Christmas break

Mrs GOB and I are taking a brief break, removed from computer terminals, and thus there will be no further posts on this blog until about Wednesday 29 December.

I see that various authorities are complaining about the de-Christianisation of Christmas, but I'm afraid I don't have much sympathy with that. There was a mid-winter festival long before Jesus Christ was born, and the justification for it was the fact that, somewhere around 21 December, the days stop getting shorter and start getting longer.

Back in east Africa, where the human race apparently began, I don't suppose the seasons mattered very much. There was plenty of food all year round -- that's why human beings started to increase in numbers. But once we got into Europe, and started to experience some serious winters, the length of days, and the amount of sunshine, started to have some real significance.

Human beings didn't need to be very smart or observant to find the crucial point in the year when the sun shone for a little bit longer than it had done a week or so earlier. (Technically, this is the winter solstice.) True, winter had not yet finished; but with the sun regaining its strength, so to speak, it was time for a party.

My guess is that this celebration began thousands of years ago, long before the creation of written records. Certainly we do know that, as soon as written records began, there was a mid-winter festival. The Romans called it Saturnalia; the Germanic tribes called it Yule.

When Christianity arrived on the scene, the early Christians were unaware of precisely when Jesus was born, since the Gospels don't give a date. But it wasn't long before the Christian authorities decided that it would be a good plan to latch on to some of the popular pagan festivals, which they promptly proceeded to do. Hence any grumbles from today's Christians that Christmas is being de-Christianised should be countered by a gentle and polite reminder that the mid-winter fun and games were being celebrated long before the Church joined the bandwagon.

I still think it's a good time for feasting and drinking, even in this electrically-lit and centrally heated age.

See you before long.

The next big thing?

Booktrade.info has provided a couple of links in recent days to a piece on bubblegeneration.com about the future of publishing. Beginning on Thursday last, Umair Haque has been considering whether publishing as we know it has a future. There have been a couple of comments, leading to a further piece by Omar on Friday.

This is all well worth a read, but personally I don't find the diagnosis -- the imminent death of publishing -- at all convincing. Reason: I am quite old enough to remember the invention of video recorders (which are now on the way out as a dead technology). When video recorders first began to appear you could find articles in quite reputable journals predicting the death of the cinema. Similarly, when cable and satellite came along, some otherwise sensible people were telling us that the big TV networks would be dead within five years.

Yes, there have been changes, of course, and there will continue to be. But publishing is not going to die just yet.

The bubblegeneration site also contains a lot of other interesting stuff, for instance on the new economics of music, and particularly on something called human licenses (to use the American spelling). I haven't had time to absorb it all as yet, but if you're at all concerned about copyright in general, and the licensing of rights in particular, it would be worth a look.

Credibility problems

I have been reading John Grisham's The Summons. It's a tolerably interesting read: 'classic Grisham', the Times called it. But I found myself wondering, as I went along, how it would fare if it were to turn up in some agent's slush pile, written by an unknown.

Let's see now. It's pretty well written, especially at the start. But before long the agent would scribble in the margin 'too much telling, not enough showing'.

Then there's a big credibility problem. The main character is a professor of law -- a well educated fellow, ultra respectable -- and yet before long we find him doing something not only illegal but pretty damn silly and more or less guaranteed to lead to trouble.

Now, Grisham being Grisham you go along with this and see where he is taking you. But if it was in a slush pile? Nah. The agent would want you to fix it.

And then there's the big surprise that comes at the end. Or it should do. This is where the bad guy is revealed. It's a 341-page book, and I had it figured by page 215, so I'm afraid that isn't too impressive either.

All in all I reckon the agent would call it a good try but not quite up to snuff. Have you got anything else you could show me, John? Please let me have a look at it when you do.

Then there's Agatha Christie. Some enterprising television-production company has decided to remake some of the Miss Marple stories, in two-hour format; very glossy, with lots of top British stars, even in the bit parts. What is more, the producers seem to have decided to update the plots. Or at any rate they did in the first one, The Body in the Library, shown a week ago yesterday.

There's a problem with credibility in this one too. The book was first published in 1941, and the plot turns around the decision of a millionaire to adopt a working-class girl as his daughter.

