Novellas: The Case For The 98-page Weaklings
They're the 'just right' porridge of the literary world
From the National Post, April 3, 2004

Muscular bibliophiles now have a new format to covet -- coffee table books the size of actual coffee tables. At 1.5 metres by 2 metres (and weighing more than 60 kilos), Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Last Himalayan Kingdom was certified by Guinness records keepers as the world's largest book shortly after its publication in December of last year. But it's no means the only book with such imposing stature, Taschen has published retrospectives of Helmut Newton (Sumo) and Muhammad Ali (Goat), weighing 29 and 34 kilos respectively, a hefty benchpress for any bookworm. As if to acknowledge its excess, Sumo includes its own stand designed by Philippe Starck.

Most experiments in the publishing world, however, still revolve around the amount of text on offer, rather than the size of the book binding. And last winter, the trend was toward less-is-more, as the novella found itself in the gentle glare of the 25-watt CanLit spotlight. If the buzz was less than deafening, if the thin spines of The Haunted Hillbilly, Stevenson Under the Palm Trees and All My Friends Are Superheroes missed your gaze, don't blame yourself. In the last few years, publishers have been loathe to allow 98-page weaklings to brave the bookshelves solo, preferring to tuck long short stories safely inside short story collections instead. Witness The Grandmothers, four novellas from prolific 84-year-old Doris Lessing, published this year by HarperCollins.

"A book of less than 200 pages is not a book that a larger publisher would put out due to economic reasons," explains Ellen Seligman, fiction publisher at McClelland & Stewart. Yet the novella should, by all rights, represent the "just right" porridge of the literary world. Neither too long, nor too short, the 100-odd page format mixes the intensity of the short story with the expressive brush strokes of the novel. It appears the perfect vehicle to convince time-starved, lapsed readers to give a hoot and read again, with a heritage that includes Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad), The Turn of the Screw (Henry James), The Day of the Locust (Nathanael West) and Animal Farm (George Orwell).

This is illustrious company for any author to aspire to join, but the last few years have borne infrequent attempts to add to the canon -- The Body Artist by Don Delillo, Riding the Bullet by Stephen King (first published as an e-book) and The Actual by Saul Bellow. One of the few authors to find any real success -- or rather, receive any significant attention -- within the novella genre is Steve Martin, first with Shopgirl back in fall 2001, and then late last year with The Pleasure of My Company (which, at 163 pages, was dubbed a novel by his publisher).

That many publishers view novellas as the vestigial organ of the literary world illustrates how economic decisions can prevent irregular (but worthwhile) formats from reaching readers. According to Seligman: "I suppose the wisdom is that the price of anything should represent good value to the consumer in terms of length."

Or, to put it another way: Why pay $20 for a 110-page quickie with Delillo, when, for only an extra 10 bucks, you could be up all night, every night, for a week with Ann-Marie MacDonald straddling your lap? At 736 pages -- each more redemptive and empowering than the last -- The Way the Crow Flies crunches down to five cents per page, a bulk bargain that even Costco (which, along with Wal-Mart and other big discount chains, is now responsible for 40% of sales of best-selling books) would find impressive.

Compare that price point with All My Friends Are Superheroes, by Andrew Kaufman (111 pages), The Haunted Hillbilly, by Derek McCormack (124 pages), Forde Abroad, by John Metcalf (72 pages), and Another Book About Another Broken Heart, by Julia Tausch (162 pages) ­ four Canadian novellas published last winter, whose cost-averaging hovers around 10 to 20 cents per page. (Poetry's return on investment is even worse, often in more ways than one.) This bottom line approach says nothing about quality, of course, and I'm reminded of an episode of The Simpsons when the entire family visits a discount store called Books! Books! And Additional Books! that features a sign advertising "Today's Special: Michener - $1.99 Lb."

It's no coincidence that all four of the aforementioned novellas are from independent publishers (Coach House, ECW, Porcupine's Quill and Conundrum Press respectively) all of which have been experimenting with length for years, usually out of economic necessity. "If I was putting out $25 books I'd be out of business," explains Andy Brown, the founder of Montreal-based Conundrum Press. "Doing novels is cost-prohibitive. I'd love to do a 400-page novel."

