Random
Length Matters
On several recent occasions, writers have apologized for sending me “long” stories as if we were exchanging contraband in the form of stories longer than 500 words. To give you a sense of how sad this length sensitivity has gotten, a grand writer apologized for sending me a 3,500 word story. Call me crazy, but a 3,500 word story is not a long story. It is a short short story.
I’ve also heard people complain about the length of Joshua Cohen’s Witz, which at 800 pages is certainly longer than the average book, or David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, at more than 1,000 pages, as if the length of these books was an insurmountable obstacle.
When did length become a bad thing in literature? Have we become so inutile as to no longer be able to read more than 500 words at a time? I may be alone in this but I love long creative works (insert jokes)–long movies, epic poems, long books, long short stories, whatever. If the writing is good (and that is certainly a big if) I will read something whether it is 1,400 words or 140,000 words long. When I read the announcement about The Seattle Review no longer considering anything but very long poems and short stories, I was thrilled. I thought it a bold, defiant gesture and one I hope is embraced by the literary community.
There’s a lot to appreciate in the very short form–an economy of language, a sudden impact, a challenge to the form, but I also believe there’s a lot to appreciate in the very long form. There’s a freedom for writers to develop and sustain complex narratives. In very long works, more than anything, there is room.
As a kid, I loved reading the books of James Michener. His novels were long and sweeping, telling stories across generations. For me, Michener stories epitomized the word “epic.” I was never intimidated by the length (generally around 1,000 words in length) because the writing always held my interest. I don’t know that I ever thought, “This is a long book.” Instead, I always thought, “This is a good book.” Admittedly, I wasn’t allowed to watch but an hour of television a week so if I wanted to be entertained, books were my best option but still, I continue to enjoy very long works and I watch more television than you could imagine.
When the literary community first began talking about Witz, before anyone addressed the subject matter or the writer or any other truly relevant aspect of the book, the main subject of discussion was the book’s length and how audacious it was to publish an 800 page book like Dalkey was releasing a new Bible, and not simply a very long novel.
It worries me when we’re more concerned with length than literary merit, whether we’re discussing novels or poetry or short stories.
Is the long form endangered? Do you share similar concerns? What are some of your favorite longer works? Let’s talk long!
I’m with you, Roxane, though my youthful guilty pleasure in the realm of long books was James Clavell rather than Michener. I got over it, thankfully, but I’d still rather have something that envelops me.
When I finished Bolano’s 2666, I worried that it was going to be the last great epic novel. I hope the Cohen novel proves I’m wrong.
The length of 2666 is vital because the scope of the book is so absurdly large. Not many writers have the skill or audacity to take on so much in one work.
I’m in the midst of Javier Marias’s “Your Face Tomorrow” — I’m reading all three volumes in sequence, so that amounts to a 1,200+-page book. So far, I’d say that the story being told and the quality of writing have merited the length…
there is something beautiful about an author’s ability to sustain a narrative or idea beyond the average 250 page length of the average novel
holding a huge book is very satisfying and tiring and therefore there is a great sense of accomplishment when you work your way all the way through the book
i am sometimes intimidated by anything that requires me to scroll though
i am not sure why, my attention seems limited by my screen resolution
3,500 is definitely within the normal range for a normal short story.
Roxane, I certainly agree there is nothing wrong with a long creative work. Regarding online journals, however, one must consider the attention span of the average internet reader–seemingly the truest flaw in the system of online literature. I mean, it seems as though hypertextual/electronic documents were always intended to combat the traditionally tangible book-format because, according to archaic theorists, the notion of “book” is constraining. While seemingly infinite, the internet also seems constraining–it’s not something you can take with you on the subway. It can be mobile, but at the same time, it is only mobile in a limited sense. Sure, someone could start spouting out (sounding extraordinarily cheeky) the names of devices like “iPad” or “cell phone,” but if you’re reading DFW’s Infinite Jest or Bolano’s 2666 on your iPad or (god forbid) cell phone, it’s simply not going to have the same impact of something you read in print. Yes, there is so much to appreciate in the “short form” or “very short form,” and yes, there is so much to appreciate in the “very long form,” but it seems the editors of online journals must rely on the “short” because the average reader doesn’t want to read a 12,000 word something via online journal. Same 12,000 word something in a print journal? Sure, why not. The near limitless mobility ensures that the reader is giving the piece the time it possibly deserves. Also, I feel like the author of the piece is going to profoundly affect one’s decision to read a 12,000 word piece via online journal.
