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April 27, 2007
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Squeezing the three-decker
Orion Group is set to launch "Compact Editions" of some of the greatest--and longest--classics we have.
Tolstoy, Dickens and Thackeray would not have agreed with the view that 40 per cent of Anna Karenina, David Copperfield and Vanity Fair are mere "padding", but Orion Books believes that modern readers will welcome the shorter versions.The first six Compact Editions, billed as great reads "in half the time, will go on sale next month, with plans for 50 to 100 more to follow.
Malcolm Edwards, publisher of Orion Group, said that the idea had developed from a game of "humiliation", in which office staff confessed to the most embarrassing gaps in their reading. He admitted that he had never read Middlemarch and had tried but failed to get through Moby Dick several times, while a colleague owned up to skipping Vanity Fair.
What was more, he said: "We realised that life is too short to read all the books you want to and we never were going to read these ones."
Research confirmed that "many regular readers think of the classics as long, slow and, to be frank, boring. You're not supposed to say this but I think that one of the reasons Jane Austen always does so well in reader polls is that her books aren't that long".
The first six titles in the Compact Editions series, all priced at L6.99, are Anna Karenina, Vanity Fair, David Copperfield, The Mill on the Floss, Moby Dick, and Wives and Daughters.
Bleak House, Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, The Count of Monte Cristo, North and South and The Portrait of a Lady will follow in September.
Each has been whittled down to about 400 pages by cutting 30 to 40 per cent of the text. Words, sentences, paragraphs and, in a few cases, chapters have been removed.
The Times article goes on to compare the new series to the Classics Illustrated comic books of old and to offer a few compact editions of its own.
Here is Anna Karenina: "The problem is, thought Anna--her aristocratic brow furrowing slightly under a fabulous new hat--men look so irresistible in uniform! Ditto boots, billowing shirts and moustaches! Hang marriage. Hang motherhood. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a train to catch."
And here is David Copperfield: "I am Born ... I am Sent Away from Home ... I Have a Memorable Birthday ... I Become Neglected and Am Provided For ... I Make Another Beginning ... Somebody Turns Up ... I Fall into Captivity ... Depression ... Enthusiasm ... Dora's Aunts ... Mischief ... Mr Dick Fulfils my Aunt's Predictions ... I am Involved in Mystery ... Tempest ... Absence ... Return ... Agnes!"
Publishers can do as they like with books that aren't under copyright. But they miss the point of these novels when they suggest that nothing is lost--and a lot gained--by bowdlerizing them with an eye to shortening the amount of time someone has to spend with them. Much of the point of the nineteenth-century novel was that it was LONG. Length compelled readers to live with characters, to spend time with them in ways we no longer associate with books all that much, but that we do associate with TV series.
Serial publication underscored this ideal--Dickens regularly took 18 months to publish a novel in monthly parts, and sometimes he took even longer. When you are reading David Copperfield at a settled, measured pace of about fifty pages a month, and when that experience is drawn out for well over a year, there is no sense of a long, heavy novel weighing you down at nights. There is, however, the sense of living characters who exist in time, and whose imagined existences become entwined with those of the readers who are returning regularly to them each month, as if to an old friend.
Authors shared this sense of their works as vital entities. When Dickens wrote the preface to the completed David Copperfield, he observed that "It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know, how sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years' imaginative task; or how an Author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are going from him for ever. Yet, I have nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess (which might be of less moment still) that no one can ever believe this Narrative, in the reading, more than I have believed it in the writing." In the preface to the 1869 edition, Dickens expanded on that sentiment: "Of all my books, I like this the best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is DAVID COPPERFIELD." Not all the works slated above were serialized (The Mill on the Floss for instance, was published in book form), but even those that weren't belonged to a culture that understood novels as forms that compelled readers to digest a story over time, and they were written with that in mind.