Now, anyone who knows anything about English life in the 1930s and 1940s would know that such a decision stretches the credulity. And yet somehow, over all these years, Agatha has persuaded us to swallow it. Perhaps it is easier to take in the novel format than in the two-hour TV film. Anyway, it's certainly a big problem. However, Agatha was Agatha, and she got us to believe that black was white so often that it's scarcely surprising that she got away with this one.

Once again, an agent reading a slush-pile submission with a hard-to-believe plot device like this would either want it fixed, or pass on the privilege of offering the book to publishers.

So what am I saying -- that new and as yet unpublished writers have to work to higher standards than established names like Grisham and Christie? Well yes. I'm afraid so. Listen, I never said that this business was fair, OK? Or easy.

By the way, in the latest TV version of The Body in the Library (there have been others), the scriptwriter has changed the plot and given us a new villain. Or rather two new villains: a lesbian couple if you please. This is a smart move, because otherwise the whole thing would be so creaky and old-fashioned that only the most determined Christie fan cum couch potato would watch it. If you want to know who the original murderer was you'll just have to read the book.

A new version of an old story

The Blogger dashboard page has a link to an article in the New York Times, and for once you seem to be able to read it without having to register. Not, I hasten to add, that I would urge you to go read it.

The article is headed 'A New Forum (Blogging) Inspires the Old (Books)'. It is written by one Joshua Kurlantzick, of whom I know not.

The correct technical term for this article is, I think, tired. It includes, in one handy package, every story about bloggers being offered book contracts that you have read over the last few months: Salam Pax, Belle de Jour, wonkette, and a few others. The article even includes, for the Rip Van Winkles, a description of what a blog is. And, yawn, you can also find out what an assistant professor of new media studies thinks about the blog phenomenon.

It is perhaps worth pointing out, once again, that what we have here is another glorious instance of what Dr Taleb calls the drowned worshippers. In other words, Mr Kurlantzick seems to be ignoring all those bloggers who tap away, day after day, week after week, without any publisher showing the slightest interest in them.

According Kurlantzick, there will be 10 million blogs by the end of the year. So, if 7 of those 10 million have been offered book contracts, it means that there are 9,999,993 bloggers, give or take a few, who haven't yet received that phone call. Which means that the idea that the new forum (blogging) is inspiring the old (books) is stretching the facts a bit. Wouldn't you think?

Still, it fills up the space between the adverts, and that's what most newspaper stories are for.

The problem of length -- part 4

In part 1 of The Problem of Length, I promised that, before concluding this discussion, we would have a look at one writer whose work does at least challenge my general conclusion that 70,000 words or so are sufficient to allow anyone to make their mark as a novelist of note. That writer is Neal Stephenson. (Oh but you’d guessed! Clever you.)

For those who haven’t been paying attention, or even reading this blog regularly, let me say that Neal Stephenson is a novelist who produces seriously long books. In the last two years alone he has published all three volumes of his Baroque Cycle. The first volume, Quicksilver, runs to 927 pages; The Confusion has 815; and The System of the World 887. He has also written several other successful novels, all of them much longer than the average work of fiction.

Occasional references on this blog have also demonstrated beyond doubt, I hope, that I am a Stephenson fan. So what is this, then? I have been arguing so far that it is unwise and unnecessary for a novelist to go over 75,000, tops – so am I inconsistent, am I forgetful, or does Stephenson constitute an exception which proves the rule?

These are very reasonable questions.

Before answering them, let us be clear what ‘proves the rule’ means. It means ‘test the rule’.

Once we have established a general rule, as we have in this case (short novels are better than long ones), and once an apparent exception to that rule appears, we then have to ask ourselves whether this exception is so important that it invalidates the rule which we have so painstakingly developed.

In considering the ‘ideal’ length for a novel, the process of testing the rule comes down to asking this question. If Stephenson, who writes at enormous length, is considered to be such a hotshot (and not only by the GOB) then do we have to admit that the suggested general rule is a load of eyewash?

No, in my opinion, we do not.

The key point in my thesis is that long novels are almost invariably too long for their intended effect: they are overstuffed with material which is unnecessary in order to achieve the desired effect; or they are overwritten on a scene by scene basis; or both.

Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle is a formidable piece of work. When I started to read it, I did consider, at first, that the author might have done better to divide volume I into three separate novels, making up some sort of a saga. But I soon realised that that was not such a good idea; ideally, volume I needs to be read as a whole. And by the time I reached the end of volume III I realised that the entire three volumes do in fact constitute one quite exceptionally long novel. It is a fully unified work; unified, that is, around its intended effect.

This massive chunk of fiction is not, in my view, overlong; and for several reasons. First, every word of it, as far as I can see, is necessary to the final effect. Second, the scenes are not, in my view, over-written; I was never tempted to skip. And third, when you get to the end you realise that everything in it is beautifully planned and hangs together in a most remarkable way.

Stephenson, in short, is a quite unusually talented and hard-working writer, with a formidable grasp of the history of Europe and the history of science, and no doubt a dozen other esoteric subjects as well. As one reviewer remarked, to appreciate Stephenson fully you probably need at least a couple of liberal-arts degrees, plus a good working knowledge of the natural sciences.

Stephenson himself has put his finger on the nature of the problem of length. On his web site he has a short (!) piece about the Cult of Brevity. Here is part of what he has to say: ‘As must be obvious, I am not an adherent of the Cult of Brevity. Personally, I am delighted to read extremely long books, or series of books, as long as they hold my interest.’ And that, of course, is the key. ‘As long as they hold my interest.’

It is self-evidently possible for a writer of Stephenson’s class to produce a long novel which holds his readers’ interest. (Consider his massive fan-base.) But the rest of us find the task impossible, and we would be well advised not to tackle it.

The problem of length -- part 3

Conclusions

Today we try to draw some conclusions from the discussion of the ideal length for a novel which has occupied us for the last couple of days.

We began (in part 1) by considering the various demands for books of a certain length which have emanated from publishers in the past, and which continue to have some influence today. And I hope we can agree that what publishers expect of novelists, in terms of length, at any given time, has really had very little to do with any understanding of what makes a novel effective. After all, if publishers really knew how to write an effective novel they would do it themselves, because the rewards can be substantial. Effect is, in any case, not closely linked with length, except perhaps inversely.

No, what has determined publishers’ attitudes to length has been economic considerations (as perceived at any point in time). And there is good reason, in my view, to suppose that publishers’ demands for books of a given length (particularly when they have wanted long ones) have in fact hindered rather than helped the creation of effective fiction.

In part 2, yesterday, I pointed out that there are many examples from the history of this medium (or art form, if you will) to show that a short novel can be every bit as powerful in the emotions that it arouses, and hence in the reputation that it creates, as a long one.

It follows therefore that those who propose to write novels should clear their minds of any idea that they must write a book of a certain length if it is to make any impact. This is true whether the writer’s aims are commercial or literary.

Sol Stein, who is a highly experienced editor and publisher (as well as a writer himself) says in his book Solutions for Novelists that most of the unpublished mss that he sees are too long for what they do – i.e. too long for their stories.

There are two versions of the over-long novel. In the first place, the story may simply include scenes and incidents which are not necessary to the story's ultimate effect on the reader; and in the second place the scenes which are included may simply be over-written, with the writer getting carried away by the sound of his own wonderful voice, and the amazing insights which he is able to generate (the result, of course, of his undeniable genius).

Some of the 'great' novels of the past clearly contain material which is more or less irrelevant to any story they may have to tell. Moby Dick, for example, begins with lengthy portraits of the main characters, a defence of whaling, bits of history, and a zoological taxonomy of all known forms of whales. At this point, Melville realises that he has been rambling on for too long (a good 50,000 words) and writes: 'God keep me from ever completing anything. Oh Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!' Only then does he get on with the real story.

Similarly, Stendhal begins La Chartreuse de Parme with a description of the battle of Waterloo which has no necessary connection with the rest of the story. Balzac declared that it should have been left out.

The implications of all this, for the practising writer of today, are simple. Plan to write a relatively short novel; you are producing one book, not a library. When writing a first draft, by all means let the story rip, so to speak. But at the revision stage, tighten everything up. Go for speed. And if you want an example of speed, taken from another medium, watch the first five minutes of Carol Reed's masterpiece The Third Man; the economy and pace of the scene-setting are breathtaking.

I should perhaps mention, from my own experience, that even an experienced novelist can seriously misjudge the length of a novel. In 1994 I set out to write a new novel, not having written one for some years; I soon realised that what I had thought could be told in 75,000 words or so would require three times that length. A major rethink was involved.