Admittedly, the future of literature terrifies me (at least in terms of format). Do I want to read a book by David Foster Wallace or Roberto Bolano on an iPad? Fuck no. I guess some people do. Maybe literary masterminds like PH Madoreable are into virtual Bolano, but not me.
That said, the only reason I can think of regarding print journals that have length requirements (i.e. nothing beyond 3500 words) would have to be budgeting/financial support/grant limitations. Some editors seem to focus more on authorial variety, often resulting in the brushing aside of longer submissions, which is unfortunate.
I’m reading Infinite Jest on my iPad, oddly enough and it’s great.
http://www.bearcreekfeed.com does strictly long stories. some nice ones. i guess it can be hard to read very long, very dense things as far as the internet goes, but i’m down for any length of story if it’s engaging in some way.
would not have pictured “young Roxane Gay” curling up to “Tales of the South Pacific,” heh…
i was reading those Redwall books and Hardy Boys mysteries when i was a youngun…
Guess I’ll just sit here in the corner of the nursing home . . . lazy eyed . . . drooling . . . fondling my books.
BWA HA HAHAHAHA AHA!!!!!!
(profuse drooling)
thought it was interesting they have the iPhone version that makes it easier to flip back and forth btw the endnotes…is it like that on the iPad?
This reminds me of poetry workshops I’ve taken where the instructor advised the class to submit poems no longer than one page for the workshop, so one doesn’t “inconvenience their fellow writers.” To this day I don’t understand how a two page poem could be an inconvenience to critique.
A few long poems that I try to keep at hand:
Alice Notley’s The Descent of Alette
Ashbery’s Three Poems
Dan Beachy-Quick’s This Nest, Swift Passerine
Ben Learner’s Topekan Ethos
Andrew Zawacki’s Georgia
Alex Lemon’s Hallelujah Blackout
More please.
I will read absolutely anything. I have lots of interests and as a kid, I just liked great stories. I struggle with the notion that it is hard to read very long, very dense work online. I understand the perceived constraints of the format, but I feel like we submit to this idea that Internet=Short too easily sometimes.
With online publications, they’re fighting against a well-documented usability issue… if the reader can’t tell how long it goes on, it immediately creates anxiety. Even if you can guess the length from the size of the scroll-bar slider (?), it’s not an exact science and it can be different for every screen resolution/computer/device. And how do you get comfortable if you can’t tell how long a piece might go on for?
With a book, you’ve got the thing in your hand and you basically know what you’re getting into. But still we’re all that the mercy of every day life. The random flotsam of electronic transmissions, the phone ever-ready to pounce, all of this will be constantly nagging at us as we read. And the longer the book, the more open it is to this assault, ultimately undermining the reading experience.
For most of my 20’s I’d been told I should read Celine’s Journey to the End of Night (around 600 pages). People had given it to me. I’d bought a few copies. I’d started it multiple times.. but never got past page 30. I couldn’t figure it out. It seemed like a book I wanted to read. Both the material, the sensibility, and the voice, were all stuff I aped and admired. But I just couldn’t get it down. Then once night in Walgreens I put on a pair of reading glasses.
“Which heads do the changing, and which get the change?”
yea. well and i imagine with new ways of reading online stuff, like phones and iPads, even the longest work can be segmented by the screen, and maybe wont have to be scrolled through, but could be “paged” through in some way.
i tried to read almost everything in my parent’s bookcase. i remember there was some michener, and “tai-pan,” and like bill moyers books. but then i found “the catcher in the rye” in the red jacket, with the swear words that was so funny. and i snuck off with that one and read it in my room.
Long stories and long novels are still the norm in the publishing industry. Critically and reader-wise, short novels and short shorts still have a lot of ground to catch up with so I don’t think there is much of a risk of longer fiction disappearing anytime soon.
i liked the “catcher” themed episode of south park
Props on Zawacki. Also, a fan of Beachy-Quick, though I haven’t read that one.
Ashbery – Flow Chart
Ashbery – The Skaters
Ashbery – Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
all essential
Like, perhaps in the small world of online lit mags and a certain type of indie magazines that htmlgiant traffics in, short fiction is really common, but not in the literary world as a whole.
