In Praise of the Novella

After just finishing Edith Wharton's great Ethan Frome book from 1911 (100th-anniversary alert!), I thought I'd write an appreciation of the short novel.

And what's not to appreciate? A novella can be read in only a few hours, yet the best ones pack almost the same punch as much longer works of fiction. Keeping track of a smaller cast is very manageable, and there's little delayed gratification in waiting for the book's conclusion.

Also, a novella is easy to carry on a bus or train, and easy to hold when riding an exercise bike without a reading rack. Last but not least, a novella is an excellent way to try an author you've never read before to see if you like her or him. If you do, then it's on to the longer books!

I'll be doing that with Wharton now that I've read Ethan Frome. Her novella (181 pages in the edition I read) is an intense story of a reserved, partly crippled New England man who had one remote chance at happiness more than 20 years earlier. The tale is told in the present, then the past, then the present again -- and this framing device makes the conclusion extraordinarily powerful.

Just before trying Wharton for the first time, I reread The Time Machine -- which clocks in at a modest 30,000 or so words. But it's amazing how much H.G. Wells crams into that space. He tells the sci-fi story of a man's harrowing trip to 802,701 A.D. and subsequent haunting sojourn to the very end of time. Plus Wells makes the story an allegory about the awful gap between the rich and poor (something that was a big problem in 1895 -- when the 29-year-old author came out with his book -- and obviously remains a big problem today).

Another short work of fiction I recently enjoyed looks toward the past rather than the future. That book was Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad, which humorously and soberly imagines what happened with Odysseus' wife Penelope while her hubby was away for much longer than it takes to read a novella.

Among the many other excellent novellas I've read are A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Billy Budd by Herman Melville, Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers, and The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck.

What's the word for a short blog piece? A "blogella"? This "blogella" is about to end, but I'd be interested to hear about some of your favorite novellas.

 

Comments

[StrangeWine]

05:19 PM on 09/06/2011

'A Boy And His Dog' by Harlan Ellison is a fave of mine. I greatly enjoy his short stories, and generally speaking I have a great fondness for short stories in general.

[Dave Astor]

09:27 PM on 09/06/2011

Thanks for mentioning that title, StrangeWine! I'll put that on my list for a future library visit. I've never read Ellison (well, maybe RALPH Ellison!), and need to give him (Harlan) a try.

[StrangeWine]

09:34 AM on 09/08/2011

I'm personally a great fan, but like him or not, Ellison generally produces a strong reaction. He is one of the great-yet-relatively-unknowns despite being one of the most prolific living authors with over 1700 pieces of work in print (the majority of which are short stories) and a plethora of awards for imaginative fiction and social commentary. Love or hate his material, his grasp of the craft is astounding. I hope you enjoy him for his talent, even if not the material itself.

[John Beatty]

03:48 PM on 09/06/2011

I loved Ethan Frome, but found Wharton's longer works to be overrated. Here's are some of my other favorite novellas:
Leo Tolstoy (master of the novel AND novella)- "The Kreutzer Sonata," "Family Happiness," "Hadji Murad," "The Death of Ivan Ilych (very long short story or short novella... you decide)."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky- "Notes from Underground," "The Double"
George Orwell- "Animal Farm"
Robert Louis Stevenson- "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde"
Alice Munro- "The Love of a Good Woman"
Herman Melville- "Bartleby the Scrivener"

*And thanks to the blogger for actually taking the time to respond to most of the comments. It's so rare to see a blogger respond to more than one or two comments.

[Dave Astor]

09:23 PM on 09/06/2011

Thanks so much, John, for mentioning all those excellent titles and for your kind comment! I try to respond to everyone who comments because if people take the time to write, I feel it's courteous to take the time to reply. Plus people make very interesting comments, and it's great to get into a discussion, even if it's brief! I LOVE "Bartleby the Scrivener," and thought of including it in my post, but wasn't sure if it was a short story or novella. Same with Melville's gripping "Benito Cereno." "Animal Farm" and "Jekyll and Hyde" are great, though I'm more fond of the longer "1984" by Orwell and the unfinished "Weir of Hermiston" by Stevenson. Several of the other novellas you mentioned have piqued my interest to read -- thanks! I still want to try at least one or two of Wharton's longer works; will see how I feel about her fiction after that!

[drb19810]

01:20 PM on 09/06/2011

I offer up Nathaniel West as a great novella author. His "Miss Lonleyhearts" and "Day of the Locust" really capture the lonely, futile experience against the backdrop of LA in the 1930's. It's a shame that we lost this artist at such a young age. I also offer up some great pre-WWI German writers, such as Hauptmann and Rilke, who really seemed to represent the 19th Century pinnacle of the novella form.