Novellas also suit independent publishers because books more than 48 pages in length are eligible for Canada Council grants. In 2001, Conundrum published All Day Breakfast by Valerie Joy Kalynchuk, a 52-page collection of linked stories. Brown was quick to pass the savings onto taxpayers, selling the book for only $10.

Yet there remains a certain shame in being called a little book that could -- only John Metcalf's Forde Abroad is willing to describe itself as a novella. "If I wrote on the back of a book that it was novella, as opposed to a novel, I think it would make it seem more slight. Even though it's the exact same object," explains Brown. Other independent publishers appear to agree, as they hold their breath and charge between $15-19 for a book that can generally be read in a single sitting. In early March, Conundrum launched Cherry, a brand new novel(la) from Winnipeg writer Chandra Mayor, a series of interlinked vignettes that total 112 pages. Brown gave a copy to his partner Meg, who read the entire book in a 40-minute Metro commute, prompting Brown to consider calling his pocket-sized books "the subway series."

Meanwhile, big publishers have recently begun to think smaller too. Thomas Allen published Alberto Manguel's 104-page book, Stevenson Under the Palm Trees, last winter. At 4" x 7", it was perfect for stuffing literati holiday stockings. And today, McClelland & Stewart will publish The Best Thing For You, by Annabel Lyon, a collection of three novellas.

It's difficult to remember the last time a major Canadian publisher vigorously promoted a trio of novellas. So, given the lost art of long short stories, what is the novella uniquely capable of achieving that the novel or short story cannot?

According to Vancouver author Annabel Lyon, novellas are more plot intensive than short stories, and their characters have more depth. "But at the same time, because it's tighter than a novel, you have the interest in style and in language, which is perhaps harder to maintain through a 300 or 400 page novel," explains Lyon. "Novellas have the refinement of language seen in a short story."

If readers rarely spend time actively thinking about such distinctions, it turns out that neither do writers. The most recent debate about the novella's purpose took place during the 1970s. No one disagrees that The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio represents the origin of the novella (from the Latin novus, implying novelty, freshness, or something unusual) and that the Germans made the genre their own during the 19th century (most notably, Goethe). After that, arguments devolve into etymological chatter: short novel versus novelle versus novelette versus "the beautiful and blest nouvelle" (so dubbed by Henry James).

Ultimately, the name game brings us no closer to figuring out the delicate inner workings of the novella. As Graham Good, a UBC professor, wrote in 1977 in the journal Novel, "Attempts to define short fictional forms and distinguish them from the novel are often in danger of tautology. The emphasis on qualities like economy, concentration, or unity can seem to boil down to the idea that short fictions are different from novels because they are, well, shorter." In this view, the term novella becomes a mere measuring tool, suggesting fiction can be served in either a glass, a pint or a pitcher.

For Lyon, The Best Thing For You began life as a novel, but she eventually realized the core of the story required only 90 pages. "It naturally ended at that length, so it wasn't a conscious decision to write a novella," she says. Thankfully for Lyon, McClelland & Stewart didn't pressure her into writing a novel that didn't exist. Instead, Lyon wrote two more novellas for The Best Thing For You, the follow-up to her oft-praised short story collection, Oxygen.

But to release three Lyon novellas as separate entities? Never. The Best Thing For You reinforces the primacy of the page count in publishing calculus. Famous comedians and novelists are permitted to produce novellas only because their name-brand celebrity convinces publishers to take the necessary financial risks. But the bottom line is preventing good tales from reaching bookstores, meaning no one bothers to write novellas, which serves to further reinforce their apparent extinction. Publisher John Metcalf was practically begging authors to send him their novellas in a recent Quill & Quire interview.

But, as Andy Brown points out, there is still the issue of prestige to consider. "No one ever says I'm working on a novella," he says, with a small laugh. "It's always a novel."

First draft