Long & Short: The Return of the Novella

The original, 1937 cover for Of Mice and Men

I write “return” with a degree of critical care. Did the novella ever leave? If yes, why had it gone? Or maybe it was never really big at all, and therefore isn’t making a return so much as a début. All of this is unclear to me. But what has become definitely apparent is that there’s been a recent surge in interest for novellas. The form is infamously tricky to define, of course. A novella is supposed to be book-length, because it can be published on its own, but not quite novel-length. But then, does the novella exist at all? Maybe it’s just a long short story, or else a short novel. In terms of content and form — this has nothing to do with length — I have certainly found this true on some occasions. Some novellas, like Ethel Wilson’s “Tuesday and Wednesday” and “Lily’s Story,” which are collected in her Equations of Love, feel like short stories that have been inflated. In terms of emotional resonance and narrative breadth, they remain, well, a little short. Other novellas, like James’ The Aspern Papers, are much shorter than novels, but pack the punch of longer, more ambitious works.

 

Some clues as to the return of the novella:

To begin with, there was Julian Barnes’ first Booker victory in October with The Sense of and Ending, which was the shortest book on the shortlist, and has been called a novella by some. Also, last year, the Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris inaugurated the Paris Literary Prize to celebrate the novella, which is awarded to a work of fiction between 20,000 and 30,000 words. And let’s remember how much ink was spilled a few years ago about Robert Bolano’s posthumous masterpiece 2666, which is really 5 interlinked novellas. Also, the American short story genius Jim Shepard’s most recent collection, You Think That’s Bad, contained a novella titled “Gojira, King of the Monsters”, which was also published separately as a stand-alone book. As for publishing houses, Penguin has of course recently had a lot of success with elegant collections of short books: Penguin Great Ideas, Penguin English Journeys, Penguin Great Loves… Last year, they came out with Mini Modern Classics, 50 short pieces of fiction, published as their own, lovely little books, to celebrate 50 years of Penguin Classics. What’s great about the selection is that the editors have generally chosen little-known stories; letting them stand on their own gives them some well-deserved visibility. To be fair, a lot of the stories that make up the books in the series are actually short stories, not novellas. Moreover, from what I can see most of the volumes collect more than one story. Borges’ The Widow Ching—Pirate, for instance, also includes 5 other stories from the Argentine master. The design for the collection is very nice, playing off the silver, black, and white of the traditional Penguin Modern Classics, with much bigger author pictures on the back covers. Penguin has also released 5 production videos for the series: they’re great fun to watch.

More directly novella-related, perhaps, Melville House, which is becoming increasingly renowned for great books and great designs, has published a collection of books called The Art of the Novella, featuring, among many others, Jacob’s Room, by Virginia Woolf, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville, and 5 different stories entitled The Duel (by Casanova, Checkhov, Conrad, von Kleist, and Kuprin). The whole series is a great idea, and is perfectly executed: the choice is varied and classic, and the designs are remarkably simple and fresh. Their selection is sometimes a little wobbly in terms of form, however: I’m not entirely sure The Hounds of the Baskerville, for instance, is usually considered to be a novella, but that’s another story…

All this attention on novellas is wonderful; for one thing, novellas are awesome. They’re short enough to be read in a few sittings and to be quite focused aesthetically, but they’re also long enough that they have the time to creep into the brain of the reader; they cut out their own space and demand that their issues be addressed. I have a short-standing theory that the act of reading happens en deux temps. Maybe this only happens to me, but I feel like I always need a short period of adaptation when I start reading a book, not really to get used to the characters and the setting so much as to adjust my reader’s ear to the rhythm of the writer’s voice and the linguistic rules of the book’s universe. I believe this is why I can’t immerse myself completely in a book and read long swaths of it in one sitting until I’ve passed a certain point (sometimes this point comes early, sometimes later, never after the midway point) — then all is well and I can drive on to the end, perfectly attuned to the story’s music. The advantage with novellas is that they’re so short and well-formed that even a reading en deux temps can occur quickly. You can begin with two or three short sittings to start immersing yourself in the world of the story bit by bit, like a swimmer gradually dipping his limbs deeper and deeper in cold water, and then finish off the rest of the story in a single, smooth dive. The novella invites you to do all of that in one day, or even a few hours. Ideally, I would suggest leaving a night’s sleep in the middle to allow the shift to occur and finish the novella the next day — it makes the experience last longer. 

