Saturday, July 08, 2006
Were I to write fiction ...
... I would write novellas. The novella is both exquisite and unjustly neglected. It can attain a formal and thematic perfection few novels can approach. Louis Auchincloss - who, God bless him, continues to write wonderfully - has names what he regards as the five best: The Long and the Short of It. (I hope the link works.)
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Surely there's more than five. How about "The Dying Man" by Damon Knight, 1957, for a sixth. Would it be an interesting exercise to see a list of people's favorite novella? Probably not, huh?
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No Beau, I think it would be great. Try these: Theodor Storm's Immensee; Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych; Thomas Mann's Tonio Kroger. Calling Melville Goodwin.
ReplyDeleteThe novella is my favorite length for prose fiction. It seems to be just the right length to develop characters and idea without over-writing or overindulgence on the writer's part.
ReplyDeleteOne of the greatest writers of novellas out there is Robert Silverberg. He's a master of the form. His collection of novellas "Sailing to Byzantium" is highly recommended.
Another marvelous novella writer is Kate Wilhelm. She wrote one called "The Gorgon Field" that I still find compelling and mysterious on multiple re-reads. The ending is a stunner.
Art,
ReplyDeleteWilhelm (married to Damon Knight you know) and Silverberg, two of my favorites. Wilhelm's 'The Killer Thing' from 1967 is a very good story. She has a great way with endings.
Frank,
I notice a fifty to hundred year difference in the writers we're citing. Hmmmm. You can never go wrong pushing Tolstoy and it has just now popped into my head that maybe CE Chaffin has read too much Mann. Well, that's what happens when you have a lazy Sunday all spead out before you, the mind wanders around ridiculous theories.
I hope others will share their favorite novellas as well. This could end up a very informative blog thread.
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