I recently finished reading “Going to the Territory,” a collection of essays by Ralph Ellison. Among the topics he discussed (art, African Americans, history, jazz) one of the most important and recurring topics was the Novel. Not the lowercase novel as a thing, as a piece of entertainment, but the uppercase Novel as an idea, as a form.
This factoid is more of a frame. I’m not here to contribute to what Novels constitute, what makes a Novel a Novel, or debate Mr. Ellison’s points. Instead, I want to compare the Novel, in all its heady significance, with the other predominant prose form: the short story. The novel and the short story afford a writer two forms of fictional expression (outside of poetry and plays, which have their own rules and mechanics).
The immediate difference between novels and short stories is length. Now, ignoring any terminological pussyfooting à la the novella, a novel is generally 50,000 words in length (which is how long “The Great Gatsby” is, as much a novel as any) and a short story usually falls far below that, generally below 5,000 words.
Novels, in many ways, are an integral part of our culture. Novels are the hubs of English class, novels line the walls of bibliophiles, and novels are practically enshrined in libraries. Everyone has read at least one novel in his or her life.
Short stories, on the other hand, hold less sway in American culture. Sure, you’ve read a short story or two in your life, in English class or otherwise, sometimes they’re thrown in magazines or maybe you’ve got an author friend who shares his or her work, but on the surface, short stories have less of the glow and prestige of novels in culture.
Common sense would say, with the sheer volume of words, a novel would edge out short stories in terms of depth and emotion. By volume, a novel inherently takes more craft and care, in creating such a momentous work, whereas a short story, you would think, is hardly anything compared to the Novel. Short stories seem slighter.
But there is nothing inherently inferior about short stories compared to novels. There is no paucity of meaning and feeling. Just because a short story is short doesn’t mean it can’t strike a meaningful chord. Examples abound of profound and relevant short stories. Haruki Murakami’s “The Year of Spaghetti” packs a wallop of poignancy and forlornness in its short pages. “The Depressed Person” by David Foster Wallace broke my heart both times I read it. J.D. Salinger’s “Nine Stories” is a near-perfect anthology of short tales. Some greatly respected authors—Anton Chekhov, Jorge Luis Borges, Raymond Caver—never even wrote full-on novels.
To tie this up (and back to my frame), one of Ellison’s points about the Novel was how, in the 19th century and beyond, it was a vehicle for social criticism, as well as art. In many ways, that’s what separates a novel from a short story.
Novels can encompass whole periods of time, perhaps all time in the hands of someone particularly gifted, but short stories are captured moments, fleeting. It takes a lot of craft to make a good short story, perhaps more craft than a novel since they’re working with limited resources. There is something consciously more artistic in a short story than a novel, due to its compactness. You have to know what to say where, and how to go about saying it as briefly as possible. Novelists, on the other hand, have the freedom to sprawl out and ruminate upon what’s happening. The short story is a conscious art form, whereas the novel is a contemplative one.
Want to run your own story ideas by Sean? E-mail him at sreichard@wisc.edu.