Long-winded, baggy novels are great, but I have a particular fondness for the tight focus of short books. Among my favorite novellas are Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Alice Munro’s ”A Queer Streak”, Mann’s Death in Venice, James Joyce’s “The Dead”, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, Henry James’ ”The Lesson of the Master”, Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Disinherited”, Maupassant’s Boule de Suif, and Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach. Some of these straddle the line with the short story or the novel, but the long and short of it is that they’re just the right length. Plus, they’re all exquisite and quick to revisit. Between lengthy dinners and short shopping sprees, why don’t we all dip into a novella for the Holidays? Happy reading!

NYRB Classics

I’ve been following the exciting new titles published by the New York Review of Books for a few years, and now that I’ve finally read a few of their books I can confirm for myself that this is a truly exciting and necessary publishing house. NYRB Classics, specifically, specialize in the publication of lost classics, with an emphasis on discovery and difference: “The series includes nineteenth century novels and experimental novels, reportage and belles lettres, tell-all memoirs and learned studies, established classics and cult favorites, literature high, low, unsuspected, and unheard of.” The series has also published more well-known authors by giving exposure to the works on the fringe of their oeuvres. For instance, they’ve collected some of Mavis Gallant’s short stories under Varieties of Exile, The Cost of Living, and Paris Stories; they’ve also given a second life to Henry James’ late novel The Outcry and created a collection of his New York stories (edited and introduced by Colm Tóibín, who portrayed Henry James so beautifully in The Master), including the novel Washington Place.

I’m much interested in the literature related to Paris in the 1920s, so the first New York Review book I read was Memoirs of Montparnasse, by the Montréal poet John Glassco. Glassco, a McGill student, fled to Paris toward the end of that mythical decade and rubbed shoulders with people like Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, and Ford Maddox Ford. The so-called memoir, originally published in 1970 — by which time Paris in the 20s had already become mythical, Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast having been published in 1964 — was later revealed by critics to be in large part fictitious reconstructions. That does not change the fact that it is a compelling and very pleasant read. It’s also a rather sad story; as one of Glassco’s friends remarks in the book, he “arrived a little late” to the party that was Paris, bringing “a fresh vision to bear on a dying epoch”. Glassco eventually contracted tuberculosis and was forced to return to Montreal in 1931 in order to get treatment. The party was over for him, as well. As far as I know, the book was never republished after 1970, until NYRB came out with their edition in 2007. 

Another NYR books I read were Grief Lessons, which is made up of 4 plays by Euripides, translated (and with six excellent accompanying essays) by the poet/classicist Anne Carson. Euripides is always fantastic, of course, but these translations really breathe new life and and emphasize the twisted morals and sheer oddity of the worlds the fifth century Greek tragedian creates in his plays. The book includes some of the lesser known works, like Herakles and Alkestis. The final NYR book I read a few weeks ago (and unfortunately had to leave behind me in England) was Chaos and Night, a short novel by the French writer Henry de Montherlant, about a bitter old Spanish man, exiled in France after the civil war in Spain. It’s a sad, moving book about disillusion and old age, and the character’s ability to face the truth about his identity and his past.

The other two important aspects of NYRB, which makes it so recommendable, is that they do a lot of translations, like Chaos and Night, thus giving the English speaking world access to some outstanding material they wouldn’t otherwise get a chance to enjoy (we all know how rare that is, with recent statistics about the poverty of books in translations published in the US), as well as creating really great covers. Many of them have been showcased on the excellent Caustic Cover Critic — I particularly liked the article on Neil Krug photographs, one of which was used on a French crime novel by J. P. Manchette (the first one, bellow). I don’t usually like book covers that always reuse the same template, but in the case of NYRB, because they use such beautiful illustrations, I find the small square upper-center with the title and author is surprisingly effective in creating a cohesion in the design of the series, while allowing for interesting and aesthetic covers that look really great. I’ve put some of my favourites bellow, which also show off the wide range of the series in terms of genre.

NYRB are always looking for new classics to publish, and they’re open to suggestions on their website. If you think a great, long-lost work of literature — be it fiction, memoir, or other — needs to be rediscovered, drop them a line. If you’re the first to recommend the title and they publish it, they’ll send you a free copy!