Were there any 20 under 40 writers who traffic in flash fiction or novellas?
I love long, long novels with sweep and vision that you don’t want to put down even after 800 pages. I think that’s why I love my Russian novelists so much–they give you so much and even if the occasional philosophical meandering seems a bit long, they never felt the pressure to condense, shorten, abbreviate.
That said, I do tend to sigh when I see really longer stories online. I tend to skip them. Reading a 10,000 word story online is just too hard on my poor old eyes. I have no problem reading a piece that long in a print journal. I know, I’m horrid. But just being honest.
did they “shit on” “catcher”? south park is mad funnie, i dont care if they did
This is true. Outside of the indie writing circuit, all of my non-writing friends and family find my flash stuff too short. They don’t like it. I only get genuine compliments and praise on stuff that’s much longer, which makes sense to me. Most people don’t care about the form, which flash is all about–they just want a story they can get into, characters that grab them.
This is a good point. I’ve been using instapaper to flip long stuff into my kindle, and it is a godsend! I actually have a way to read long stories that originate online that isn’t a total bitch on my eyes!
yeah. it’s fine. i don’t even think people should care about “catcher”
can’t go wrong with ‘franny & zooey” or “nine stories” though.
Aside from what’s being published and what’s being lost from the lit scene, I think at least in a lot of MFA communities there remains a good deal of pressure (from ourselves and our peers) to write longer work. Maybe it’s a result of the workshop — of getting the most bang for your buck when you only present a work once every 3 or 4 weeks, or maybe it’s the impressiveness of seeing peers maintain an interesting nuanced narrative for more than 500 words…But writers who veer more toward the short form seem to feel guilty and self-conscious about not writing longer work.
I think writers feel a lot of pressure in terms of length — maybe if they mostly write long work they feel they’re missing out on internet markets, or if they write short work they question their stamina as writers. Shouldn’t we write the length that makes most sense for the piece we’re writing? Shouldn’t we focus on our own artistic vision instead of being self-conscious about publishing and competition and vague ideas about what’s impressive/worthwhile? Ideally! Unfortunately we can’t ignore the society / world we write in…most of us wouldn’t be happy living in a hole, writing only for ourselves.
What I really want someone to do is find a way to make reading long work online realistic and accessible for more people. I don’t mind reading online at all but I understand that most people do. I have to believe there’s a way to make this happen. There’s a space station in orbit. Surely we can tackle this.
i care about “catcher” :)
Speed is a greatly underrated virtue when it comes to fiction.
oh yeah, well . . .
“fuck you” and “i pity the fool” and “go read a book”
just thought i’d recycle old arguments–i’m all about going green
lol
the last thing I want is for people to make long form reading online accessible. My eyes are assaulted enough as it is.
Amen, Lincoln
To each his own. I love reading online.
his “or her”
we don’t want to leave anyone out
‘damn’… they’re making a new ‘a-team’ movie with all-new cast… seems disrespectful to mr. t
hehe, good show ol’ boy
Readability from arc90 is pretty great: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
holy gimmick batman
Two of my favorite longer texts: Miss Macintosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young and Juliette, Or Vice Amply Rewarded by Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade.
feel i know mr. t ‘strictly’ from conan o’brien skits
Ezra Pound’s Hugh Selwyn Mauberley.
I get this same reaction. My grandma, who is an avid reader to say the least, says she has a hard time really enjoying my stuff because it’s too short for her, and she equates my flash with poems even. Same with my uncle, though he tries to appreciate it more and more.
Woah. That’s kind of awesome.
Just a thought. Longer works are harder to get published in general, because even if they are electronic, they are more expensive. (editing, etc.). Therefore, when I purchase a large novel I believe it has gone through more scrutiny than a shorter one. It’s less likely to be crap. May or may not be true, but that’s my perception, so I tend to purchase longer books. Plus there’s a feeling that I’m getting my money’s worth.
Casey
I think you are wrong on both ends, honestly. I think shorter works are much harder to get published (collections of short shorts or shorter novels) and that shorter works are probably edited more closely on a per page basis.
I’m with you, Roxane, though my youthful guilty pleasure in the realm of long books was James Clavell rather than Michener. I got over it, thankfully, but I’d still rather have something that envelops me.