People are fond of saying that serial publication=padded writing. And certainly there are times, especially when reading the work of lesser Victorian novelists, or the early work of great Victorian novelists, when the prose seems to drag. But that's because the writer in question is learning to inhabit a form that requires considerable tautness and pace--not padding--if it is to work. You would be hard-pressed to trim Bleak House or Middlemarch (which Virginia Woolf called "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people") without ridiculous results. And you would be missing the point of these works, which revolve around plot but are also about much more than plot, if you read versions that had been reduced to simplified storylines.
I'm all for more people reading the long Victorian novels, which is really what this series seems to be about. But there are better ways to bring them to people. I'd love to see newspapers and magazines serializing the classics afresh, bringing Dickens and his followers (because all Victorian serializers were, like it or not, Dickens' followers) back to life, replete with the original illustrations. I think people would read this stuff if they got it in small, manageable chunks parsed out over time, they way Victorian readers themselves did. And I think they would develop a taste for longer fiction--and a patience for spending time with longer fiction--that they could carry over into their reading lives more generally.
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Comments:
The re-serialization idea is a good one. A smart marketeer could help build the audience by linking the serialization, in a print publication, with discussions on TV and/or the web. (Although one would have to think a bit about how you do this without anyone giving too much of the not-yet-serialized portion away)
this is a reflection of widespread attitudes--maybe part of our demand for instant gratification. i had students complain in course evaluations about reading five novels in a semester! people don't see the novel as an investment (or the see it as too costly an investment). and it is odd that while many people have a whole range of television shows that they must watch each week, few will commit to reading a novel chapter once a week.
maybe it's partly that novels are taught in brief blocks (read _Bleak House_ in two weeks or a week)--which is forced by the reality of syllabi.
a ps to david--nice post on your blog about our fearmongering society.
The Bible in 50 Words
God made, Adam bit, Noah
arked, Abraham split, Joseph
ruled, Jacob fooled, bush talked,
Moses balked, Pharaoh plagued,
people walked, sea divided,
tablets guided, promise landed,
Saul freaked, David peeked,
prophets warned, Jesus born,
God walked, love talked, anger
crucified, hope died, Love rose,
Spirit flamed, Word spread, God
remained.
Thanks for the nice words, Jason.
I wonder how much of the problem with novel-reading is due to many kids having never learned to read *fluently*...that is, they can do it, but it takes such a high % of their mental "processor cycles" to just handle the mechanics of reading that there aren't enough cycles left for understanding and enjoyment.
No data that I've seen supporting the above, just a hunch.
I really like the comparison to TV series. It is difficult to watch at one time, say, 5-10 hours of a well-written TV series. I know: I've tried it, renting TV shows on DVD only to be disappointed by how unpleasant they became after the fourth consecutive hour of watching... Even a (relatively-short) mini-series is hard to watch in one sitting.
Serial fiction often doesn't work in one large chunk. However, with novels (and now with DVDs) it is often easier to publish serial works in one package. That the same self-control (is this the right word?) necessary to enjoy "the complete season" on DVD is necessary to enjoy a Victorian novel lends some hope that future generations--used to watching TV on DVDs instead of in syndication--may better appreciate the latter.
Some folks have been trying this in different ways. Stanford University has run a "community reading" project for several years, in which they release 19th century works serially (in print for a fee, or in PDF for free) and support discussions and in-person events around it. 2005 was for Dickens (Great Expectations, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities), and 2006/2007 was for Conan Doyle (various Sherlock Holmes tales). I think the last of the Holmes works is finishing up, and I don't think they've announced a new series yet. But you can find info and download all the PDFs at http://sherlockholmes.stanford.edu/.
You could be right, David, about the fluency. And among people who are fluent, reading styles could still make a difference.
