noveller
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You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
Is there any room in the modern publication market for the novella? The genre itself (a kind of nebulous, vague, subjective classification) is designed for marathon readings but is frequently criticized as thin, minor, insubstantial or just not worth the time.
What are your favourite novellas? How do they measure up to the rest of the author's work (if it varies at all)? What are your experiences with the form (either in reading or in writing)?
>>8177816
There's a certain elegance, maybe mystique, to the form. It has the virtues of a short story, it isn't as spread-out as a novel. I'm not dismissing the novel (or even the doorstopper: there are enough examples of diamonds buried under pages of description in Dickens and Dostoevsky to last), but I admire writers who can condense their work into a wedge of papers and still blow your mind.
>>8177816
I hope so. I love novellas, it's a shame that the profundity or artistic merit of a literary work is often measured in proportion with its page-count. You would think that literature was above trite dick-measuring contests.
Anyhow,
The Metamorphosis
The Old Man and the Sea
Siddhartha
Heart of Darkness
Dubliners(?)
A Single Man
Catcher in the Rye
Notes from Underground
Gatsby
The Stranger (?)
I hope the next "literary movement" is the rise of novellas. I think it would be a good way to introduce people to literature without intimidating them.
>the dead
>novella
jesus christ these fucking plebs
>>8177900
I'll admit, Mansfield's "The Prelude" and Joyce's "The Dead" are long and swaddled with symbols and themes to rival better-structured short novels; but I still consider them short stories, for the same reason, and because they were included by the author (or by the author's consent) in a collection of short stories.
Is it too late to say I really admire writers who manage to publish a collection of short stories with a novella furtively taking up almost half the length of the book?
>>8177919
the dead is not a short story collection. it's an episodic novel and should be read as such.
>>8177949
*meant to say dubliners obv
>>8177953
Do you feel the same about Beckett's More Pricks than Kicks?
>>8177959
havent read that one
>>8177983
i posted yesterday about Nabokov's Dar and how it's always seemed to me more like a collection of interrelated novellas than a straightforward novel (its composition history certainly warrants some second thoughts). In one of her interviews, I remember Zadie Smith said she recommended her writing classes to avoid making definite divisions in their works (she meant novels); and I can't help but think I haven't read a single recent novel that divides its chapters into smaller, cohesive sections.
>>8178005
>I haven't read a single recent novel that divides its chapters into smaller, cohesive sections.
wait what do you mean by this? do you mean like dubliners styles?
Bolaño writes great novellas.
>>8178015
No, like Explosion in the Cathedral (El siglo de las luces) by Alejo Carpentier.
>>8177900
Came here to post this