When I finished Bolano’s 2666, I worried that it was going to be the last great epic novel. I hope the Cohen novel proves I’m wrong.
The length of 2666 is vital because the scope of the book is so absurdly large. Not many writers have the skill or audacity to take on so much in one work.
I think chalking up the “explosion” of short work online as a result of short attention spans is at least partially wrong and misses a probably more accurate reason. The kind of time people spend at computers is often broken up into a small chunks, making it possible to read short shorts in one sitting but not longer works. When faced with choosing a complete experience over an incomplete one, I understand why more digestible forms are popular online. If it were just a matter of attention span, it would be a trend spilling out into print. It’s not.
Not to mention, how many readers trust that any given piece of writing is worth their time? No one wants to invest a lot of time in an unknown commodity.
People talk about online journals as if they’re alone in this but print journals do this as well, especially the more “indie”-flavored ones — there are a bunch of print journals that don’t want stories over, say, 3000, or maybe 5000 is their max.
It pisses me off in part because I generally write longer stories, although I’ve been slowly reigning this tendency in, but in part because it reinforces the sense I often have of some journals, which is that they exist more for the social lives of the editors than to publish the best work available. Why else worry so much about maximizing your # of contributors? I’d rather publish three incredible stories than twenty okay ones — which is not, of course, usually the choice, but by limiting so sharply what your journal will read, you make sure you never have the opportunity to make it.
One reason I’m excited about the next No Colony.
Consider how few of these “epic” novels we have–I do think the long form is in trouble. Witz is so stunning partly because it seems like it’s the only one out there. Jump back to the 20s and thirties and everybody was publishing those multivolume modernist masterpieces. I also wonder how much of the scope of a true epic is alive. Witz is not War and Peace or In Search of Lost Time in scope. It is a smaller book, but it is by far our biggest book. If I made a top 10 list now I’m sure most of my picks would be “big” great novels, but I think most people go to HBO tv shows to fulfill those long narratives now. No reason we can’t try. I intend to start around Autumn.
I’m in the midst of Javier Marias’s “Your Face Tomorrow” — I’m reading all three volumes in sequence, so that amounts to a 1,200+-page book. So far, I’d say that the story being told and the quality of writing have merited the length…
there is something beautiful about an author’s ability to sustain a narrative or idea beyond the average 250 page length of the average novel
holding a huge book is very satisfying and tiring and therefore there is a great sense of accomplishment when you work your way all the way through the book
i am sometimes intimidated by anything that requires me to scroll though
i am not sure why, my attention seems limited by my screen resolution
I hate the “flash fiction is popular because of lowered attention spans” argument with all my heart. It is harder to read a flash fiction by Kim Chinquee or a short-short by Diane Williams than it is to read all 2000 pages of Twilight or some similar pulp epic. That kind of compression requires attention to every single word, and takes longer to read right than just about anything else.
3,500 is definitely within the normal range for a normal short story.
Roxane, I certainly agree there is nothing wrong with a long creative work. Regarding online journals, however, one must consider the attention span of the average internet reader–seemingly the truest flaw in the system of online literature. I mean, it seems as though hypertextual/electronic documents were always intended to combat the traditionally tangible book-format because, according to archaic theorists, the notion of “book” is constraining. While seemingly infinite, the internet also seems constraining–it’s not something you can take with you on the subway. It can be mobile, but at the same time, it is only mobile in a limited sense. Sure, someone could start spouting out (sounding extraordinarily cheeky) the names of devices like “iPad” or “cell phone,” but if you’re reading DFW’s Infinite Jest or Bolano’s 2666 on your iPad or (god forbid) cell phone, it’s simply not going to have the same impact of something you read in print. Yes, there is so much to appreciate in the “short form” or “very short form,” and yes, there is so much to appreciate in the “very long form,” but it seems the editors of online journals must rely on the “short” because the average reader doesn’t want to read a 12,000 word something via online journal. Same 12,000 word something in a print journal? Sure, why not. The near limitless mobility ensures that the reader is giving the piece the time it possibly deserves. Also, I feel like the author of the piece is going to profoundly affect one’s decision to read a 12,000 word piece via online journal.
