The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance...

>The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes!

Novelists BTFO. How will they ever recover?

I think most writers would say the subjects in their books are not reducible to 5 minute conversations

kind of missing the point

the reason that a smart person with a good point to make would write a fiction novel is just because it makes it far more accessible to people

people will have a much easier time learning something if they can enjoy themselves while in the process

>the reason that a smart person with a good point to make would write a fiction novel is just because it makes it far more accessible to people
>people will have a much easier time learning something if they can enjoy themselves while in the process

You're a clumsy thinker. Short fiction is more accessible to the common man because it's briefer. Compare how much easier it is to watch an episode on TV, than to commit to a whole movie.

People can enjoy themselves with short fiction just as well as a novel.

Your thinking is wrong, even if your main point is right. The novel is essential for certain modes of narrative, but most prats publishing these days definitely haven't earned their lengths.

He has a point but what he doesn't consider is how a 'point' gets stronger as we dedicate ourselves to it. Emotional impact of saying "x dies." without any context and telling a masterful story in which x dies.

Not really. Hamlet has the most effective death in all of literature, shown by Hamlet's influence throughout all literature. And yet the play barely fills 80 pages. Not even novella length. Like , you're a clumsy thinker, and the type of idiot who mediocrizes this board.

What are some good very short stories writers?

Why, Neil Gayman is obviously the smartest short fiction writer alive. Read him and forgo the rest!

Hamlet is literally Shakespeare's longest play though sure it seems short when you treat it as a book but remember its a play which means in actuality it takes 4 hours to perform in its entirety

and do you really think its just a coincidence that his longest play is also his most famous and influential?

Dude Hemingway lmao

GAIMAN is highly overrated, srlsy.

Good short story writers:
Borges, Calvino, Cortazar (kinda overrated too, but not that bad).

Don't give me that backtracking shit.

The point was:
>To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes!

Even converting 4 hours to modern page count barely yields 100 pages in return, far less than several hundred. And if you want to speak in terms of oral performance, the essence of Hamlet is encapsulated in the To be or not to be monologue, which doesn't take long, and which remains fresh in the modern consciousness, for people who know nothing about the rest of the play. So once again, you're wrong.

Now if you're still interested, effectively prove that the length of multi-hundred paged novels are necessary for developing their themes.

too long and too popular! I was thinking about someone like this meme weird russian guy. I forgot how he was called!

>prove that the length of multi-hundred paged novels are necessary for developing their themes.

I think the mere existence of this literally masterpiece speaks volumes (pun intended) on this issue

check and mate kiddo just so you know it was nothing personal

I like that it was knocked a few pegs from the Lit 100 chart.

You miscorrected the sanic meme so I see your point.

>whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes
Horseshit reductionism. That's like asking why anyone should watch a movie when it's faster to read the Wiki summary. Point and laugh, move on.

Sorry wrong image

Thomas McGuane

>[This military tactitian] was one of those hopelessly and immutably self-confident men, self-confident to the point of martyrdom as only Germans are, because only Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract notion—science, that is, the supposed knowledge of absolute truth.

tolstoy is the platonic ideal of a grandfather. if you weren't (as i was not) lucky enough to have a man sit you down and reveal the truths of human nature to you, you should read great works of literature desu.

I love the man but
>implying novels contain only one idea
>forgetting character and how they can change due to events
>actually telling a story rather than exposing an idea
I almost feel like Borges was joking here

i've got this fat book called the Collected Fictions and the experience of reading that in its entirely does not differ drastically from reading a long novel

Well tbqh with you, I am not deeply affected by Hamlet's death as I read the play. Far more affected by Ophelia's but not because of who she is but what she represents. No need to get catty though.

>putting an exclamation mark when the Spanish original doesn't have, or need, one