Great Novellas

[J-Sun]

The intro of my Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels (Silverberg/Greenberg) says:

Some of the greatest works of modern literature fall into the class of novellas. Consider Mann's "Death in Venice," Joyce's "The Dead," Melville's "Billy Budd," and Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"--or Faulkner's "The Bear," Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych," Carson McCuller's "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe."

Anyone have any to add to that list or, if not, just want to discuss those that are on that list?

 

[Extollager]

Great thread idea, J-Sun. I am not going to worry too much about whether something's a novelette, novella, nouvelle, or short novel, but instead rattle off some things I've read and enjoyed and that come quickly to mind. Henry James's "The Aspern Papers" is one, also "The Friends of the Friends" (aka "When It Came," I think). Conrad's "The Shadow-Line" (reread "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" first for an extra dimension) and maybe "Amy Foster," but I need to read that again; and it might belong to the weird tale genre and so not necessarily belong here. Elizabeth Gaskell's "Cousin Phillis." Turgenev's "First Love." Several pieces by Adalbert Stifter -- "The Forest Path," "The Recluse," "Brigitta," and more. Tolstoy's "The Devil," "The Kreutzer Sonata," "Master and Man," "Father Sergius." Great, great stuff. Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Ebb-Tide," "The Beach of Falesa."

We should be able to come up with fifty or even a hundred truly fine novellas, outside the sf-fantasy genres that we discuss elsewhere, to list here.

There's a book, Four Stories, by Sigrid Undset that I should set aside to catch my eye.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"Notes from Underground" by Fyodor Dostoevsky comes to mind.

"The Turn of the Screw" and "Daisy Miller" by Henry James.

 

[SilentRoamer]

I think The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster is a fantastic novella.

Incredibly prescient for when it was written.

 

[hitmouse]

Without a word or page count, I am going on books that from memory felt thin enoigh to be novellas. So give me some slack here.


Pnin Vladimir Nabokov
Animal Farm George Orwell
Candide Voltaire
Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
Is This A Man Primo Levi (arguably autobiography)
All Quiet on the Western Front Rene Remarque

 

[Danny McG]

One that sprang to mind right away (only finished reading it last month) is The Third Man by Graham Greene.
It was in a compendium book with three instantly forgettable others by different authors. The blurb said he wrote the novella to establish a basis for the classic film.
TBH I found the novella much more gripping than the film, his descriptive sentences transported you to the creepy, dismal war damaged city and you could almost smell the smoky atmosphere

 

[hitmouse]

Graham Green is a great call. I would add Our Man on Havana, The Comedians, The Quiet American.

 

[Extollager]

I've got The Comedians on my TBR shelf on the piano, and that's a purty long novella, surely! (wink)

When I see this famous portrait of Greene, I think it looks like he just burped. No doubt on some seedy gin.

 

[Randy M.]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned James Joyce's "The Dead," which might be the best novella I've ever read.

Another favorite, Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men."


Randy M.

 

[Bick]

Graham Green is a great call. I would add Our Man on Havana, The Comedians, The Quiet American.

None of those Greene books are novellas, they're all novels. Also, for the record, none of your earlier suggestions are novellas either (Madame Bovary is well over 300 pp)

I would concur with Heart of Darkness, and Of Mice and Men, and add The Pearl (Steinbeck) and The Outsider (Camus), The Old Man and The Sea (Hemingway).

 

[Extollager]

Several of E. T. A. Hoffmann's works would qualify as novellas. We had a thread on Hoffmann going a few years ago, which seems to have run into the sand. "The Sandman" etc. These are works of the fantastic imagination, which we really don't want to see swamp this thread, but we discussed Hoffmann here in the Literary Fiction zone.

The E. T. A. Hoffmann Thread

There's this book...

Amazon.com: Eight German Novellas (The World's Classics) (9780192832184): Ludwig Tieck, Heinrich von Kleist, Georg Buchner, Annette von Droste-Bulshoff, Adalbert Stifter, Eduard B Morike, Gottfried Keller, Theodor Storm, Andrew. J Webber, Michael Fleming: Books

and this...

Amazon.com: The Rider on the White Horse (New York Review Books Classics) (9781590173015): Theodor Storm, James Wright: Books

 

[Allegra]

Stefan Zweig wrote a great deal of novellas, there are quite a few his collections of different editions, such as this:

It contains:

Burning Secret
A Chess Story
Fear
Confusion
Journey into the Past

All superb.

Also, Thomas Mann's Death In Venice.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

I always wished there was a science fiction version of that classic novella called Death on Venus.

 

[Extollager]

Trollope's "The Spotted Dog" was an impressive story about alcoholism, as I recall.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka fits this length, I believe, and was highly influential.

 

[dask]

The Last Castle by Jack Vance. Can hold its own against anything listed above.

 

[Extollager]

Speaking for myself, Dask, I would prefer that discussion of genre novellas such as "The Last Castle" be done elsewhere, e.g. in this case on one of the Jack Vance threads -- so that this thread isn't swamped by lists of people's favorite sf, fantasy, and supernatural stories.

I realize that Kafka's "Metamorphosis" is a fantasy -- but I think most people would regard it as more fittingly mentioned in a Literary Fiction section of Chrons.

My 2c only.

 

[hitmouse]

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome.

Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith.

I think these are novella length.

 

[Bick]

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome.

Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith.

I think these are novella length.

Nope, both are novels, and too long to be considered novellas (Diary... is well over 200 pp).

 

[BAYLOR]

Benito Cernino by Herman Melville