In Praise of Brevity

I am not a fan of long books. It isn't that I have no attention span; I can stare at a wall like a mental patient of lithium, I love to watch paint dry. Hell, My general rule for movies is that if it's under 2 hours, it's probably a waste of time. I believe, whole-heartedly, in brevity.

Sure, there are some really good books out there that clock in on the obnoxious side of word-count. But odds are that if you your name is not Tolstoy or Joyce, you flat-out do not have to the talent to justify anything over 100,000 words. Maybe talent isn't the word.

Purpose is. There is no purpose in much of anything over 100k words. If it takes you 100k words or more to get to your point, you are probably wasting the time of your reader. And Saint Vonnegut says that you shouldn't do that.

Probably the only thing I've ever agreed with Vonnegut on, even though I never met the man and do not like 95% of his output. Ol' Kurt ain't my cup of tea. Shit. I'm a JG Ballard man (may he Rest In Peace).

There really isn't a good reason for any novel being published to be over 80k words long, and IMHO, that is me being generous. JG Ballard has this book called Concrete Island. It's about this guy who stuck on a highway median with crazy person and her mentally-handicapable foil. It's one of the best books I have ever read, and I have read a lot. There are MFA and English Grad Students who haven't read as much as me. Concrete Island clocks in at (rough back-of-envelope claculation) 55k words. Perfect novel length, I must say.

Brevity gives you, of course, conciseness. This is an important thing. After all, a novel is essentially a very long metaphor. Metaphors are best kept short, else they grow roots and become tangled with the sewer lines of the author's subconscious. You spread a work that is essentially about suburban ennui over the course of 576 pages (Freedom by Jonathan Franzen) and you loose the tension needed in that kind of story*. Tension is the core of story telling.

People will tell you that the core of story telling is the transference of the universality of human experience, or some-such highfaluting nonsense that they learned in college. This is a silly conceit and worth none of your time. the reason being that human experience is very rarely told in the telling of a story. Human experience is a very boring, banal thing. think about it. The vast majority of the people that you know are spending the lions-share of their day in a cubicle staring a screens. The 21st century version of the human experience is essentially that of an automaton. This does not make good drama. Drama is tension. Tension is best kept taught, ergo: short.

Brevity. Brief . Short. To the point. The kind of thing that if you blink, you'll miss it. The most profound things you will ever come across in your life are brief things. The moment sunlight catches dew-laden leaves in springs. The contented look on the face of a lover. A well-made hamburger. All short, brief, transitory things. Wind on your face, the first sip of a well pulled pint of Guinness. Things that are in your hand one moment, gone the next.

My general scale, from best length to worst for writing goes something along the lines of : Novella, Short Story, Novel.

But, Nick, you say, Novellas are longer than Short stories, and you obviously have the attention span of a cat that just ate your little brother's Adderall.

Well, no, and no.

The reasons: 1.) I do not have a younger brother, in fact, I am the little brother and have never been prescribed Adderall, let alone diagnosed with ADHD, and 2.) The Novella is the supreme expression of the art of literature.

I came to this conclusion when I read Jim Harrison's Novella Revenge. Maybe you saw the movie it was made into, with Kevin Costner. Doesn't do it justice. Same with another of Jim Harrison's novellas, Legends of the Fall. Revenge is the kind of work that requires you to read it in one sitting, and it's also of the length that means that sitting isn't going to be on the toilet. It is between short and long, in that goldilocks area. It has just enough mass to say something, and to say something in a not-nebulous manner, and without having the kind of digressions and subplots that plague novels. I'm not going to give a blow-by-blow, but I am going to encourage you to go pick up a copy (it is in the 3 novella collection called Legends of the Fall).

The novella, in its length gives both the author and the reader enough space to explore the idea or dilemma, the drama, of the story, without either the faux-profundity of the short story or the annoying, pointless digressions and girth of the novel. The ideas are allowed to be formed, explored, and not driven into the ground or forgotten in a myriad of subplots. Characters are given room to breath, but not allowed to crash on the reader's couch for long; they never outstay their welcome. Plots are not allowed to go off the track, subplots, while sometimes present, do not take over. The point is come to, not after 400 pages, but 100. You can read it in a night, have something to think about, and not be thrown off by an extended reading period.

Brevity is where it is at.