It's great to read someone singing the praises of the novella. It's wonderfully fulfilling to be able to experience some really great literature completely over the course of a weekend.

[drb19810]

01:51 PM on 09/06/2011

And before anyone comments, I recognize that "Miss Lonleyhearts" takes place in NYC - but this is just the setting, it could be any large metropolis. However, in "Day of the Locust", Hollywood is really like a character in the story.

[Dave Astor]

01:53 PM on 09/06/2011

Those two West titles are excellent examples of novellas! I read them both in college (they were combined in one book) and both had a lot to say in not a lot of pages. And, yes, finishing a book (or two!) over a weekend is a great thing. Thank you very much for commenting, drb19810!

[Dave Astor]

03:07 PM on 09/06/2011

Thanks for your follow-up comment, drb19810!

[Jerry Zezima]

08:01 AM on 09/06/2011

I'll make this short, Dave: Great blogella.

[Dave Astor]

08:17 AM on 09/06/2011

Thanks, Jerry! Or maybe should I say: Thx, J!

[Dave Astor]

08:25 AM on 09/06/2011

OK, I'm going to lengthen this reply. I meant to write "maybe I should say," not "maybe should I say." I'll leave the flip-flopping to Mitt Romney...

[nessy533]

10:19 AM on 09/05/2011

Kate Chopin's The Awakening

[Dave Astor]

12:34 PM on 09/05/2011

I'm very glad you mentioned that book, nessy533! I loved "The Awakening" when I read it many years ago. And it has a very powerful and intense ending.

[chrysostomos]

09:43 AM on 09/05/2011

Dear Mr. Astor,
Thank you for your enjoyable post- and for bringing to mind a number of very pleasurable literary experiences. I am a big fan of Carson McCullers and of Faulkner. I would add some of Flannery O'Conner's shorter work to the list but I guess technically theses fall into the range of the the short story. Since I'm already outside the line I'd also propose James Agee's A Death in the Family. Agee painted this portrait of sorrow and loss with such efficient elegance that despite its slightly longer length deserves to be included for consideration.
Finally, though not necessarily my favorite in shorter fiction, Ralf Rothmann's Knife Edge, about a West berlin Taxi driver who like Camus' Mersault is undone by his existential indifference, has left a lasting impression.
Cheers

[Dave Astor]

12:31 PM on 09/05/2011

Thanks for commenting, chrysostromos! Yes, Flannery O'Connor's work was amazing -- including her unforgettable short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." But I guess, as you say, her shorter work tended to be too short to be novellas. Also, thanks for mentioning and describing the Agee and Rothmann titles. You made them sound very worth checking out.

[Dave Astor]

08:43 PM on 09/13/2011

Oops -- sorry I misspelled your name (in my above reply) with an extra "r," chrysostomos.

[Brian Bess]

07:09 AM on 09/05/2011

In my opinion, Henry James corners the market as a writer of great novellas. His 'Aspern Papers' really whetted my appetite for more and, while many of his novels are great I often have the sense that some trimming wouldn't hurt. However, the novellas are perfect--The Beast in the Jungle, Daisy Miller, The Pupil and many more. I think you mentioned 'A Christmas Carol.' I feel the same about some of Dickens' novels as I do about James. Unfortunately, Dickens did not pursue the novella as far as I would have hoped. 'Heart of Darkness' and 'Youth' are the best introductions to Conrad. Faulkner's 'The Bear' is tough but the size makes it less intimidating and, like much of Faulkner, you pick up so much more upon re-reading. I think the novella is definitely an underrated art form.

[Dave Astor]

07:35 AM on 09/05/2011

Thanks, Brian! Excellent comment, packed with suggested reading and a last line that is very, very true! I tried Henry James once ("Turn of the Screw") and he didn't grab me enough to attempt another title, but I'll try at least one of the James novellas you mentioned. Yes, Dickens usually went for the longer books than the shorter ones -- perhaps partly because so many of his novels were serialized over multi-month periods. And, of course, there was a lot Dickens wanted to say and digress about in each book. As for Faulkner, I just took out "The Sound and the Fury" from the library (a paperback edition that's a longer-than-a-novella 300-plus pages) and will attempt it after I build up some courage.

[Brian Bess]

08:31 PM on 09/13/2011

Thanks for replying, Dave! I think the least intimidating one to start with by James is 'The Aspern Papers.' I made the mistake of reading 'The Sound and the Fury' before any of Faulkner's other novels. The next year I took a course in Faulkner (you can probably tell I was an English major when I was an undergraduate) and read that again, of course, along with 'Flags in the Dust' (original version of 'Sartoris'), 'As I Lay Dying,' 'Sanctuary,' 'Light in August,' 'Absalom! Absalom!' 'and 'Go Down Moses' (from which 'The Bear' comes). Out of all of those 'Sound and Fury' is still the toughest. I've probably read it four times by now and it starts to make more sense about the third time through. With Faulkner, even when I didn't understand exactly what was going on, I sensed a powerful creative mind at work.

