Remember when novels came in different lengths? When 200 pages could contain a fascinating story? Why are fantasy novels so long now? Are they denser...and denser how? World-building, gravitational rotation of character development dense or filler dense (twinkie dense)? Lately I've been feeling that more of what I read contains a certain amount of flash-bang expansion of this twinkie density: grotesque fight scenes, diary-quality character rumination, and desperately high stakes that eventually peter off into stratospheric incomprehensibility.
As I've been haunting used bookstores looking for Brittle Innings and am taken by the number of fantasy novels from years (or decades) ago that accomplish all of the intensity, character building, and world building in a much smaller space. Longer novels seem to be solely about a great confligration that flickers, ignites, and steadily consumes the characters. So many actions and reactions fall into the fire that evenutally only the great theme--survival--emerges. In a smaller novel, there is time to see some of the smaller actions and thoughts loom larger and, for me, this means that I can enjoy the arc of a well-told story in a way that I can't with a larger tale.
This doesn't mean I'm ready to sweep away any novel longer than 200 pages. What it does mean is that I'd like to see good stories in miniature--not novelizations that gloss a movie or tiny stories that cram in all the flash-bang twinkie grandiosity and none of the interest. Focused stories are much more common in fiction aimed at younger readers; but I don't believe that I've lost my interest in a good story as I've gotten older. I just don't always have the time or patience for the long version of the History of the Fifty Fiefdoms of Planet Huge and Perilous. I'd like to know what happened on the one day that the eldest daughter of the smallest fiefdom visited her cousin in the forest of the largest fiefdom and why it mattered. Maybe tomorrow I'll be ready for the epic.
No comments:
Post a Comment