The big book

It wasn't a deliberate strategy, but it appears 2009 is becoming the year of the "big book." I've tackled a number of hefty tomes so far, most recently turning the last page (over 800 of them!) on Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. This is the second time I've tackled the classic novel. A few years back, I read about ten pages of the Penguin version, but my heart just wasn't in it. But I bought the new translation (the husband and wife team of Pevear and Volokhonsky, who seem to be tackling the major Russian works; I had intended to buy their Crime and Punishment at the Strand in NYC, but ended up leaving the store without it, although I did walk out with their translation of War and Peace), and I was hooked from the start. A proverbial page turner! The true definition of a classic! A timeless masterpiece! Well, you get the picture. This reading comes on the heels of other lengthy novels, primarily Roberto Bolano's wonderful works 2666 and The Savage Detectives (which was a re-read). I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm a novel reader, not a short story reader.

This actually is difficult for me to admit, that I love the long novel over the short story. For years, I thought I was a true short story aficionado. The evidence, while not overwhelming, was there. I had a subscription to the New Yorker when I was 17, largely because I loved the idea of having a new short story to read every week since, at the time, I fashioned myself to be an aspiring writer. And how does one "break in" to the business? By writing short stories, I reasoned. Yet, I barely remember any short stories from those early reads, although I can rattle off a good number of excellent non-fiction pieces. And even today, while still a faithful New Yorker reader (there was a several-years gap when I barely glanced at the magazine on the newsstand), the short story tends to be the last thing I read. (Unless, of course, they publish a new Haruki Murakami or Roberto Bolano story. I'm not sure David Sedaris counts, but of course I faithfully read him too. And Woody Allen, although his "casuals" are becoming increasingly lame.) I'm not outright dissing the short form - after all, I love John Cheever and Mavis Gallant and Alice Munro short stories, and there was a recent John Updike piece that blew me away; and Salinger's Nine Stories is still such an important book in my reading history - but I think I prefer the sprawling, sometimes messy, aspect of a novel over the "perfection" of the shorter work. Maybe because my own life is so messy!

That being said, I'm currently reading The Song is You by Arthur Philips.

(This post was going to be about my own attempts at writing short stories, but it morphed into something else. Which is a good clue as to why I never become much of a writer...)