Admittedly, the future of literature terrifies me (at least in terms of format). Do I want to read a book by David Foster Wallace or Roberto Bolano on an iPad? Fuck no. I guess some people do. Maybe literary masterminds like PH Madoreable are into virtual Bolano, but not me.
That said, the only reason I can think of regarding print journals that have length requirements (i.e. nothing beyond 3500 words) would have to be budgeting/financial support/grant limitations. Some editors seem to focus more on authorial variety, often resulting in the brushing aside of longer submissions, which is unfortunate.
I’m reading Infinite Jest on my iPad, oddly enough and it’s great.
http://www.bearcreekfeed.com does strictly long stories. some nice ones. i guess it can be hard to read very long, very dense things as far as the internet goes, but i’m down for any length of story if it’s engaging in some way.
would not have pictured “young Roxane Gay” curling up to “Tales of the South Pacific,” heh…
i was reading those Redwall books and Hardy Boys mysteries when i was a youngun…
Guess I’ll just sit here in the corner of the nursing home . . . lazy eyed . . . drooling . . . fondling my books.
BWA HA HAHAHAHA AHA!!!!!!
(profuse drooling)
thought it was interesting they have the iPhone version that makes it easier to flip back and forth btw the endnotes…is it like that on the iPad?
This reminds me of poetry workshops I’ve taken where the instructor advised the class to submit poems no longer than one page for the workshop, so one doesn’t “inconvenience their fellow writers.” To this day I don’t understand how a two page poem could be an inconvenience to critique.
A few long poems that I try to keep at hand:
Alice Notley’s The Descent of Alette
Ashbery’s Three Poems
Dan Beachy-Quick’s This Nest, Swift Passerine
Ben Learner’s Topekan Ethos
Andrew Zawacki’s Georgia
Alex Lemon’s Hallelujah Blackout
More please.
I will read absolutely anything. I have lots of interests and as a kid, I just liked great stories. I struggle with the notion that it is hard to read very long, very dense work online. I understand the perceived constraints of the format, but I feel like we submit to this idea that Internet=Short too easily sometimes.
I just want to know where that bathroom is.
With online publications, they’re fighting against a well-documented usability issue… if the reader can’t tell how long it goes on, it immediately creates anxiety. Even if you can guess the length from the size of the scroll-bar slider (?), it’s not an exact science and it can be different for every screen resolution/computer/device. And how do you get comfortable if you can’t tell how long a piece might go on for?
With a book, you’ve got the thing in your hand and you basically know what you’re getting into. But still we’re all that the mercy of every day life. The random flotsam of electronic transmissions, the phone ever-ready to pounce, all of this will be constantly nagging at us as we read. And the longer the book, the more open it is to this assault, ultimately undermining the reading experience.
For most of my 20’s I’d been told I should read Celine’s Journey to the End of Night (around 600 pages). People had given it to me. I’d bought a few copies. I’d started it multiple times.. but never got past page 30. I couldn’t figure it out. It seemed like a book I wanted to read. Both the material, the sensibility, and the voice, were all stuff I aped and admired. But I just couldn’t get it down. Then once night in Walgreens I put on a pair of reading glasses.
“Which heads do the changing, and which get the change?”
What do you mean? Narrative speed?
I just can’t do it. It’s not comfortable, and that much time staring at the screen makes me head hurt.
yea. well and i imagine with new ways of reading online stuff, like phones and iPads, even the longest work can be segmented by the screen, and maybe wont have to be scrolled through, but could be “paged” through in some way.
i tried to read almost everything in my parent’s bookcase. i remember there was some michener, and “tai-pan,” and like bill moyers books. but then i found “the catcher in the rye” in the red jacket, with the swear words that was so funny. and i snuck off with that one and read it in my room.
Long stories and long novels are still the norm in the publishing industry. Critically and reader-wise, short novels and short shorts still have a lot of ground to catch up with so I don’t think there is much of a risk of longer fiction disappearing anytime soon.
i liked the “catcher” themed episode of south park
Props on Zawacki. Also, a fan of Beachy-Quick, though I haven’t read that one.
Ashbery – Flow Chart
Ashbery – The Skaters
Ashbery – Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
all essential
Like, perhaps in the small world of online lit mags and a certain type of indie magazines that htmlgiant traffics in, short fiction is really common, but not in the literary world as a whole.
Were there any 20 under 40 writers who traffic in flash fiction or novellas?
