the amazon single

This is interesting:

Amazon on Tuesday announced it will be trying a new format for the Kindle e-reader which it is calling the “Kindle Single.”

Longer than a magazine article, and shorter than a full novel, Amazon says the Kindle Single could be the “perfect, natural length to lay out a single killer idea…well researched, well argued and well illustrated.”

Kindle Singles will be roughly 30-90 pages in length (10,000-30,000 words) carry a lower price than a full length book, and be available in their own section of the Kindle store.

First thought? Like the article points out, this would be the perfect format for serialized fiction, something I’d love to see make a comeback. Short isn’t in itself a bad thing (I’ve got Roth on my side), and if e-book novellas get people reading serious fiction, then have at it.

bellow and roth and auster oh my

Question: Your writing style has changed in the last decade. How would you describe the change?

“Yes, I think it has. I think it’s more condensed. I think it hits harder than it used to. I think I have a much greater desire to strike sharp blows, to find more exact formulations. I greatly dislike books that waste my time. I detest superfluous sentences, unwanted paragraphs, needless pages.” –Saul Bellow, Contemporary Literature Vol. 25, No. 3 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 265-280

Mark Athitakis has a post up on brevity and Bellow, and he situates Roth smack dab in the middle of it. Apparently Saul Bellow was Phillip Roth’s mentor, which I find very interesting. My knowledge on both authors is very limited, restricted to the kind of historical facts one would learn in school, but I can see it. I’ve had Augie March sitting in my to-read pile for several months now as well as American Pastoral, and I’m definitely going to follow up the former with the latter. As someone learning to read as a writer instead of a reader, I’ve found approaching books in such a contextualized way to be  much more rewarding — don’t tell Barthes.

In other news I’m still reading Invisible. I’m refusing to let myself make up my mind about it, but I’m beginning to think that maybe Auster just isn’t for me. Almost everything I said about New York Trilogy applies to this book as well: it’s overly intellectualized, and the prose is boring. There’s no life to anything, no soul. It’s all so sterile. I find myself wanting to skip over whole paragraphs that seem to serve no real purpose except to fill space and get the reader from point B to C, and all this reading about Roth and Bellow and short form fiction makes me want to get out a red pen and go to work on my copy. I’m just barely half way right now, and I’m still hopeful…but things are looking grim.

roth on writing

Phillip Roth has been making the rounds in support of his new book, and has had a few interesting things to say on the future of the novel, specifically in regards to its decline in the face of technology:

“The concentration, the focus, the solitude, the silence, all the things that are required for serious reading are not within people’s reach anymore,” he said. Beginning with film in the 20th Century, then television, then computers, and more recently social media networks such as Facebook, the reader is now utterly distracted.  ”Now it is the multiple screens and there is no competing against it”

Among the publishing chatter about a possible impending death of the popular, longer novel and the growth of novellas due to e-readers, “Nemesis” — clocking in at about 56,000 words — is Roth’s latest in a cycle of short novels. You see, Roth noted humorously, “I am with the times.”

Far from being new ideas, it’s still interesting to hear someone like Roth vocalize them. His solution? A higher output (five books in five years) of shorter novels.  Though it’s hard to play the prediction game, I can’t help but think that in the future prolificness and expansiveness will be good keys for success.