So. If you are looking for a neat conclusion to this series of three posts on the problem of length in the novel, here it is: Most novels today are altogether too damn long.

They are too long in the sense that they include excessive and unnecessary material in order to achieve the effect that the author intends; and this redundant length is to no one's advantage, least of all the writer's.

If you are proposing to write a novel, then for heaven's sake plan it to be of reasonable length. There are innumerable examples from the past to prove that 60,000 or 70,000 words are quite sufficient for you to make your mark.

And, at the risk of stating the obvious, let me add that a writer who restricts himself to, say, 75,000 words as the upper limit, only has to do half the work of a writer who hammers out 150,000. And the two shorter books give twice the chance of royalties, and twice the chance of reputation-building reviews. This is scarcely rocket science, is it?

The problem of length -- part 2

The aesthetic imperative

This section of The Problem of Length (which continues from yesterday) represents my attempt to answer the following question: What is the ideal length for a novel, ignoring all demands of the publishing marketplace? In other words, if we consider ‘aesthetics’ alone, what is the best length for a novel?

It will be immediately obvious, of course, that the answer, in any specific instance, will depend at least to some extent on the content and nature of the novel. But in general my answer to this question is that, in all probability, the ideal length for a novel, whatever its subject matter, is probably a good deal less than is usually thought.

Before we consider aesthetics in isolation, let us first empty our minds of literary reputation, because it will prove, on examination, to be irrelevant.

This whole issue of length is clouded by the influence of those well known enemies of clear thinking, the professors of English literature, and their concept (God help us all) of the Great Novel. We have all been brought up, for instance, to believe that War and Peace (all 745,ooo words of it) is a ‘great novel’. Whatever that means, and in my opinion it means damn all.

To enlarge on that point, let us suppose that we put a thousand liberal-arts graduates in a theatre. Hands up, we say, anyone who agrees with the statement that War and Peace is a great novel. Lots of hands will go up, perhaps even three quarters of those present, because they've all been good boys and girls and have listened to their teachers. Then we say, Keep your hand up if you have actually read War and Peace. How many hands will remain? Let us say ten, because I’m feeling generous. And no, dear, seeing the movie doesn’t count. And finally we say, Keep your hand up if you really and truly, cross your heart and swear to die, can say with a clear conscience that you actually enjoyed reading War and Peace more than any other novel you’ve read.

How many hands remain in the air?

I hope my point it clear. It is that the accepted wisdom in literary circles bears no relation whatever to people’s actual reaction to books. Books which are hailed by the literary establishment (choose your own example) remain very largely unread; we could easily make a list of fifty novels which are widely recognised as literary masterpieces but which are read by no one who doesn’t have to study them for a degree (and half of those who are supposed to read them for study purposes don't bother either). Meanwhile, novels which are despised and rejected by that same literary establishment continue to demonstrate their effectiveness and power, either by selling in vast numbers and becoming popular successes, or by becoming cult classics in various genres.

It follows, therefore, that we should ignore literary reputation when we consider the ideal length for a book. The fact that certain novels, mostly big fat long ones such as Moby Dick (220,000 words), have acquired significant literary status gives us no clue whatever as to the ideal length of a work of fiction.

When we come to consider the aesthetics of the novel, what we are talking about is the extent to which fiction communicates emotion to its natural audience. A novel which hits its readers hard, with the emotion which the author intended them to feel, is a successful novel, no matter how large or small its readership is, and no matter how long or short the novel is. And sheer length, as we shall now perceive, has got very little to do with success in that sense: short books have, historically, been at least as successful as long ones; and in my view they are often more so.

It's time for some examples.

Who are the most memorable characters in nineteenth-century fiction? Well, for my money two of the candidates are Ebenezer Scrooge and Sherlock Holmes, neither of whom show any sign of fading from public consciousness.

Scrooge was created in the space of about 43,000 words, by my calculation; somewhere between 40,000 and 45,000 anyway. As for Holmes, he does appear in some novels but he comes to us chiefly through the short stories.

Move to the twentieth century and choose the most memorable character from that era: James Bond, for example. Bond was created by Ian Fleming in 1953, in Casino Royale. The book runs to 159 pages in my paperback copy, which is barely 60,000 words, at a guess. I still have copies of the first Pan paperback editions of most of the Bond books, and few of them creep over 200 pages.