I love long, long novels with sweep and vision that you don’t want to put down even after 800 pages. I think that’s why I love my Russian novelists so much–they give you so much and even if the occasional philosophical meandering seems a bit long, they never felt the pressure to condense, shorten, abbreviate.
That said, I do tend to sigh when I see really longer stories online. I tend to skip them. Reading a 10,000 word story online is just too hard on my poor old eyes. I have no problem reading a piece that long in a print journal. I know, I’m horrid. But just being honest.
did they “shit on” “catcher”? south park is mad funnie, i dont care if they did
This is true. Outside of the indie writing circuit, all of my non-writing friends and family find my flash stuff too short. They don’t like it. I only get genuine compliments and praise on stuff that’s much longer, which makes sense to me. Most people don’t care about the form, which flash is all about–they just want a story they can get into, characters that grab them.
I am currently reading two books that are both over 5,000 pages, so 800 seems almost like a novella…
Name the monsters.
This is a good point. I’ve been using instapaper to flip long stuff into my kindle, and it is a godsend! I actually have a way to read long stories that originate online that isn’t a total bitch on my eyes!
yeah. it’s fine. i don’t even think people should care about “catcher”
can’t go wrong with ‘franny & zooey” or “nine stories” though.
Aside from what’s being published and what’s being lost from the lit scene, I think at least in a lot of MFA communities there remains a good deal of pressure (from ourselves and our peers) to write longer work. Maybe it’s a result of the workshop — of getting the most bang for your buck when you only present a work once every 3 or 4 weeks, or maybe it’s the impressiveness of seeing peers maintain an interesting nuanced narrative for more than 500 words…But writers who veer more toward the short form seem to feel guilty and self-conscious about not writing longer work.
I think writers feel a lot of pressure in terms of length — maybe if they mostly write long work they feel they’re missing out on internet markets, or if they write short work they question their stamina as writers. Shouldn’t we write the length that makes most sense for the piece we’re writing? Shouldn’t we focus on our own artistic vision instead of being self-conscious about publishing and competition and vague ideas about what’s impressive/worthwhile? Ideally! Unfortunately we can’t ignore the society / world we write in…most of us wouldn’t be happy living in a hole, writing only for ourselves.
What I really want someone to do is find a way to make reading long work online realistic and accessible for more people. I don’t mind reading online at all but I understand that most people do. I have to believe there’s a way to make this happen. There’s a space station in orbit. Surely we can tackle this.
i care about “catcher” :)
Speed is a greatly underrated virtue when it comes to fiction.
oh yeah, well . . .
“fuck you” and “i pity the fool” and “go read a book”
just thought i’d recycle old arguments–i’m all about going green
lol
the last thing I want is for people to make long form reading online accessible. My eyes are assaulted enough as it is.
Amen, Lincoln
To each his own. I love reading online.
his “or her”
we don’t want to leave anyone out
One of the reasons we got rid of submission guidelines at PANK was to do away with the 5,000 word limit for our print issue. That was an unnecessary limit.
‘damn’… they’re making a new ‘a-team’ movie with all-new cast… seems disrespectful to mr. t
hehe, good show ol’ boy
Readability from arc90 is pretty great: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
holy gimmick batman
Two of my favorite longer texts: Miss Macintosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young and Juliette, Or Vice Amply Rewarded by Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade.
PANK’s decision to kill the guidelines was a really good one, I think. Tracy (Bowling, or Meginnis, depending; my wife) wrote an essay last semester that I think talked about that, and other people taking a minimalist approach, and your post on that subject in particular, as an exciting thing.
As we’re planning our own magazine this is something we think about a lot, as we have a particular thing we want that we don’t think most people will actually believe we want unless we tell them, but we don’t want to have big long guidelines.
Mysteries of the Court of London (10 volumes at over 500pgs each)…Part 2 in the series. The first book was Mysteries of London which was about 5000 pages also.
Rocambole. Altogether it is about 10,000 pages.
I actually realised I am also in the middle of a third book like this:
The Youth of Henry IV…That one is only about 4,000 pages though.
I bet it is great. I hated having to keep bouncing to the back of the book. I had this gum wrapper keeping my place and it kept flitting out.
feel i know mr. t ‘strictly’ from conan o’brien skits
Ezra Pound’s Hugh Selwyn Mauberley.
