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/lit/ - Literature

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19620497 No.19620497 [Reply] [Original]

After reading this collection I am convinced that no one should read novels ever again. Short stories are almost always more impactful, not to mention a better time investment

>> No.19620503

>>19620497
Generally, what you get out of something is directly related to what you are willing to put in.

>> No.19620507

>>19620503
novelfag cope

>> No.19620512

>>19620497
based and borgespilled

>> No.19620514

>>19620503
Absolutely right

>>19620507
lazy seethe

>> No.19620520

>>19620497
Poetry > Short stories > Novels > Essays

Faulkner was right.

>> No.19620626

>>19620507
I like short stories as well. As I get older I have come to see that short stories rarely change, when you revisit them later in life you do not find new meaning, generally just find nostalgia for the meaning you found in them when first read. Novels have the room for ambiguity and are more likely to change with you. There are exception to this and there are even times which the concision and bluntness which the short forms excel at is called for. When it comes down to it the cope is the bipolar view, you judge each within the constraints of its form, not the form of another.

>> No.19620666

Never really read many short stories. Who are some good short story writers?
>Kafka
>Carver
>Cheever
>Borges
>...?

>> No.19620667

>>19620626
Not OP but in my experience has been that all texts change when you read them when you're older and many leave for for ambiguity regardless of length. Borges short stories for example, I read them when I was 18, now I'm 25 and I have found details that I didn't recognize back then. Short stories are harder to write than novels because you have way less space to use language properly and leave an impact on the reader in fewer words. There are some short stories that even manage to say more than many novels. That's not to say novels are without their merits btw but I understand where OP is coming from.

>> No.19620671

>>19620666
Oh, and Salinger of course.

>> No.19620673

>>19620666
Chekhov, Cortázar, Salinger, Singer, PKD, Tabucchi, Buzzati, Hemingway, Fitzgerald.

>> No.19620693

>>19620673
>Tabucchi
What’s his deal and is he comparable to any other writers? I always look at his books but pass them over in favor of something I know more about

>> No.19620882

>>19620667
I am not talking about change due to your own lack of understanding, hence my mention of ambiguities. Short stories are not more difficult to write, same with reading, you get out what you put in. Look at all the novels which took 5 to 10 years to write, hell there are some that took decades, you are over simplifying.

>> No.19620944
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19620944

>>19620882
>I am not talking about change due to your own lack of understanding, hence my mention of ambiguities.
I'm talking about finding different details in each reading. Not about lack of understanding.
>Short stories are not more difficult to write
Yes, they are and one of the GOAT novelists agrees. In a novel you can just go on and on without caring for the space restriction.
>Look at all the novels which took 5 to 10 years to write, hell there are some that took decades, you are over simplifying.
They were made over the course of 5 to 10 years, but they didn't take 5 to 10 years to write. Gass wasted like three decades of his life writing The Tunnel and his novel is dogshit and a hundred times worse than Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, which took a few years to write. You don't necessarily "get what you put in."

>> No.19620996

>>19620666
EAP, Alice Munro

>> No.19621033

>>19620944
Details you missed is a lack of understanding.
>an author I love agrees with me
>so there
Ok. If it were true there would be a consensus.

>> No.19621071

>>19621033
Novelists far outnumber short story writers. If writing a novel was harder than writing short stories this wouldn't be the case.

>> No.19621121

>>19621071
Ignores that a great deal of novelists also write short stories and/or started out writing short stories. Also assumes the market for the two is equal, could be but i do not have the stats and I doubt you looked them up, might just be easier to make a living off of novels, which would not surprise me, the death of most of the literary journals with the rise of the internet was a massive blow to the short story since that is how most short story writers made their living.

>> No.19621125

>>19621071
Nah, I'm pretty sure that's because novels sell better than short stories.

>> No.19621203

>>19621125
I do not know if that is true, but they almost certainly make less money for the publisher since they often have to pay journals for publishing rights since having a few well known stories by the author is good for sales of an anthology which means publishers will give priority to the novel which they get full publishing rights too from the start. It certainly is not as simple as that anon made it out to be.

>> No.19621368

>>19620503
>>19620514
novelfag cope. Faulkner >>19620944 was 100% right, and if I recall more than one novelist has echoed the same sentiment
>nowrites on /lit/ still struggling through a translation of Anna Karenina blindly defending novels
As expected

>> No.19621403

>>19621368
>solipsism means never being wrong

>> No.19621586

>>19620666
Nabokov's Dozen