Even though the
form has an honorable history, in recent years, the novella seems to have
fallen out of favor. And, even though we honor
Of Mice and Men,
The
Shawshank Redemption,
Death in Venice,
Breakfast at Tiffany’s,
Heart of Darkness,
The Stranger and many more short classics from
the past, publishers are adamant about their 60,000 to 80,00 minimum word rule
for a manuscript to be considered unless the writer is a member of the
best-seller’s club. Stephen King or James Patterson could publish
napkins, though Patterson would have a co-writer, bless his talented and
prolific heart. Jealousy is not pretty.
Why the minimum?
Maybe because of production costs (set-up, handling and the whole launch
business), publishers need to get $30 retail for a hardbound book no matter how
thick. Readers, it seems, are reluctant to pay that amount of money for what
they perceive to be half a book or less. There is an underlying “cost per word”
logic to all this, conscious or unconscious. We are prey to packaging.
Dickens was paid by
his publisher so much per word. No fool, he wrote long books. Before
cheap communication technology, when people used Western Union to send
important messages across the country, they were charged by the word. So they
wrote short messages, eliminating all but absolutely essential words. Even
today we look at word pricing. Using that standard, however wrong-headed the
logic might be, the novella at $29.95 for 100 or so generously leaded pages doesn’t
give readers their money’s worth. Today in order to be published at all,
writers produce longer books. The temptation to pad, or add water, is
hard to resist in such an environment.
We have already
forgotten that much of the fiction published not too long ago were
“pocket” books, thin bodice rippers, romances, mysteries and westerns
that fit into men’s breast pockets and women’s clutch purses. There are a few
retro publishers trying to revive this concept, often with great style and
panache. But all in all, short books, whether genre or “literary,” (an argument
for another day) are still battling the fat blockbuster model. Perhaps not lost
on this is that those thin books of previous decades, often in drug stores on
revolving metal racks, were roughly the size of a smart phone.
Thin books,
especially pulp fiction, prompted a style. The style was often “telegraphic,”
that is prose as short and direct as possible, eliminating unnecessary words,
most often adjectives and adverbs. That’s one way to shorten books. To some
extent, we could call the art of the novella, “achieving shortness,” or
“honoring brevity.’ But a novella might also merely encompass a smaller slice
of time in which a story takes place or in which philosophical arguments are
examined. In some cases a well-written, smaller story represents a
greater one. Do we need the greater one? Of course we do.
Perhaps we need to deal with historical perspective or generational issues.
A novella may not work.
But I’m 70 and I’m
running out of time. But even if I weren’t … if I were 17, how much time
would I have, given the unlimited alternatives of art and communication?
Might I really think about stealing three or four days from my allotted
existence — devoting that time instead to Thomas Mann’s Joseph And His
Brothers at 1,492 pages?
Writers of skinny
books occupy many spots on my favorites list in large part because they write
skinny books.. Georges Simenon is at the top of it. Not his Inspector
Maigret series. He wrote 200 novels, all relatively slender volumes and 75
about Maigret. He wrote 150 novellas that had nothing to do with his famous
detective, though many of them had to do with criminal behavior. I like
those.
Instead of having
universal endless knowledge of the characters and the need to express it all,
there is a sense f voyeur in Maigret’s, of a delicious peeping Tomism. When I
read, (actually when I write as well), I’m siting in the darkness outside a
stranger’s window observing what is happening in the lit interior. There is
brevity in description because there are limits to what can be observed in time
and space (as life really is) and a writing style that appears to be very
direct, almost telegraphic. The writer writes what can be seen and heard.
The reader interprets. Short books. Where are the contemporary versions
of this?
I apologize for not
remembering the source; but a while back there was an informal poll asking
readers if they would purchase a novella and if not, why not? The overwhelming
response was ”no.” While many didn't want to give up that fat book that
would take them days to read, presumably on a big soft sofa in front of a fire
with a glass of wine, the reason most gave for not wanting a novella was that
they are too expensive for what they get.
But times have
changed. For all the horror the Internet and E-books have wrought on the
romance of reading, I believe there are now opportunities for the novella to
bloom again. It might be the perfect form for an E-book for the more mobile,
less materialistic, increasingly time-challenged reader. And the
electronic book does not require anywhere near the production cost of a book in
print. The novella I argue is the best choice for that flight from San
Francisco to New York or those city-to-city train trips in Europe and Japan.
Complete in a sitting. How many novellas can you carry in one small electronic
reading device? Certainly all 150 of Simenon’s novellas.
The truth is I am
puzzled by the slowness of the public to gravitate toward the smaller work. The
system and the culture at large must adjust to the changes, I guess. For
example, major reviewers rarely touch any book unless the first edition is in
hardback. If the publishers aren’t producing hardback novellas and
reviewers are avoiding E-books launches, the system is stacked against them
both.
The evolution or
revolution is not without pain either. How do we, or can we incorporate the
bookstores and libraries into the process? These two entities are the very
roots of the book reading culture throughout the world. How do we not lose
them? We know that technology often moves faster than the ethics needed to cope
with changes. I suggest that in terms of general values, quickened
technology can risk our losing sight of valuable traditions. (There are serious
discussions about the need to teach cursive handwriting.)
One more: How can
we apply some sort of quality (however you define it) filter to the tsunami of
self-published books without squelching the beauty that technology is affording
new talent? How can we get publishers, bookstores, reviewers and others to
present novellas as legitimate in whatever format (ink or electronic) they
take?
Perhaps, that is
for the marketplace to solve. Meanwhile, there is a practical opening for
books of all lengths. And it is time the novella reclaims a prime position.
Literarily, it has always been legitimate even as it has been unwelcome here in
the U.S.A. where we keep falling for the bigger is better philosophy of
everything.
As a writer, in the
last few years I have moved in the direction of the novella. It has given
me new joy in writing in what are my otherwise waning years. Writing a novella
is a different challenge.
To paraphrase Ian
McEwan in a New Yorker article, while the novel is often sloppy, the novella,
he says is “the perfect form of prose fiction.” I would add or
qualify that statement, though I’m hardly qualified to do so, by saying that
the novella is more likely to be made perfect. To be perfect requires the
reader and writer to conspire perfectly, also harder to do in the more rambling
novel.
With a few novellas under my belt, I am continuing in that vein
with a new series for Orca Publisher’s Rapid Reads program dedicated to short,
easy-to-read fiction (under 20,000 words). The first was The Blue Dragon
last September, which is to be followed by The Black Tortoise in March,
2017. My most recent release (May 1) was the final book in my
Shanahan series, Killing Frost, a shortish novel.
Often we hear of all these
non-profits, some of them governmental, some not, doing various kinds of missionary-style
work in poor or developing, but almost always vulnerable nations with propped
up governments. A lot of funny business goes on in these places, usually in the
Middle East or in various African locales.