I get this same reaction. My grandma, who is an avid reader to say the least, says she has a hard time really enjoying my stuff because it’s too short for her, and she equates my flash with poems even. Same with my uncle, though he tries to appreciate it more and more.
Woah. That’s kind of awesome.
Just a thought. Longer works are harder to get published in general, because even if they are electronic, they are more expensive. (editing, etc.). Therefore, when I purchase a large novel I believe it has gone through more scrutiny than a shorter one. It’s less likely to be crap. May or may not be true, but that’s my perception, so I tend to purchase longer books. Plus there’s a feeling that I’m getting my money’s worth.
Casey
I usually don’t have the attention span and the willingness to experience eye strain for a long online story. But I’m perfectly fine with reading novellas as PDFs on my screen. By the time an online short story engages me, it usually ends. But I’m willing to experience discomfort if it keeps going.
I think you are wrong on both ends, honestly. I think shorter works are much harder to get published (collections of short shorts or shorter novels) and that shorter works are probably edited more closely on a per page basis.
I think chalking up the “explosion” of short work online as a result of short attention spans is at least partially wrong and misses a probably more accurate reason. The kind of time people spend at computers is often broken up into a small chunks, making it possible to read short shorts in one sitting but not longer works. When faced with choosing a complete experience over an incomplete one, I understand why more digestible forms are popular online. If it were just a matter of attention span, it would be a trend spilling out into print. It’s not.
Not to mention, how many readers trust that any given piece of writing is worth their time? No one wants to invest a lot of time in an unknown commodity.
Consider how few of these “epic” novels we have–I do think the long form is in trouble. Witz is so stunning partly because it seems like it’s the only one out there. Jump back to the 20s and thirties and everybody was publishing those multivolume modernist masterpieces. I also wonder how much of the scope of a true epic is alive. Witz is not War and Peace or In Search of Lost Time in scope. It is a smaller book, but it is by far our biggest book. If I made a top 10 list now I’m sure most of my picks would be “big” great novels, but I think most people go to HBO tv shows to fulfill those long narratives now. No reason we can’t try. I intend to start around Autumn.
I love short shorts. I almost always write 100-1000 word stories. When I’m not, I’m writing poetry, which is even shorter. Sometimes I feel inept because of this. I carry around this prickly anxiety that I’m not talented enough or disciplined enough to write longer fiction. I think a lot of other short short writers feel the same way, but that’s just an assumption.
I think people are more willing to read “long” fiction in print, for reasons several others have pointed out above. Even though I love longer stories, I tend to skip 1000+ word fictions in journals unless I have ample time to devote to the journal in question, or if it’s in PDF form. PDFs somehow make longer fiction much easier to read and I don’t feel as distracted or constrained. I have no idea how to explain this, haha. Best effort: PDFs are pretty and convenient and I can “oooh and ahhh” over the cover designs and collect them in a bad-ass little folder called “Lit Shit”? (Yeah, it’s really called that.)
I don’t think short shorts are better than long fiction or vice versa. I love them both. I don’t believe long fiction is going out of style. It probably seems that way if you primarily traffic in small presses and indie online lit (I’m not knocking small press or indie online lit writers/lovers; I’m one of those kids). The establishment journals and mainstream presses seem more than happy to accommodate long fiction, and most mainstream readers are still generally disinterested in literary forms I find to be fabulous, i.e. microfiction. A collection of superb 100-word stories by a 23-year-old who’s published primarily online would probably get a form rejection from someone like Simon & Schuster. And, thanks to technological advances like the Ipad and the Kindle, long fiction can be consumed comfortably in more than print form.
I hate the “flash fiction is popular because of lowered attention spans” argument with all my heart. It is harder to read a flash fiction by Kim Chinquee or a short-short by Diane Williams than it is to read all 2000 pages of Twilight or some similar pulp epic. That kind of compression requires attention to every single word, and takes longer to read right than just about anything else.
Have you read Kawabata’s palm-of-the-hand stories? Don’t worry about length, man! It’s better to produce one short thing of quality rather than several massive entities of pure shit.
I just want to know where that bathroom is.
What do you mean? Narrative speed?
I just can’t do it. It’s not comfortable, and that much time staring at the screen makes me head hurt.
