than is available in a short story

 

[egg_]

When they work, they can be brilliant, and can say things that other forms can't get at. But they should be seen as a niche form, not the gold standard.

Actually I'd say the reason they have become 'the gold standard' is partly to do with money. Who's gonna spend 15 quid on a book you can read in a hour?

 

[jane]

Jane, are you championing brevity?

do my eyes fool me?

Your eyes are not fools, Snaky.

I'm not exactly championing brevity, just expressing my admiration for those who have the deftness with words to do it -- because I don't. I also appreciate longer works that focus on the journey of the characters and of the story, and not on just getting to the end. My favourite writer, ITalo Calvino, manages to do both: he often says more in a single sentence than any writer does on an entire page, and because he hated writing endings, there's always something remaining at the end, some suggestion of more. I want some sense of finitude when a story comes to the end, but I prefer when the novel doesn't just die on the last page.

As for Kundera, I read about half of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and just didn't really like it. I see what is likable about it, but it's not what I look for. It's not so much his misogyny, but his bleak view of humankind itself, and the way that he deals with it. Bleakness can be artful, but that book just didn't do it for me.

 

[snakybus]

ah

 

[Super Dexta]

after reading anna karenina i felt the same way woody allen did about war and peace (i think it was war and peace?)...."it was about some russians." that bleedin book took me a month, a month that i want back.

 

[krystal]

after reading anna karenina i felt the same way woody allen did about war and peace (i think it was war and peace?)...."it was about some russians." that bleedin book took me a month, a month that i want back.

I have started giving up when I hate a book, I used to force myself to finish things I was loathing and now I just don't bother. The last book I forced myself through was Jonathon Franzen's 27th City and it was *such* a dissapointment after The Corrections - meandering, boring, confusing, and above all, lame.