(Incidentally, in the examples which follow I shall give the length in thousands of words if I know it, and in the number of pages if I don’t. Printed pages will, of course, vary in the number of words they contain, but as a crude rule of thumb you might assume that three pages equals a thousand words.)

There are many, many other examples of short books which have embedded themselves in the folk memory of readers. The Time Machine (Wells) runs to about 80 pages in most editions; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Stevenson) is 70 pages.

Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury) was written in nine days on a hired typewriter and the first edition contained 158 pages. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) has 172 pages. Bonjour Tristesse (Sagan) was 30,000 words, and Georges Simenon built a whole career on novels of a similar length. The Bridges of Madison County (Waller) is shown as 180 pages on Amazon, but I believe that too is about 30,000 words. So is Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, if you want a literary example; the book received special recognition in his Nobel Prize citation.

Hemingway, by the way, offered the following advice: ‘Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic.’

Enough. We have demonstrated that you do not have to grind on for 250,000 words to make a powerful impression on the average reader, or, for that matter, on those who decide on the next Nobel Prize winner.

Perhaps, before we leave the topic of aesthetics, this is the place to point out that the reader’s experience is in my view profoundly influenced, albeit largely subconsciously, by the size and weight of a book, and by the layout of the words on the page.

To begin with, a large, heavy book is an awkward object to carry around. It does not fit easily into a pocket. Your arms get tired holding the damn thing up. Some people find such books intimidating.

As for the typography: well, it seems to me that an art which was once taken seriously is now more or less ignored. In years past, for instance, no respectable printer or publisher would have allowed a right-hand page to end with a word divided by a hyphen. Neither would they have allowed a chapter to end on a page with less than perhaps five lines on it. To prevent these occurrences, minor alterations would be made in the spacing of the lines, or the words, higher up. Nowadays, I am sorry to say, nobody gives a shit. In all probability no one in-house reads the printed book anyway; and in many instances they don't read it in manuscript either. (Geller wants six figures for it so it must be OK.)

As for worrying about the readability of type -- one might as well forget it. No one seems to care (apart from the specialist large-print publishers) about the use of tiny type, lots of lines on the page, narrow margins, and so forth. But all of these things influence the reader’s experience, usually unfavourably; and it is obviously easier to give a text ‘air’, so to speak, if the wordage is short than if it is long.

This is probably also the place to point out that there is a deadly vice which affects writers, once they have reached a certain stage in their development. At first, the task of writing a full-length novel seems impossibly difficult. But then, gradually, writers get into the swing of things; their fluency improves, and after a while they realise that, hey, I can really do this! It isn’t so difficult to sit down and write a novel after all! And you know what, I’m really rather good at it!

This is, of course, drivel. And a writer who begins to enjoy the sound of his own writing voice is a writer who is more than likely to produce drivel.

A corollary of this vice is a reluctance to cut anything. The writer's attitude often boils down to: I wrote it, so it must be marvellous. This is the madness which afflicted Ross Lockridge, for example, in producing his 600,000 word ‘masterpiece’ Raintree County (eventually published at 380,000 words). In his case the disease proved fatal -- see my post of 4 October.

Tomorrow: some conclusions.

The problem of length -- part 1

'The history of the novel is a monument to self-indulged miscalculation in the use of words.' Thomas H. Uzzell

Please sir, how long should my novel actually be, sir, please sir? Actually, sir?

Well, Jones Minor, your novel should probably be a great deal shorter than you might imagine. Actually. For reasons which will now be explained.

This is a potentially lengthy subject (groan), so I will be as brief as possible; even so, the discussion may take a few days. The discussion is couched mainly in terms of the UK book trade, but the conclusions, I believe, hold good anywhere,

To begin with, it will be necessary to differentiate between the demands of the marketplace, on the one hand, and the aesthetic imperative, so to speak, on the other. Then we will try to draw some conclusions which will be of practical value to those of you whose delusions take the form of believing that you will one day be a great writer. (It is the least I can do to save you from your misguided yourselves.) And finally we need to examine at least one exception which will prove (i.e. test) the rule which has emerged from our deliberations.

