As I’ve said before in this series, not all the “treasures” I find, particularly those from the 19th and early 20th centuries, are specifically Australian, but I justify them because in those colonial and early post-colonial times English content tended to reign supreme.
This post was inspired by my serendipitously coming across an article praising short novels. Most of you will know that I love short stories and short novels (or novellas) so of course I was interested. I went looking for anything else on the topic, and I found a few little items that I felt worth sharing.
Plea for shorter novels
The article that inspired this post appeared on 6 July 1907 in Sydney’s The Australian Star. It cites one Basil Tozer, who made a “plea for shorter novels” in the Monthly Review. Naturally, I researched Basil Tozer. He’s not in Wikipedia, but it looks like he was born in Devonshire around 1872 and died in 1949, and that he wrote some fiction and nonfiction. In the article, he seems to be railing against books like those Victorian “big baggy monsters”. He says:
The habit of loading a story with indifferent descriptive passages still prevails to a great extent, though it might with considerable advantage be dispensed with. A beautiful woman loses her charm when every good point she possesses, from the creamy smoothness of her complexion to the alluring, curve of her eyebrow, is described separately and in detail; and in the same way a glorious scenic panorama metaphorically falls flat when every square mile of it is analysed and dissected.
These “faults”, he says, are “commonest among young writers” but they are also “flagrant enough still among some of our novelists who have served a long apprenticeship”. He names French writers like Daudet, Hugo and de Maupassant, suggesting there is no “superfluous verbiage” in them. These are, he admits, three of France’s most polished fiction writers, but even “the rank and file” French novelists “seldom err upon the side of overloading their work with unnecessary vocables and third-rate descriptive passages”. He believes that British novels would be strengthened if they were more condensed.
The long and short of it
The next article I found was published in late 1925 and early 1926 in several regional newspapers across Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania. It reports on comments made by someone called Mark Over in Outlook. I struggled to identify Mark Over, but I assume the journal is the British magazine which Wikipedia says was, in full, The Outlook: In Politics, Life, Letters, and the Arts. It ran from 1898 to 1928. The first version of the article I found appeared on 14 January 1926 in Victoria’s Shepparton Advertiser. It reports that Mark Over had written that readers are appearing to prefer the short book over the long one, that they “seem to be frightened by the book of many closely printed pages, and choose the large type, thick-paper novel which is really hardly longer than a short story”.
However, this doesn’t spell the end of the long book because Over believes that “this type of reader” does like to buy long books as gifts, as they are – wait for it – “better value for money”! (I’ve heard this before as an argument against novellas.) Booksellers, he says, will vouch for this. And, he adds, library staff and owners also prefer long books: they mean less work because they take longer to read so they are changed less often and experience less wear and tear. Mark Over’s advice?
Let would-be novelists remember these prosaic facts, and count their words.
Love it …
Ten years later, on 31 August 1937, Melbourne’s The Herald shares a report from Arthur J Rees in London. This name rang a bell and yes, he is in Wikipedia. He was an Australian mystery writer, who “likely went to England” in his early twenties. He reports the opposite to Over, saying that the British don’t like short novels and that this had caused quite a controversy because “a leading critic” had recommended an American novel of 100 pages “worth many a contemporary English novel of four times the length”. Unfortunately, the newspaper I found this article in is in poor condition so the scanned text is not completely legible, but he wanted to know why English fiction writers didn’t attempt this sort of close writing “instead of plunging themselves and their readers into masses (?) of words and padding out their novels (?)”.
Except, he knows why. Readers don’t like short novels. Libraries won’t stock them because they can’t “persuade library subscribers to take them out; they don’t think they are getting enough for their money”. (There it is again.) Readers, he reported to The Herald, like a “thick book”. So, of course, publishers also won’t publish short novels. On the rare occasion that they do, said Over, it is ‘printed in larger type, and “bulked out” by thicker paper’. (Short stories, he added, suffered a similar fate.)
I found a couple more articles, but these contain the gist of the pros and cons. Has anything changed much do you think?
Meanwhile, I will leave you with a funny little par I found in one of those literary news type columns. It was in Ian Mair’s The Argus Literary Supplement on 2 February 1946. Headed “Writing to space”, it went like this:
The factory chief of a New York publishing firm recently asked the author of a very long novel if she would mind cutting a few pages of her book, then in process of manufacture, not yet bound.
The author couldn’t help asking why the request didn’t come from one of the house’s editors.
“Because,” said the production man, “we have some thousands of cartons (book casings) to use up, and they’re a shade too narrow for this job.”
The author cut her book, which is now one-eighth of an inch thinner than it was before.
Now there’s a new type of editing – to suit the size of the cover!
Whispering Gums 
Bringing this debate to the present, we’re told everything that’s important on a web page is above ‘the fold’ – which implies article writers should produce very short pieces indeed. Somebody commented, btw, that when leaving a web page, youought scroll back to the to so that it’s in the right position for the next site visitor :0)
As for lengthy works, I’ve George Birkbeck Hill’s six volumes of Boswell’s Life of Johnson on my library shelf – that naturally I’ve never read, despite them being good value for money! The cockroaches, however, have been all over them many times. I mention that because I downloaded those six volumes from Gutenberg, and they barely fit on the Kindle which is only 5/16th of an inch thick. A seventh volume, I fear, and I would have needed a fatter Kindle.
(I’m sorry, but it’s 3 am)
So sorry Phil that I’ve only just seen this. Life is hectic at the moment and I’ve only just checked the comments that have “gone into moderation”. I do love that the cockroaches know Boswell’s Johnson even if you haven’t read them! You should write more at 3am.
Hey, that’s ok. I was, however, starting to suspect you thought the post was not only off-topic, but posted to the wrong forum!
