Novelist Nick Harkaway, whose new novel, Angelmaker, weighs in at 576 pages. Photograph: Richard Saker for the Observer
In these lean times, fiction is putting on weight. Take three of the major novels out in the next few weeks. Never mind the quality, which is variable, feel the width. Angelmaker (Heinemann), Nick Harkaway's second novel, weighs in at 576 pages. My copy of Capital (Faber) by John Lanchester tips the scales at 577pp. The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood (S&S) is a 420-page debut. Even the Costa winner, Andrew Miller's Pure (Sceptre), runs to a chunky 352 pages. When last year's Booker winner, The Sense of an Ending, was first shortlisted, there were some who said that, at 150 pages, it wasn't really a novel. Whatever happened to the slim volume?
You can blame the computer for the contemporary writer's reluctance to cut. Again, you can blame the decline of editing at the big imprints, which is actually more apparent than real. Or you can point the finger at the pressures of the marketplace, especially in America.
The jury is out on all these charges. Fatter novels are the outcome of these and many other factors. What's hardly in doubt is that where novelists used ascetically to follow a regime of "less is more", now they're piling on the carbs.
This trend towards fiction of between 350 and 500-plus pages is new. Graham Greene, whose prose was always pared to the bone, wrote of learning his craft as a subeditor on the Times: "A sprawling style is unlikely to emerge from such an apprenticeship." For much of the 20th century, novels averaged 75,000 to 80,000 words, making a book of fewer than 250 pages and sometimes barely 200. Further back, the picture becomes more complex.
While we can doff our caps to Thackeray, Trollope and the triple-decker Victorians, we should recognise that some of English literature's best-loved classics are exceedingly short. The recent celebration of Dickens's 200th birthday has given a new lease of life to Nicholas Nickleby and Bleak House, which are 800pp and more than 1,000pp, respectively. But the Dickens story everyone loves is A Christmas Carol, which is 160 pages, even with illustrations.
McCrum's full story at The Observer.
You can blame the computer for the contemporary writer's reluctance to cut. Again, you can blame the decline of editing at the big imprints, which is actually more apparent than real. Or you can point the finger at the pressures of the marketplace, especially in America.
The jury is out on all these charges. Fatter novels are the outcome of these and many other factors. What's hardly in doubt is that where novelists used ascetically to follow a regime of "less is more", now they're piling on the carbs.
This trend towards fiction of between 350 and 500-plus pages is new. Graham Greene, whose prose was always pared to the bone, wrote of learning his craft as a subeditor on the Times: "A sprawling style is unlikely to emerge from such an apprenticeship." For much of the 20th century, novels averaged 75,000 to 80,000 words, making a book of fewer than 250 pages and sometimes barely 200. Further back, the picture becomes more complex.
While we can doff our caps to Thackeray, Trollope and the triple-decker Victorians, we should recognise that some of English literature's best-loved classics are exceedingly short. The recent celebration of Dickens's 200th birthday has given a new lease of life to Nicholas Nickleby and Bleak House, which are 800pp and more than 1,000pp, respectively. But the Dickens story everyone loves is A Christmas Carol, which is 160 pages, even with illustrations.
McCrum's full story at The Observer.
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