The demands of the marketplace

(a) Long books

If you look at the history of the novel, it is clear that, at various times, the length of a typical novel has often been determined by what publishers are actively looking for. After all, there is no point in writing a book, whether short or long, if you are fairly certain from the outset that a ms which fails to fit the desired template will be rejected without hesitation. I myself once had a novel rejected in America for precisely that reason; excellent in every way, said the editor, but too short to fit the house rule. Early on, therefore, writers learnt to pay some attention to what publishers want.

In the nineteenth century, what publishers wanted was long books. And their demand was in turn conditioned by what the market was calling for. And the market, especially towards the end of the century, was for what are known as three-decker novels.

The introduction of compulsory schooling gradually meant that the pool of potential readers greatly increased in size; but these readers were for the most part not able to afford to buy novels. They could, however, afford to pay a fee to a lending library. The most famous and successful of these libraries was run by Charles Edward Mudie.

Mr Mudie very soon twigged that a novel published in three parts allowed him to divide the book between three separate subscribers, thus increasing his income. So that was what he bought from publishers: long novels, capable of being published in three parts. Publishers were quick to meet his demand, particularly as he would sometimes buy up the entire print run.

Incidentally, Mudie was also highly influential in determining the content and tone of nineteenth-century fiction. He was religious and prudish, which is one of the main reasons why the novels of his era do not feature any sex.

The influence of Mudie, and the other libraries, must always be borne in mind when we look back at the successful novels of the past – successful, that is, either in literary or commercial terms. It is undeniable that there were some very long novels published in the Victorian era which were enormously popular, and other long novels which are regarded as works of great literary importance. We must always remember, however, the effects of survivorship bias.

When we look back at the past, and see big thick books which became famous, we are seeing the survivors. A select band indeed. We do not see the big thick books which were bloody boring and of no real interest either to the literati or the hoi polloi. Neither do we see those novels which never achieved publication at all, because they were judged to be too short. Who knows what lost masterpieces were in that category? We must greatly beware, therefore, of falling into the trap of thinking that long novels are, by virtue of their length, somehow inherently superior to short ones. (Examples will be given shortly, in the section on aesthetics. Be patient.)

(b) Short books

By the middle of the twentieth century, economic circumstances had changed greatly. In the second world war, the shortage of paper meant that publishers were hard put to stay in business. Even in the 1950s, publishers were acutely conscious of the cost of typesetting and paper. So, when I began my writing career, in the early 1960s, a publisher such as Robert Hale was still making it very clear that the ‘correct’ length of a novel was no more than 55,000 words. That was a sufficient length to provide a novel which would sell to the public libraries, which were Hale’s principal market, and a novel of 100,000 words would have been rejected out of hand because it was too expensive, from Hale's point of view, to set the type and print.

(c) Back to long books again

Somewhere in the 1980s, perhaps, a theory began to gain ground among publishers that what the book-buying public wanted was value for money -- i.e. a book which looked as if it contained a lot of words. (This idea represents a serious misjudgement of what it is that readers actually do want from a novel, but that is what passes for clear thinking in the world of fiction publishing.) A fat book was therefore judged preferable to a thin one. A big book would keep a reader going for a week or two, it was argued, and such a book would be more readily bought than one which could obviously be read in an evening.

So, as recently as five years ago, Hodder Headline in the UK were issuing an information sheet which showed that they were interested in commercial fiction in the more popular genres which ran to at least 100,000 words.

Certainly it is not hard, these days, to find books which would be wonderfully useful for preventing a door slamming in a high wind. Michael Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White has 835 pages. Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections has 653. And Paul Anderson’s Hunger’s Brides has 1376. These books are, in fact, not so much novels as slabs of concrete, and, as far as I'm concerned, just about as enticing.

Recently, another motive for demanding long books has surfaced. The theory goes that bigger books make bigger margins (in profit terms). There are, of course, additional costs involved in publishing a long book; but (or so they say) you can charge a disproportionately higher price for it, thus boosting the bottom line! Wow! Aren’t we clever?

The answer, I’m sorry to say, is no.

(d) And next?

There may shortly be a move back to publishers favouring short books. One editor was quoted recently as saying ‘I think the status quo thinking right now is that short books work – people point to Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.’