Which isn't to say novels are bad. Some novels are good. the vast majority that are published every year are absolute crap and should be ignored. The downside of this is that novellas are hard to publish, harder even that short stories, and are ignored by both the book buying public and the critics. The incentive for the working writer to write what a novella is small. There is no money there. Absolutely none. Even though the days of working short story writers are over, the odds of a writer making a living on the short story is massively higher than the novella writer. The novella writer has to either cut his creations by a third, or bloat them out to gargantuan proportions to get the m published.

All of this is why literature, specifically American literature, at the moment, is more or less in the shitter and shows very few signs of getting out.

You'd think that the internet would open up publishing and literature, to expand markets and make room for experimentation, but it doesn't. What the internet has done is fragmented the markets into fetishistic sub-markets, where things that do not fit into very small niches get thrown into the shredder, whether or not it is good. I have had better luck placing work with dead-tree publishers that I have getting it on the web**.

So where does this leave me?

I don't know. I have a back log of stories and novellas that are unable to find homes with publishers, both hard- and soft- copy. I've been working on a novel for the past 14 months and the with the current draft, I suspect it will shrink back down to novella length, which will damn it to a life spent on my harddrive.

I have no way of summing this all up without sounding like a neurotic writer.

So, here is a lecture by Ray Bradbury:

(*Suburban Ennui is best kept short anyway, preferably in the form of a pop song, which is another example of brevity being better than sprawl. Who, after all, can say that feelings are expressed better in Beethoven's Symphony # 1 than, say, 1979 by The Smashing Pumpkins. This, you may say is comparing apples to oranges, but in reality, they are both musical works meant to elicit an emotional response. The 3.5 minute pop song is the short story of the music world, and the symphony the sprawling Russin novel. Of course, Franzen's Freedom is essentailly a re-write of Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (or perhaps White Noise by Don Delillo), which itself is a rewrite of The Beautiful and Damned by Fitzgerald. Shit, lets just face facts. Freedom isn't a novel about the tenor of our times. It is about the tenor of the 1970s, the most recent decade that the American Suburban ennui novel has been stuck in. If you want to read a novel that is really about NOW, read William Gibson's Zero History. That book will blow your hair back. Franzen is 30 years, at least, behind the times, and he's a hack of a writer to boot.)

(**the less said of online markets, the better***)

(*** the internet killed the short story and the novella, deal with it)

A Ramble About Robin Hood

In the commentary to the Director’s Cut of Kingdom of Heaven, Ridley Scott said that he would jump at a chance to return to make other movies in that particular era. He did so with Robin Hood, and he should have looked before he leaped.

It’s frustrating not because it’s a bad film. It isn’t. It’s just hamstrung by being called Robin Hood. It isn’t Robin Hood. But then again, this is another secret history movie, like Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur. By creating a narrative that supposedly is about the man behind the myth, the film cannot decide what it is about. Sure, Russell Crowe’s character is well drawn and executed, bit he doesn’t need to be Robin Hood. As a matter of fact, the film would have been better if all the references to Robin Hood and the like were absent until the very end. I say this because it is obvious that the Robin Hood bits are a subplot, or perhaps an after thought. Because I think that Scott really wanted to make a movie about William Marshal and King John.

I really hope that, like Kingdom of Heaven, there is a superior cut of this film waiting to be released on DVD. But instead of Kingdom of Heaven, where the director’s cut restored the characters to the film (where the theatrical cut was all politics), I really hope that Robin Hood gets the politics put back in. I’m not saying this cut exists, I just hope it does. Because if somebody where to make a movie about medieval English politicking, I want that somebody to be Ridley Scott. He creates a singular verisimilitude in his period pieces that I think is absolutely necessary for this type of film. The technical side of this film is near perfection, which just adds to the frustrating nature of the film.

Watching the movie, you get the idea that Scott really doesn’t dig on Robin Hood. First off, there is no real Errol Flynn-like good-natured action; while relatively bloodless (especially in comparison to Kingdom of Heaven) the violence is brutal and realistic. There is also very little of the Robin Hood myth in here. There is a little bit of stealing from the rich to give to the poor, but it’s narratively more of an aside than the main thrust of the film. There is very little humor; Scott would appear to be one of the more dour and humorless filmmakers out there and thus a poor choice for something like Robin Hood, if that Robin Hood was to be a traditional kind of RObin Hood movie. A movie that Scott is uninterested in making.