I am currently reading two books that are both over 5,000 pages, so 800 seems almost like a novella…
Name the monsters.
One of the reasons we got rid of submission guidelines at PANK was to do away with the 5,000 word limit for our print issue. That was an unnecessary limit.
I like Kawabata a lot. His longer (though still short) works are good too.
Mysteries of the Court of London (10 volumes at over 500pgs each)…Part 2 in the series. The first book was Mysteries of London which was about 5000 pages also.
Rocambole. Altogether it is about 10,000 pages.
I actually realised I am also in the middle of a third book like this:
The Youth of Henry IV…That one is only about 4,000 pages though.
I bet it is great. I hated having to keep bouncing to the back of the book. I had this gum wrapper keeping my place and it kept flitting out.
I usually don’t have the attention span and the willingness to experience eye strain for a long online story. But I’m perfectly fine with reading novellas as PDFs on my screen. By the time an online short story engages me, it usually ends. But I’m willing to experience discomfort if it keeps going.
It’s a fine balance, sometimes. There is absolutely a need for guidelines for certain magazines, or at least some kind of guiding principle which I do think we have. It has been so interesting to see how things have gone since we abandoned guidelines. I don’t know if it is a coincidence, but the quality of our submissions increased exponentially. I’ve never seen such a formidable slush pile. And even better, we’re getting the crazy long work that’s amazing that we were missing out on before. There have been no problems. The reality is that writers are well trained, so to speak. 8/10 times they know how to send a submission formatted reasonable and in a readable format. Everything else they can learn by reading a few issues. Anyway, I look forward to your new magazine! What an adventure.
I love short shorts. I almost always write 100-1000 word stories. When I’m not, I’m writing poetry, which is even shorter. Sometimes I feel inept because of this. I carry around this prickly anxiety that I’m not talented enough or disciplined enough to write longer fiction. I think a lot of other short short writers feel the same way, but that’s just an assumption.
I think people are more willing to read “long” fiction in print, for reasons several others have pointed out above. Even though I love longer stories, I tend to skip 1000+ word fictions in journals unless I have ample time to devote to the journal in question, or if it’s in PDF form. PDFs somehow make longer fiction much easier to read and I don’t feel as distracted or constrained. I have no idea how to explain this, haha. Best effort: PDFs are pretty and convenient and I can “oooh and ahhh” over the cover designs and collect them in a bad-ass little folder called “Lit Shit”? (Yeah, it’s really called that.)
I don’t think short shorts are better than long fiction or vice versa. I love them both. I don’t believe long fiction is going out of style. It probably seems that way if you primarily traffic in small presses and indie online lit (I’m not knocking small press or indie online lit writers/lovers; I’m one of those kids). The establishment journals and mainstream presses seem more than happy to accommodate long fiction, and most mainstream readers are still generally disinterested in literary forms I find to be fabulous, i.e. microfiction. A collection of superb 100-word stories by a 23-year-old who’s published primarily online would probably get a form rejection from someone like Simon & Schuster. And, thanks to technological advances like the Ipad and the Kindle, long fiction can be consumed comfortably in more than print form.
Have you read Kawabata’s palm-of-the-hand stories? Don’t worry about length, man! It’s better to produce one short thing of quality rather than several massive entities of pure shit.
I like Kawabata a lot. His longer (though still short) works are good too.
It’s a fine balance, sometimes. There is absolutely a need for guidelines for certain magazines, or at least some kind of guiding principle which I do think we have. It has been so interesting to see how things have gone since we abandoned guidelines. I don’t know if it is a coincidence, but the quality of our submissions increased exponentially. I’ve never seen such a formidable slush pile. And even better, we’re getting the crazy long work that’s amazing that we were missing out on before. There have been no problems. The reality is that writers are well trained, so to speak. 8/10 times they know how to send a submission formatted reasonable and in a readable format. Everything else they can learn by reading a few issues. Anyway, I look forward to your new magazine! What an adventure.
I was in one of those–not only were we limited to a single page, but the poem had to be double spaced as well, so we could have room to comment. It was miserable.
And for long works, Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover will always be high on my list.
I was in one of those–not only were we limited to a single page, but the poem had to be double spaced as well, so we could have room to comment. It was miserable.
And for long works, Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover will always be high on my list.
traffic? wow.
traffic? wow.
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