The novella

For as long as I can remeber, I've been an avid reader.  I'm not trying to say thatI'd read Tolstoy at age three or Wilde at age four, but I've always loved books.

Perhaps it would be more accurate eo say that I love stories and ideas.  There's something wonderful and magical about capturing a story or idea in words, afixing meaning to the symbols which represent the sounds and then pressing those symbols to the page indefinately. 

Poetry, novels, plays; I find them all fascinating. 

There's something that I find inexplicably graceful about a piece of well written literature.  It's not always about plot lines and twists, although I'm not saying that these aren't important (far from it!) it's about the skill with which the afore mentioned literary techniques are executed.  A well written piece of literature can provoke equally strong emotions in me even on the third, fourth and fifth reading.  I remeber that the first book to ever do this was "The B.F.G", by Roal Dahl.  I loved it as a child and even now, as an adult.  Not the most complex of pieces, I'll grant you, but it is gripping in its' own way, nonetheless.  There are a number of novels which still make me marvel at the ingenuity of the author whenever I read them.

One of my favourite novels is "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand.  The sheer scale of the piece is awe inspiring (it's one of the longest novels ever written in a European language) and does count toward a great deal of my admiration. 

Why write such a long piece?  It is indeed a gruelling thing to read at times, not light reading by any means.  So why write in such vast and grand proportions?

The answer is this:  for what Rand aimed to achieve, it was necessary.  To present such a complex and rich philosophy, it was necessary to write a piece which explored every avenue of its' application, without leaving one question unanswered.  That is why I love this book so much, because it issuch a thorough piece in achieving the authors's aim. 

There are other novels for which I feel a similar level of love and admiration, some of near equal proportions, some which are far from it. 

Howeever, I'm writing this to think of a particular form of literature; the novella.  Not quite a short story, not quite a novel, it is, I would say,  the middle ground of the literary world. 

Althought with any piece of literature there is a reat deal of room for subjective interpretation of language and of themes, there seems to be something unique about novellas.  There is enough room to recount a story, or present an idea, but there is also plenty of intelectual space for the reader to make their own decisions and expansions (more than a novel, by any means). 

When reading a novella, it seems that it's an opportunity for the author to make the reader do a great deal more imaginative though than with a novel.  there is a great deal of information not being said and to me this is part of the genius of this particular literary form.  It's almost as if the reader is responsible for turning the novella into a novel. 

Some people may see it as laziness on the part of the author, but personally, I think that this level of restraint requires as much literary skill as the full and complete picture formed in a novel.  A novella is, to me, the blue prints of what we as readers then create for ourselves.