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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

books and novels

  
 
Trijhaos
17:30 / 01.01.02
What exactly is the difference between a book and a novel? Whenever I wrote a paper about a novel and called it a book I got points taken off. I don't see any difference between the two, they're both made the same. As far as I'm concerned everything ever written has been a book. Twain wrote books, Tolkien wrote books, Dickens wrote books, Ayn Rand wrote garbage. What makes a book worthy of being called a novel?
 
 
Spatula Clarke
17:32 / 01.01.02
When it's fiction and it's over a certain length, Shirley? I don't think the term is used based on a story's perceived 'worth'.
 
 
Jack Fear
17:58 / 01.01.02
It's a matter of specificity--of not confusing medium with genre.

All novels are books, but not all books are novels: consult a dictionary (which is a book, but not a novel) for the proper meaning of the word "novel."

Textbooks, cookbooks, books of short stories, books of poetry, books of essays, dictionaries, collections of newspaper cartoons--any collection of pages between two covers which is published in one set edition (as opposed to a peridoical) is a book.

A novel,though, is a single unified work of fiction (generally in prose, although there are novels in poetry and comics) of about 30,000 words or more (shorter than that and it's a novella).

Calling a novel "a book" is like calling a Mozart symphony "a song": you may be arguably correct on technical grounds, but you sound like a fucking ignoramus.
 
 
Trijhaos
18:10 / 01.01.02
Ok, so I can see I'm wrong in calling every written body of work a book. What are some examples of novels?
 
 
Spatula Clarke
18:37 / 01.01.02
Is this a trick question? Did you read this:

quote:Jack Fear:
A novel,though, is a single unified work of fiction (generally in prose, although there are novels in poetry and comics) of about 30,000 words or more (shorter than that and it's a novella).

?

You must be ablke to think of something that fits that description. Failing that, this forum is full of examples. Explore a little.
 
 
Jack Fear
18:40 / 01.01.02
Examples?

The Golden Ass, Moll Flanders, Ulysses, As I Lay Dying, Great Expectations, Gravity's Rainbow, Tom Jones, Naked Lunch, Harlequin Romances, The Satanic Verses, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Bridget Jones's Diary, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Tommyknockers, the Sweet Valley High books, Atlas Shrugged, The Sun Also Rises, the "Left Behind" series... the works of Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Thomas Mann, and Graham Greene: also the works of Harold Robbins, Jacqueline Susann, Jeffrey Archer, Danielle Steele, Tom Clancy.

Novel is a value-neutral term: it refers only to the form. There are good novels and bad novels.

A very odd question, this.

Could you give an example of something that you think might not be a novel?

[ 01-01-2002: Message edited by: Jack Fear ]
 
 
sleazenation
19:06 / 01.01.02
Novel's tend to be in plain prose (asopposede to novel-length poetry which is defined as poetry because of its metre rather than a novel )

given that this is a definition that is based on an arbitary diference in the underlying structure of a book is A Void / La disparation a novel or something else.

(I know it IS somethingelse whose exact name eludes me for the moment, but my point is -- isn't it also a novel and is it not also primarily a novel and whatever else it is is secondary)[/LIST]
 
 
Trijhaos
19:47 / 01.01.02
Danielle Steele and Tom Clancy are novelists? Maybe my definition of novel is different from everybody else, but I've never considered their work novels. Sure, they write interesting books, but I've always seen a novel as something like the Scarlet Letter, or Song of Solomon, not Rainbow Six and whatever Danielle Steele writes.
 
 
Jack Fear
20:14 / 01.01.02
They don't write interesting books. They write horrible, horrible books.

Horrible, horrible novels.

Am I being unclear?

One more time, slowly and moving my lips big: "Novel" is a technical term for ANY long work of fiction: it's the definition of a form, and implies no aesthetic judgment whatsoever. There are good novels and bad novels, just as there are good paintings and bad paintings.

Christ. Am I talking to myself here? I would have flunked your ass long ago.

quote: Maybe my definition of novel is different from everybody else...

Obviously. But if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a goddam duck, whatever you choose to call it: just so, if it's prose fiction over 30,000 words, it's a fucking novel.

End of story.

Jesus.

Kids today.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
20:16 / 01.01.02
Trijhaos, I think that's because you're allowing taste to come into the definition. Clancy writes novels, if, by novels, you mean quote:A fictional prose narrative of considerable length, typically having a plot that is unfolded by the actions, speech, and thoughts of the characters.Personally, I think Danielle Steel's work should be labelled "arsewipes", but I can't argue if people want to call 'em novels...

Sleaze; I think the word you're thinking of is lipogram? A Void is an extended lipogram, a text that suppresses the use of single letters.

[ 01-01-2002: Message edited by: The Return Of Rothkoid ]
 
 
Lothar Tuppan
20:36 / 01.01.02
quote:Originally posted by Jack Fear:

All novels are books, but not all books are novels: consult a dictionary (which is a book, but not a novel) for the proper meaning of the word "novel."


Jack, something I've noticed on the board is that a lot of people here hate proper definitions and can't be bothered to consult dictionaries.

A simple referencing of a dictionary would've answered the initial question of this thread a lot easier than posting would've.

[ 01-01-2002: Message edited by: Lothar Tuppan ]
 
 
sleazenation
22:38 / 01.01.02
thanks rothkoid

so for a quesion unlikely to be in the dictionaries

is a lipogram of more than 30,000 words a novel or is it just a long lipogram?


I guess it would be the latter but would like to see if anyone has any reason that might not be the case
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
07:23 / 02.01.02
I suppose that would depend on whether it has any kind of narrative sequence or not... if it's just unconnected words it probably doesn't count as a novel.

Are we talking OULIPO here?
 
 
Sax
07:33 / 02.01.02
What a highly curious thread. Am I missing some glaringly obvious tongue-in-cheek thing in all this "what is a novel?" stuff?
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
07:39 / 02.01.02
Perec's novel was an Oulipo exercise. I think it still qualifies as a novel, though, as the exercise informed the way it was written, but not the fact it still produced a coherent novel. The lipogram was a frame for the novel, I guess; it controls the way that the text was produced by dictating the choices made in its construction, but it doesn't control the fact that a novel came of it. I read A Void last year, and it wasn't that unconnected; there was a definite plan to things, which moves it away form exercise and towards novel, methinks.
 
  
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