Not-a-novel List books

[Liz M]

The premise of the 1001 list is to exhibit the development of the novel, but Peter Boxall also states that "there is no definite boundary that separates a novel from a short story, from a novella, from a prose poem, from autobiography, witness testimony, or journalism, from a fable, or a myth, or or a legend".

Off the topic of my head these come to mind:
Out of Africa (memoir)
Dispatches (journalism)
Reasons to Live (short stories)
Eugene Onegin (verse)
Metamorphoses (myths)
Watchmen (graphic novel)
Labyrinths (stories/essays)
In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences (non-fiction)
Walden, or Life in the Woods (literary non-fiction?)

Which list books do you consider to be not-novels?

[Tej]

Labyrinth of Solitude (essays)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (journalism)

To my mind, there is definitely a place for autobiography and short story on this list. I think there would be something wrong with a list of "greatest books ever" that didn't include "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." I have more trouble with including verse and essays. If they include verse, then I wonder where is Shakespeare, Homer, or even Beowulf. If they include essays, there are any number of works that could be included.

[Anthony]

The Pit and the Pendulum
The Fall of the House of Usher

Both short stories by Edgar Allan Poe

[TeresaFL]

Tej wrote: "If they include verse, then I wonder where is Shakespeare, Homer, or even Beowulf...."

I wondered the same thing. When I first looked at the list I was surprised not to see Beowulf. In my mind it's importance in Anglo-Saxon literature makes it something that you should read before you die. Same with Homer and at the least most of Shakespeare.

[Liz M]

TeresaFL wrote: "I wondered the same thing. When I first looked at the list I was surprised not to see Beowulf...."

Tej wrote: "I think there would be something wrong with a list of "greatest books ever" that didn't include "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." I have more trouble with including verse and essays."

Despite what the title says, it is not intended to be a list of greatest books ever, but a list of works that contributed to the development of the novel. As "novel" is a difficult entity to define, it seems reasonable that books such as In Cold Blood (often described as a non-fiction novel) or Eugene Onegin (a novel in verse) are included while Shakespeare and epic poetry are not.

[Anthony]

I don't own the book. Is this the explanation they give? And how does this explain the inclusion of a short story?

[Liz M]

Tony wrote: "I don't own the book. Is this the explanation they give? And how does this explain the inclusion of a short story?"

The first post quotes the editor's introduction for the 2008 edition. I suppose short stories are included because it's an arbitrary decision to define novels as being more than xx pages?

[Liz M]

Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories (short story)
The Nose (short story)
Before Night Falls: A Memoir (memoir)
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

[Judith]

"The Enormous Room" - E.E. Cummings (nonfiction/memoirs)
"The Interesting Narrative - Gustavus Vassa (nonfiction/memoirs)

[Joselito Honestly]

Nathaniel Hawthorne, writing in his preface to his THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES, distinguished between "Romance" and "Novel" and said that this is a Romance, not a Novel, as in fact its complete title is THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES: A ROMANCE.

Based on the same distinction he gave, I would say that Danilo Kis' GARDEN, ASHES is also not a novel but a romance.

[Liz M]

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang (biography)

[Leslie]

I agree that the line between memoir and novel is often blurred.... I was just at a lecture last week where movelists were talking about how they invariably make use of material from their personal lives and memoirists (or those that write interesting memoirs) use literary techniques in order to make their stories compelling. I am currently writing a "literary memoir" about my life as an English professor and my personal crises, refracted through the lens of my favourite novels, so these issues are front and centre in my mind.....

Ex Lit Prof
www.the-reading-list.com

[Liz M]

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski (short stories)
The Museum of Unconditional Surrender by Dubravka Ugrešić (short stories)

[Joselito Honestly]

Barnes' NIGHTWOOD and Michaels' FUGITIVE PIECES are, I believe, prose poems. What's a prose poem? The lone character in another list book AGAINST NATURE aka AGAINST THE GRAIN by Joris-Karl Huysmans explains why prose poems are his favorite:

"Of all forms of literature, the prose poem was Des Esseinte's favourite. Handled by an alchemist of genius it should, he maintained, contain within its small compass and in concentrated form the substance of a novel, while dispensing with the latter's long-winded analyses and superfluous descriptions. Many were the times that Des Esseintes had pondered over the fascinating problem of writing a novel concentrated in a few sentences and yet comprising the cohobated juice of the hundreds of pages always taken up in describing the setting, drawing the characters and piling up useful observations and incidental details. The words chosen for a work of this sort would be so unalterable that they would take the place of all the others; every adjective would be sited with such ingenuity and finality that it could never be legally evicted, and would open up such wide vistas that the reader could muse on its meaning, at once precise and multiple, for weeks on end, and also ascertain the present, reconstruct the past and divine the future of the characters in the light of this one epithet.

"The novel, thus conceived, thus condensed... would become an intellectual communion between a hieratic writer and an ideal reader, a spiritual collaboration between a dozen persons of superior intelligence scattered across the world, an aesthetic treat available to none but the most discerning."

[Linda]

Here's a few more non-novels on the list:
Cane - a collection of poetry and short stories
The Things They Carried - war memoirs
The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights and Aesop's Fables of course are short stories
Schindler's Ark (List) - not sure; is this more historical/biographical or is it historical fiction?

There are also quite a few that fall into the novella category rather than being full-length novels. Look here to see some that qualify as novellas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novella

[Liz M]

Linda wrote: "Here's a few more non-novels on the list:
Cane - a collection of poetry and short stories
The Things They Carried - war memoirs
[book:The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Th..."

I think we are proving the editor's point that the definition of a novel and the classification of books into genres can be somewhat arbitrary. For the sake of consistency, I use the Brooklyn Public Library to determine whether individual works are fiction, nonfiction, memoir, etc. All of the above mentioned titles (except Aesop's Fables) are shelved in their fiction section. But thinking about The Things They Carried and Dispatches, it is tough to say that one is more "true" than the other.

[Joselito Honestly]

H.P. Lovecraft's AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS is a short story, at most a novella.

[Joselito Honestly]

FLAUBERT'S PARROT is, to me, a set of essays tied together by a string.

[Helen]

The Garden Party and Other Stories was on the list but deleted .... are short stories by Katherine Mansfield ...

These are forced upon (and usually despised) by all the students in New Zealand schools .... can really appreciate them now though .... one of the few books of short stories I will read over and over ...

[[deleted user]]

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (memoir)