The Novel in brief

I don't write long books.  Sometimes I read them, but I don't mind if the last page comes in at under 400.  And if I read a good book and it has fewer than 300 pages, I'm impressed, because that author broke current conventions about what makes a novel.

Some of the best novels I've read have been short.  It used to be allowed.

• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (full text online)
  
• The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
  
• Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck
  
• A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson
  
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach (full text online)
  
• The Jeeves & Wooster books by P.G. Wodehouse (My Man Jeeves full text online)
  
• Many of Kurt Vonnegut's books...

Some people feel that they aren't getting their money's worth if the book is short.  Where did this idea come from?  Do they believe they're paying for the paper it's printed on, and not the story?  A mediocre book will waste more of my time if it's long.  And that's somehow better?

There are websites devoted to the short book.  They aren't difficult to find.  So I'm not alone in my admiration of the succinct.  But as far as modern publishing is concerned, there are only a few types of (fiction) books that are allowed to be tiny, such as romances and cozies, and they're usually paperbacks.  The message is clear: these are books to gobble and then leave at the library, and the speed you can read them denotes the importance they carry.  Fast food books in cheap paper wrapping.  Quick and unimportant.

On the other hand, the very-long novel is supposedly fine.  Stephen King produces Monsterpieces (I confess that one of my favourite books is It, 1392 pages.)  Science fiction and fantasy series can go on for a dozen thousand-page bricks and this is considered normal: Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series had a glossary in the back of each so you could keep track of the hundreds of characters you met from volume to volume.  And I've seen young people collapse in library aisles under the weight of Jonathan Strange and Mrs. Norrell.  Let us not forget the classics, but do you really know anyone who has read and adored War and Peace?  Paying by weight, you always get your money's worth with these guys. But how many times do you read a book and think, "It didn't have to be that long"?

Those short classics I've listed are unforgettable, their stories and characters staying with the reader much longer than the time it takes to pick up the next book.  I believe it can be the same of modern fiction, if we drop our prejudices.  Brevity does not denote a lack of anything, except perhaps lengthy sub-plots, extended bouts of description, and in extreme cases, poor editing.  Good short novels are stories boiled down to the most powerful.  Their themes are not reduced because they make their point in less time.  The Haiku of novels has its own kind of power.

Feel free to tell me some of your favourite short novels.  Or, tell me some of your favourite long novels instead, and why short novels don't cut it.

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Photo: Chinese Diary by rogergordon at flickr