Of course, if you check on Amazon it turns out that the Haddon book runs to 224 pages, and the Sebold to 336. Which shows you how rational the ‘status quo thinking right now’ is, if they regard those novels as short. As we shall see tomorrow, many successful books have been half that length.

Tomorrow: The aesthetic imperative.

Advice for the lovelorn

Human nature doesn't seem to change much, does it?

I am prompted to think that thought by the events of this week. It would be invidious to name names, but it has come to my attention that there are at least two individuals who have recently conducted love affairs of a slightly unfortunate nature. Both these individuals have first names beginning with the letter D. Out of consideration for their finer feelings, I will identify them no further than that, except to say that one of them is a princess, or was, and the other is the UK Home Secretary; or he is as I write these words, though the situation may soon change.

How different the lives of these two Ds would have been if only they had heeded the words of Mario Equicola (c. 1470-1525). Michelle Lovric, in her splendid anthology Venice, Tales of the City, tells us that Mario Equicola was the author of a book published in 1530 and entitled The New Courtier, on Prudent and Moral Living. Here, by way of a taster, is what Mario has to say on the subject of Love. And let his words be a lesson to you all.

I would suggest that you should flee extreme Love.... The souls of the Lovers have the time-honoured privileges of raging, arguing, frequent battles and declarations of peace, of rare pleasures and frequent miseries, and hardly ever a brief moment of stability.... According to many unvarying testimonies from those who, with irreparable damage to themselves, have essayed excessive Love, there comes a rapid turbulence and an inevitable (even to the wiser minds) blinding passion, which, as well as transforming a man from humble to insufferable, from shy to insolent, also obscures intelligence, confounds the Memory, dissolves conscience, and cancels out mercy, dissipates all earthly faculties, corrupts the strength of the body, exterminates freedom and brings old age before its time.

Now don't say you haven't been warned.

The McCall Smith production line

From time to time, as you may have noticed, I have expressed a general preference for commercial fiction as against the literary stuff. And on 18 May I made the point that Alexander McCall Smith looked like being ‘one of the most ruthlessly commercial writers to have appeared on the scene for some time. Giving the readers what they want, with knobs on.’ (See my post of 6 August for a discussion of the origin of the phrase ‘with knobs on’.)

The Ottakar’s Christmas catalogue tends to confirm my view of Professor McCall Smith as a highly commercial author: he has a whole page to himself, containing five separate offers, as follows:

In the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, the first five volumes are available in paperback, and Ottakar’s are offering three for the price of two.

The sixth volume in the No 1 series can be had in hardback at £10.99.

The 2½ Pillars of Wisdom contains the whole of the Von Igelfeld trilogy, i.e. three books effectively for the price of one (paperback).

Then there’s The Sunday Philosophy Club, which introduces McCall Smith’s new female detective, Isabel Dalhousie of Edinburgh (hardback).

And, finally, you can buy the paperback edition of last year’s The Girl Who Married a Lion.

Please note that nearly all these books of McCall Smith’s are notable for being quite short. For example, each book in the Von Igelfeld trilogy was originally published separately, and they ran to 144 pages apiece. Several of the No 1 series come in at 224 pages. The Girl Who Married a Lion is 208. And so on.

Why is this significant?

Well, I have long held the view, and have doubtless expressed it here, that the smart writer is the one who writes little and often. In the first place, if you haven’t hit the reader with some powerful emotions in 60,000 words, you sure as hell aren’t going to do it by ploughing on to 120,000. And in the second place, by writing two shorter books instead of one bloody great long one you obviously stand a better chance of increasing your royalty income. Especially if you’re any good. Because the delighted reader, having found one satisfactory book, immediately goes looking for the rest of your oeuvre.

Compare McCall Smith’s prolific output with that of Louis de Bernieres: ten years between Captain Corelli and the next one; and Tom Wolfe, who had an eleven-year year gap after Bonfire of the Vanities. Simple arithmetic surely tells us that, other things being equal, the writer who gives the fans a couple of books a year is going to generate greater revenue. Think Josephine Cox.

Of course, there are those who feel themselves to be well above such sordid considerations as earning money. Because they write Literature. Their work is Art. And it’s Art because they Express Themselves. They write only when the Muse strikes, and they are uninfluenced by the thought of cash. Until, of course, it comes time to seek a subsidy from the Arts Council. Then they’re the first in line.