Sorry, I am preparing my house for sale this week so have been more distracted than usual. Very glad to have you.
Isn’t the novella one of your favourite kinds of reading ?
Took you long enough to get here .. [grin]
And btw, ST; I am often guilty of seeing the length by hours of an audiobook and not buying it because it’s too short. Gotta be ten hours !
😀
MR you and I might be twins! I pay $17 odd for books on Audible and I buy them like sausages, by the yard (or hour). But even at the library I won’t bother with any book under six hours (which seems to be around 200pp).
Though I must say I wish about once a week that Alex Wright’s Praiseworthy was just a little less than 723pp (and not a superfluous word in sight).
You’re not a member then, Bill. I’m in the happy position of having my younger sister buy me Audible gift cards whenever the thought takes her – coz she knows of my crocheting obsession while listening to books. And I have a 2 books a month membership anyway.
723pp eh ?
Hmmmm ..
Yes, I do MR, And I’m the opposite. I like my audiobooks to be under 10 hours.
Makes sense. 🙂
Mark Over seems like a made up name. Was anybody called Mark (as distinct from Marcus) before WWII?
I can’t say about Australia, but certainly the name was found in the US before WW II. The commander of the US 5th Army during the war was Mark Clark. (To be sure, those who dealt with him, and found him hard to bear, sometimes referred to him as Marcus Aurelius Clarkus.)
Mark Twain! Yes, it’s a pseudonym, but?
But what about Mark Oliphant born 1901? Wikipedia has a list of people with the first name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_(given_name) Includes quite a few born before WW2.
You got me at Mark Twain. I’m pretty sure though it was Sir Marcus Oliphant. I’ll go and look it up
Sir Marcus Laurence Elwin Oliphant
Hmm, you got me there … how about this one then, Mark Pattison, born in 1813 to another Mark Pattison : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pattison_(academic)
Still, it does look like there weren’t many Marks before WW2 as you suggest. Interesting.
And you did look it up, thanks.
Mark Twain was the pen-name of Samuel Clemens. “By the mark twain” was the leadsman’s call to indicate two fathoms of depth in the river.
As in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John??
Haha, Lisa, good one. And I thought Mark Twain was a fair response! Who was this Mark? But still he was translated to Mark long before WW2.
Advising someone to reach for the concision of Victor Hugo? Good grief.
There does seem to be an expectation in the US that one will get four hundred and some pages per novel. But unless one is using books to press flowers, I don’t think that page length tells one much. I have at times, usually when pushing my way through a book club selection, thought of having tee shirts made to read “Mega Biblion, Mega Kakon — Callimachus”. I guess one could do Greek in front, English in back.
Haha, George … is it only book club selections that you have to push through?
Seriously, though, I agree that page length doesn’t tell you much and should never be a criterion (for anything other than the time you think you might have to read a book – but even then a shorter book is not necessarily a faster read, is it?)
Sorry George, somehow I missed the beginning of your comment – probably reading it on a device.
I’m glad you commented on the Hugo thing because I nearly commented on it myself. But then I wondered whether either 1) he had written some short novels or 2) the writer thought he was concise though long!
I am enjoying this discussion! I admit if the book is thin, I think I’m either not getting enough for my money (if I purchase it), or if I am borrowing from the library, I don’t think it’s worth the trouble of going through the checkout desk unless I’m borrowing other books at the same time. I guess I like my novel lengths to be somewhere in the middle. That figures – I’m a centrist about most things!
I did purchase Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Lamp and after reading both the first Wolf Hall novels, was too daunted by the size of the third to attempt it. I am still looking at Orhan Pamuk’s A Strangeness in my Mind and trying to get the energy to start it – I suspect it will take me weeks to read and I have to feel ready for the commitment!
I tend to go by the spine width rather than page numbers too.
Thanks so much for chiming in Sue. This is the sort of discussion I was hoping for.
I don’t have any concerns about short books, but like you it seems, I can be put off by those over 500 pages. They involve such an investment of time. Unlike those who think they get value for money from a big book, I think, wow, I could read two books in the time it takes me to read one big one. That is worth a lot to me because I’m looking to read as many different ideas as I can. (Which is not to say that there aren’t BIG books that I’ve loved, of course.)
I always feel odd paying the same price for a small book of poetry as I do a novel, but on the other hand, I think about how it takes me just as long to read and review as any novel. I’m not sure about the comment regarding not choosing smaller titles from the library other than the fact that when I worked at a library I noticed skinny books could get lost (literally) on the shelves.
My thesis advisor for my MFA told me don’t let it be a novel if it is a novella, don’t let it be a novella if it is a long short story, don’t let it be a long short story if it is a short-short story, don’t let it be a short-short story if it is a poem, and don’t let it be a poem if it is a haiku. Interestingly, there is an episode of an adult cartoon called BoJack Horseman in which they’re making a movie, but they keep paring it down and down until the realize the essence of the story is a gift basket and not a movie at all. That reminded me of my advisor.
That’s interesting Melanie re paying the same price for a small book of poetry as a novel. I’ve never really thought about it, but perhaps I would too if it really were a small book of poetry.
In my experience, novellas will often be priced less than a full length novel, but a 150page novella would not cost half the price of a 300+page one. Which is fair as there are fixed costs. The actual cost of the paper and printing is such a small percentage of the whole. But, haha, skinny books can get lost on MY shelves too if I’m not careful.
I love your thesis advisor’s advice!
This might be useful advice. My wife is never daunted by the length of a book. Bigger the better. Her simple strategy is this: she reads the last chapter first, and on that basis decides if it’s worth her time to bother with all the others.
Oh no! That would never work for me. In a way, the ending is the least important thing for me. It’s the writing, ideas and characters really that I care about. I like an intriguing ending. You probably can’t tell that if that’s the only chapter you read?