Size doesn’t matter
Despite the success of relatively slim fiction titles such as Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness or Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, or the most recent book by Philip Roth, or even any new collection by Alice Munro, many editors (and readers) are still enamoured of the big, fat novel. Indeed, it is rare to see a new, mainstream novel clocking in at under 400 pages. When in doubt, go for the girth, it seems.
In an opinion piece on Slate, Meghan O’Rourke takes to task the New York Times‘ list of the best American fiction of the last 25 years, accusing the current critical climate of harbouring a fat fetish that disparages the possibilities of the “small” novel — a novel such as, say, The Great Gatsby or Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping.
“Big novels may indeed contain more of the flotsam and jetsam of social reality than shorter novels do,” O’Rourke writes. “But concision, lyrical intensity (not the same thing as ‘well-crafted prose’), and metaphorical depth are in principle as aesthetically valuable as expository generalization, sweep, and narrative complexity. Taut perfection may not be the only hallmark of a good novel (the novel has always been an expansive form), but it is surely one of them. It’s time that the books we call ’small’ get a closer look, which would reveal some of them to be as intellectually and artistically ambitious as their fatter counterparts.”
Related links:
Read Meghan O’Rourke’s opinion piece on Slate
