Brevity does not imply levity. That, at least, is the view of Ian McEwan. The national treasure was speaking at the Cheltenham Literary Festival over the weekend when he crowned the novella, which he defined as a book of roughly 25,000 words, as the ‘supreme literary form’. He challenged publishers and critics who believe the novella to be inherently inauthentic and frivolous, arguing that the compact form brings out the best in the greatest writers.
‘Somehow . . . the prose is better, more condensed, more rigorous. Characters have to be established with a great deal of economy. All this makes demands on a writer that brings them to a better calibre of prose. They don’t relax, it’s much more focused.’
McEwan reckons that ‘The Dead’, the lengthy short-story at the end of Dubliners, is James Joyce’s finest work, superior even to Ulysses.
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