Why are novella's not novels?
82714#5
The novella is generally not as formally experimental as the long story and the novel can be, and it usually lacks the subplots, the multiple points of view, and the generic adaptability that are common in the novel. It is most often concerned with personal and emotional development rather than with the larger social sphere. The novella generally retains something of the unity of impression that is a hallmark of the short story, but it also contains more highly developed characterization and more luxuriant description.
Novella
82714#4
A novella generally features fewer conflicts than a novel, yet more complicated ones than a short story. The conflicts also have more time to develop than in short stories. Novellas may or may not be divided into chapters (good examples of those with chapters are "Animal Farm" by George Orwell and "The War of the Worlds" by H. G. Wells) and are often intended to be read at a single sitting, as is the short story, although in a novella white space is often used to divide the sections, and therefore, the novella maintains a single effect. Warren Cariou wrote:
Novella
82714#0
A novella is a text of written, fictional, narrative prose normally longer than a short story but shorter than a novel, somewhere between 17,500 and 40,000 words.
Novella
63994#1
At the ending of the book, there is also a brief afterword, which King wrote on January 4, 1982. In it, he explains why he had not previously submitted the novellas (each written at a different time) for publication. Early in his career, his agents and editors expressed concern that he would be "written off" as someone who only wrote horror. However, his horror novels turned out to be quite popular and made him much in demand as a novelist. Conversely, the novellas, which did not deal (primarily) with the supernatural, were very difficult to publish as there was not a mass market for "straight" fiction stories in the 25,000- to 35,000-word format. Thus, King and his editor conceived the idea of publishing the novellas together as "something different", hence the title of the book.
Different Seasons
82714#7
Commonly, longer novellas are referred to as novels; Robert Louis Stevenson's "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" (1886) and Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (1899) are sometimes called novels, as are many science fiction works such as H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" (1897) and Philip Francis Nowlan's "Armageddon 2419 A.D." (1928). Less often, longer works are referred to as novellas. The subjectivity of the parameters of the novella genre is indicative of its shifting and diverse nature as an art form. In her 2010 "Open Letters Monthly" series, "A Year With Short Novels", Ingrid Norton criticizes the tendency to make clear demarcations based purely on a book's length:
Novella
43225091#74
On such grounds, Ralea concluded that Romanian writers "have had no deep spiritual experience", lacking "a comprehension of humanity, of life and death." In a notorious socio-critical essay, first published in "Perspective", Ralea asked: "Why Did We Not Produce a Novel?". He contended that the grand epic genre, unlike the short story, did not yet suit the Romanian psyche, since it required discipline, anonymity, and a "great moral significance". He also postulated a deterministic relationship between the staples of ancestral Romanian folklore and modern literary choices: in the absence of any ambitious poetic cycles (as found in Western literature), Romanian ballads and "doine" had naturally mutated into novellas. In order to mend such a historical disadvantage, he set himself the goal of writing his own novel, but eventually gave up on the idea. At the time of its writing, the essay claimed to count only a few living novelists; by 1935, however, there was already talk of an "inflation of novels".
Mihai Ralea
82714#10
In his essay, "Briefly, the case for the novella", Canadian author George Fetherling (who wrote the novella "Tales of Two Cities") said that to reduce the novella to nothing more than a short novel is like "insisting that a pony is a baby horse".
Novella
419225#0
The Nebula Award for Best Novella is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for science fiction or fantasy novellas. A work of fiction is defined by the organization as a novella if it is between 17,500 and 40,000 words; awards are also given out for pieces of longer lengths in the novel category, and for shorter lengths in the short story and novelette categories. To be eligible for Nebula Award consideration a novella must be published in English in the United States. Works published in English elsewhere in the world are also eligible provided they are released on either a website or in an electronic edition. The Nebula Award for Best Novella has been awarded annually since 1966. Novellas published by themselves are eligible for the novel award instead if the author requests them to be considered as such. The award has been described as one of "the most important of the American science fiction awards" and "the science-fiction and fantasy equivalent" of the Emmy Awards.
Nebula Award for Best Novella
2951792#1
While "Noon Wine" and its companion pieces, "Old Mortality" and "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," have been described as novellas, Porter referred to them as short novels. Porter, in the preface "Go Little Book . . " to "The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter", abjured the word "novella," calling it a "slack, boneless, affected word that we do not need to describe anything." She went on to say, "Please call my works by their right names. We have four that cover every division: short stories, long stories, short novels, novels."
Noon Wine
82714#3
Not until the late 18th and early 19th centuries did writers fashion the novella into a literary genre structured by precepts and rules, generally in a realistic mode. At that time, the Germans were the most active writers of the "novelle" (German: "Novelle"; plural: "Novellen"). For the German writer, a novella is a fictional narrative of indeterminate length—a few pages to hundreds—restricted to a single, suspenseful event, situation, or conflict leading to an unexpected turning point ("Wendepunkt"), provoking a logical but surprising end. "Novellen" tend to contain a concrete symbol, which is the narrative's focal point.
Novella
15330129#14
According to Adamson, literature does not necessarily need to fulfil any social mission or purpose; yet, as with Émile Zola or D. H. Lawrence, there is no reason why it should not highlight social evils. A novel or novella – or a biography – is not merely an absorbing story: in Matthew Arnold's words, the best prose is, like poetry, "a criticism of life". This means that they convey some sort of philosophy of the world (in Arnold's words, "How to live"), though some writers, such as Adalbert Stifter and Jane Austen (to whom, incidentally, he is related through his mother) do this less than most others, whilst on the other hand Samuel Beckett conveys a profoundly negative philosophy of life.
Donald Adamson