How Do You Want Your Fiction? Long Or Short ?

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.

No man ever steps in the same river twice – Heraclitus

No one wakes up being exactly the same person who went to sleep. The brain does what it has to do.  In the morning, dreams have done whatever dreams do. Cells were born, and cells died. Memories were embedded, others disintegrated or were relegated to he deepest recesses of our gray matter.

To Heraclitus’ point that a flowing river is always changing, and that the water whirling around your feet a split second ago has gone down stream. It is a constant theme in all things, perhaps the only constant, possibly. The heavens aren’t arranged as they were a few microseconds ago.  The world — the universe all in constant change — is never the same place. It is not only without a conceivable beginning and an end, it is without permanent form, and likely without purpose at least as we understand the word.

As humans we are struggling with the notion of time.  And we have become devoutly curious about dimensions we, as humans, now believe exist, but cannot perceive.

We can understand more of the endless processes, and that seems to be desirable for our curious species to the extent our organism’s capability allows. Organisms act and are acted upon accordingly. We can explore and record what we discover, develop theories and prove some of them at least for now — if the word “prove” is adequate and “now” is accurate.  But we cannot be sure that our perceptions are the only perceptions that can be made.  Or whether they mean anything at all.

I remember, as a child wondering about those we inappropriately said were living in the loony bins.  I wondered if they knew something most of us didn't, saw things we were unable to see, maybe even lived in a dimension we could not conceive. Certainly some of our greatest artists and scientists colored way outside the lines.  I have always questioned and still question the idea of “normal.” Being normal doesn’t lead to invention, rather convention.

I think about this now because, while I’m definitely not the oldest person on the planet, my increasing investment in the Golden Years has placed me in greater proximity to some of the side effects of old age – senility, dementia, and inertia. Of course, there is the other hand — acceptance, an odd and at times irritating (to others) patience, and a deeper appreciation of dark humor.

Personal Note 2

This is different.  It is so quiet. The transition from San Francisco to Palm Springs was rough for personal reasons having to do with logistics and bureaucracy. After some of the smoke and boxes have cleared, it’s time to adjust to the surroundings.

Instead of a bunch of three and four story Victorian homes climbing up a hillside, we have low single, mid last century story homes many of them with front yards landscaped with rock and cactus.  All level ground, mind you, except for huge, sharp-edged mountains that change color depending on the time of day. There are palm trees, as the town’s name implies, everywhere, but no coconuts. Figs, I’m told.

Just a few feet away from the back door are trees with lemons the size of grapefruit and grapefruit nearly the size of watermelons. In the three weeks or so we’ve been here, the sky during the day has remained clear blue. The sunrises are worth the price you pay getting up early. Yet night falls with a noticeable suddenness and depth.

As I write this, we are technically in winter, which means the daytime temperature is in the 80s. We are told that in the summer 115 is not unusual and that natives or at least the acclimated do outside things — walking the dog early in the morning or late at night — as examples. Though it is a dry heat we are advised to maintain constant hydration. And a swimming pool is not regarded as a luxury. Expatriate San Franciscans will marvel at the lack of fog and Chinese restaurants, the abundance of available parking, the sparkling cleanliness, and the sound of silence.

Expatriate Indianapolitans would be shocked that the only snow is several thousand feet up and that gravel lawns are not only common, but dominate the town’s neighborhoods. People here don’t wash their cars.  They dust them. The demographics skew old, and politicians would be foolish to ignore the gay population.

Instead of streets named after presidents, we have main thoroughfares named after Bob Hope, Gene Autry, Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore. I’m told that people identify their part of town by the closest country club.

I had no idea I’d end up here. I don’t play golf.  Nonetheless, here I am.  I am eager to begin writing again. Should I add a Palm Springs PI to my list of protagonists, which includes Deets Shanahan in Indianapolis as well as Carly Paladino, Noah Lang and Peter Strand in San Francisco?

On A Personal Note

View from my San Francisco window

Twenty-five of my seventy years of life have been spent in magical, inventive, foggy, quirky San Francisco.  The last twenty I’ve lived in a one-bedroom apartment in what has become a trendy part of a city currently experiencing a population exploding with kazillionaires.

The city is fantastic, but increasingly expensive.  It is now one of those places vying for the title of “the world’s most expensive place to live.” Seriously.  Just as daunting is that my lovely, little apartment is up two flights of stairs, a climb one must make after climbing one of those famous San Francisco hills. Because of the condition my condition is in, stairs and hills lack the charm they had for my 30-year-old self.

View from backyard at new place in Palm Springs

What I’m doing here with all this personal blather is setting up an excuse for the erratic posting I expect to make on this site for the next month or two.  I’m packing books, thumb drives, furniture, pills, art and some furniture for a move to flatter and considerably warmer ground. I will be especially discom-bobulated until some order is restored. That will happen when the move is completed, my digital connections are hooked up, and my brain, such as it is, has regained the capacity to create. Meanwhile, the process of sorting through the treasures and debris of my life — as those who have already done so know – is sentimentally painful, emotionally exhausting and physically draining. Enough whining.

The bright side is that there is still another chapter in the unknown just a few weeks away.  All I really know is that it will feature sun, palm trees and mountains, not to mention miles and miles of level ground on the desert valley floor

Book Notes — The English Translation Of The Gun by Award Winning Fuminori Nakamura Released Today

Whether he intended to or not Fuminori Nakamura’s noirish The Gun might give us some insight about those who develop an obsessive fascination with guns.  In what could be called “Ode To A Revolver,” a young man comes across a dead body. This is shocking enough in Tokyo. Worse, the dead man has been murdered. That is obvious.  But what transfixes the young man’s gaze is not the corpse, but the revolver beside the body.

I really can’t think of anything more timely as we contemplate all the shootings throughout the U.S., the obscene number (we’re a world leader) of gun deaths by criminals, by police and by accident. This cannot help but reflect a national sickness that has become a passionate, polarizing, political controversy.  What is it with guns and Americans?

Nakamura describes the young man’s fascination with a handgun as it turns into infatuation and then turn into obsession. If the process is not overtly sexual, it is certainly sensual.

My hands trembled slightly with nervousness and I felt my body trembling with a cold sweat.  As I pushed it with the ball of my thumb, the cylinder made a little clink and moved far out to the left, stopping at a point where I could see clearly inside.  There were four golden bullets loaded in it. Each of the gold bullets was embedded in the six regularly spaced holes. For a moment I gave myself over to a sense of bewildering joy that was mingled with excitement and relief.  This is as it should be, I thought.  The gun would never betray me, it would satisfy me in every way….”

Fuminori Nakamura

The writer paints the story in short strokes, capturing nuance in simple, short sentences, somehow squeezing out the personal in cold prose. His story is small in the sense that it is only one person’s strange world we see; yet universal in the way it characterizes how we might be led into it.

I’ve written about Nakamura before.  He was a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He won the David L. Goodis Award for Noir Fiction.  The Gun, translated by Allison Markin Powell, and his other crime novels received many Japanese literary awards before they began appearing in the U.S. More to come, no doubt.

Could this emotionally undeveloped psyche be what drives Americans to have this dangerous sex toy become a substitute for masculinity.