[Justin Levine]

01:40 AM on 09/05/2011

Thanks for this great article, Mr. Astor! In the age of the "doorstop", it's always refreshing to get a novella or three in between reads. Call me cliche, but I'm a big sucker for Stephen King and T.C. Boyle in this category. Really enjoyed all but one of the four in Stephen King's recent Full Dark, No Stars...definitely pack the same punch as a full-lenght novel, as you write.

[Dave Astor]

06:34 AM on 09/05/2011

And thanks for the great comment, Justin! I've read a number of Stephen King's medium-sized and longer novels, but none of his novellas -- so I need to remedy that. I love the term "doorstop." I've tackled a number of them, but it's always a dilemma deciding whether to spend a month reading one big book or several smaller ones!

[Liffey]

08:49 PM on 09/02/2011

I'm hearing really good things about "We The Animals" by Justin Torres. It's being touted as a novel although it's 144 pages.

[Dave Astor]

06:37 AM on 09/03/2011

Thank you for the recommendation, Liffey! That definitely sounds novella-length. Speaking of animal-related books, the "His Dog" novella by Alfred Payson Terhune is a wonderful story about how a "failure" of a man is affected by a dog he finds.

[PeggyAnne]

02:34 PM on 09/02/2011

The eBook revolution seems to be bringing a lot more novella writers out of the woodwork. Without the big publishers acting as gatekeepers, I've noticed a lot of indie (and traditionally published) writers putting out some really good short fiction lately.

I just finished Rejean Giguere's DreamWeaver, which was a lot of fun.

[Dave Astor]

03:45 PM on 09/02/2011

That's a really good point, PeggyAnne. Thanks for making it!

[contrarywise]

02:33 PM on 09/02/2011

Having just recently read "Reflection in a Golden Eye," I would not recommend it. A very strange book about some very strange (read seriously disturbed) people. I think one of the five main characters is in the normal range....okay that makes me sound uptight and stodgy, which I deny. But I want to strongly recomment the same author's "A Member of the Wedding," about a girl on the verge of adolescence living in the South with her father, looked after by a very vividly portrayed black housekeeper. This book is a revelation, funny, harrowing, devastating.

[Dave Astor]

04:00 PM on 09/02/2011

I agree that "Golden Eye" is a strange novella with some strange characters. But I found it mesmerizing in its weirdness -- and very well-written. It was kind of before its time in a way. I did read "A Member of the Wedding" and admired it, but found it slow going. Definitely more subtle than "Golden Eye" and McCullers' "Ballad of the Sad Cafe"! Thanks for commenting, contrarywise!

[Dave Astor]

05:25 PM on 09/02/2011

"Reflections in a Golden Eye" was published in 1941 -- a time when that offbeat book was even less-typical reading fare than it would be today! Carson McCullers' best-known work -- "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" -- came out the year before, when the author was only 23!

[naschkatze]

11:47 AM on 09/02/2011

I would consider works like A River Runs Through It and Death in Venice novellas, would you? I think a novella completes a more fully described world than a short story but am not sure what the definition of novella really is. Ethan Frome I love.

[Dave Astor]

12:09 PM on 09/02/2011

I haven't read the first two titles you named, so I can't say if they're novellas. I've seen a novella defined as a work between 17,000 and 40,000 words, but who knows? It's a fuzzy line between a novella and a long short story, and a long novella and a novel! Glad you love "Ethan Frome"! I had avoided Edith Wharton over the years because of her reputation as mostly chronicling the lives of the rich, but that's certainly not the case in "Ethan Frome." If it's the case in several of Wharton's other novels, I'm now still willing to read them! Thanks for commenting, naschkatze!

[naschkatze]

12:48 PM on 09/02/2011

Well, The House of Mirth is about society, but it is also about a woman, Lily Bart, who gets the short end of the stick. I think you would like that one too.

[John David Redux]

11:51 PM on 09/02/2011

You've never read "Death in Venice"?

[MugRuith1]

05:35 PM on 09/01/2011

Howdy, Mr. Astor!

-- I'd be interested to hear about some of your favorite novellas. --

Kilgore Trout's "Venus on the Half-Shell"? Or maybe its readability only makes it appear to be a novella . . .

MugSpaceWandererRuith1

[Dave Astor]

07:05 PM on 09/01/2011

Thank you for the mention of that book, MugRuith1! Maybe the non-novella version is "Venus on the Full-Shell"?