Not only that, but there are just so many good ideas that are just completely undeveloped in the film that you really wonder weather they had a full script when they started. First, you got the orphan thieves who live in Sherwood Forrest; visually exciting and new, and frankly, the only real bit of swashbuckling you get in the move. I would have loved to see a movie that was 1 part Peter Pan’s Lost Boys and 1 part Lord of Flies that takes place in medieval England and was directed by Scott. Second, you got Isabella of Angouleme, kingly-bed-usurper and political player in the making. Third, how can you make a movie that is more or less about the Plantagenets and not get down with some hard core political conniving from Eleanor of Aquitaine? The worst part is, that with the exception of the orphan thieves, you can see that that was the direction that Scott would have rather gone in, but he was signed on to make a Robin Hood movie.

The historical record for this particular era (1199-1216) is absolutely fascinating. There is so much a writer or a filmmaker can do here. First you have the fact that before the Plantagenets, most of the politicking going on in Europe was more-or-less tough guys with type-A personalities going around and raping and pillaging; the type of back room dealings, marriages for power and the clandestine maneuvering were relatively new to the European stage (or at least relatively returned to the European stage after the fizzling out of the Roman Empire). Also, there is the ethnic divisions going on in England at the time. The Plantagenets were Normans, which is to say they were French, and the upperclass was pretty much divided between Saxons and Normans, and the underclass was Saxon, with celtic fringes. The cultural identification that we think of as English was still two hundred years off (it was mostly a product of the Hundred Years’ War); England was not a homogeneous whole. Ethnic strife was the rule of the day. That’s where you get to the meat of what the movie could have been: a movie about the Baron’s Rebellion and the creation of the Magna Carta. All of this makes it hard to wedge Robin Hood in, especially considering that Robin Hood was a folk hero that has little to do with actual history, and since the real history of it all is so rich, kind of superfluous.

But there are other problems with the film, aside from the fuzziness of what it’s about.

The first act is essentially lifted in total from the beginning of Robin and Marian, the 1976 film about an aging Robin Hood starring Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn. The final action sequence, an amphibious landing of the French army at Dover, poses even more problems. First, Dover does not have beaches. Second, the entire sequence cribs from Saving Private Ryan, with a few Star Wars: A New Hope bits thrown in as well. Marian shows up with the orphan thieves, for more or less contractual reasons.

All of this nit picking is mostly because I wanted this movie to either be incredibly surprising, like the Kingdom of Heaven directors cut, i.e. an intelligent, astute, historically respectful film about people and politics, or to be a rip-snorting-swashbuckling-fun action movie. It is almost both of them, but the filmmakers waffled and didn’t make a fully satisfying movie, but another beautiful failure.

Root Beer

When I was a kid, my dad used to take me fishing. We’d wake up at 5.30 in the morning, climb down the steep river bank to where the boat was docked, hop in and row around until we found a good spot and hang out, baiting hooks and casting as close to the reeds as either of us could get. We’d have a whole mess of fish by 10 o’clock. Then we’d row back to the dock, climb back up the river bank and I would head up the road to the house with the fish while he’d walk down to the store to pick us up some lunch. It would usually be something along the lines of a couple tins of deviled ham, crackers, a moon pie and a Frostie Root Beer. I have never seen this brand of root beer outside that portion of West Virginia, so imagine my satisfaction at finding out they are still around. They even have a website.

I’ve been thinking a lot about root beer lately, mostly because a few months back I fell down some stairs. I bruised a couple of ribs and really messed up a muscle, both of which aggravated and older, fully healed vertebral fracture. I am now medication that will make my stomach bleed if I drink alcohol. This sucks because I like my whiskey and I like my beer.

Also, I don’t drink caffeinated drinks. I hate coffee, I’ll only drink tea in the British Isles, and Red Bull keeps me up for days.

This all leaves me drinking a lot of root beer.. Locally, I’m pretty much limited to Stewart’s, A&W, IBC, and Barq’s. But I also found this website, Anthony’s Root Beer Barrel which reviews root beers. I think I’ll have to order some stuff.

The Companion, the new project, Wong Kar wai

It has been a while since I updated, but since nobody reads this thing, I shouldn't worry much. But anyway, a lot of things have happened.

My book The Companion came out. The paperback has nearly sold out and the hardback deluxe edition is doing well. I have finished the second draft of the new project, and am commencing the third. Here is a link to the trade paperback of The Companion. Here is a link to the Hardback.

As a matter of fact, Jim Gavin has written a very nice review of The Companion that I think you should read: Link.

But lately I have been thinking that the real thematic meat, so to speak, of Wong Kar-wai's films is food. Everybody in them eats. Major scenes revolve around food. I'm trying to analyze this to the best of my ability, and will report back soon.