My husband and I have completely different reading styles. I skip around sometimes, esp. if I'm not sure I'm going to like a book well enough to make the commitment to reading it all the way through. Sometimes the third time I "read" a book is the first time I actually read it cover-to-cover. My husband, on the other hand, starts at the first word and goes word-by-word until he gets to the end. So if we get a book that we both want to read I usually take it first. I get the big picture and miss details sometimes, he gets details but sometimes misses the big picture. But I'm more likely to read the long novels, although he has read that Necronomicron thing, or whatever it is, and those other long things that go with.
There are several stories in Anna Karenenina. You could stick with Anna and Vronsky, and Kitty and Levin, and even Dolly, and still skip a whole lot of stuff. You could skip a lot of Kitty's experiences when she was taken away to get over her broken heart, and Dolly's husband's partying and politicking. That's if you want to get the story. But the other stuff, Levin's farming adventures and his attempt to come to terms with the landowner/peasant system for instance, are really important for people who don't only want the story, but also to understand the moment in time that the story was set in. That Russia is gone and will never come back. The character development, too, is part of what some readers (me) find very appealing. You could leave that out of the plot but you'd miss some of what makes the book good literature.
Middlemarch is the same, in that there are numerous story lines and a lot of background information that isn't part of the story.
But I don't see how you could cut any of Portrait of a Lady without ruining the story. Everything pretty much feeds into the plot. You'll miss important stuff if you leave out the details.
I *knew* my daughter would love Pride and Prejudice but I could never get her to read it until she was in the 9th grade. I was lying down one day, resting, and she came in and lay down next to me. I picked up P & P and started reading aloud without telling her what it was. After a couple of chapters I put the book aside and said I was ready to take a nap. "What is that book? I must read it!" she said. She took it away and read it, and reread it and reread it, and ended up buying her own copy to take to college with her. By the way, her reading style is more like mine than her dad's.
As far as I understand, the non-shortened versions will not disappear in thin air.
Let each person decide for himself if he wants to
1) read the entire book for its own sake
2) read the shortened book and at least get a clue to what it is about
3) skip it entirely
By introducing 2) I think more people don't have to choose 3).
Thus, a good development.
I will say I found it frustrating to have to absorb "Great Books" at the speed required by my college classes (we used to joke: "If this is Tuesday, it must be Plato" about it). I felt that reading 300+ pages a week seriously compromised my ability to absorb the information.
As an out-of-school adult, though, it's an active pleasure to be able to take four or six months to read one of the "large" books, slowly. It took me almost a year to complete Middlemarch but I enjoyed it the whole time - going back and re-reading, stopping to think, doing the book at a human pace.
I, too, like the idea of re-serialization. Consider the mania over the latest Harry Potter release: I think the spirit and the desire are there, people just need a little persuasion.
(Isn't there a - perhaps apocryphal - story of a traveller from London getting off the ship and being met by people (who had not had the most recent installment of the serial in the U.S. yet), asking "Is Little Nell dead?")
"I'd love to see newspapers and magazines serializing the classics afresh, bringing Dickens and his followers (because all Victorian serializers were, like it or not, Dickens' followers) back to life, replete with the original illustrations. "
That would be a neat concept; somewhat like what this fellow is doing with Pepys' diary.
I think this is all rather nostalgic. The serialization of novels worked because serialized novels were a cheap and popular form of mass entertainment.
With the rise of popular theatre, then vaudeville, then freak shows and circuses, then amusements parks, then affordable working class resorts, then film, radio, television, cable, internet, serialized novels have been simply replaced.
We're not going to turn back time and get people reading again as a wide form of mass entertainment -- especially if all they can read is reprints of Victorian novels. Film, television, and cable have replaced the novel, and excellent art is being produced in each media: *Marie Antoinette*, *Lost*, *Deadwood*, etc.
Linval - go find a book by Maureen F. McHugh. Or Martin Cruz Smith. Or Sharon McCrumb. Or Harry Turtledove. Novels are still being written and read. They have not been replaced.
Laura, you prove my point: *novel* reading is alive and well, but in terms of serial entertainment, the written word has been replaced.
And serializing the classics would only serve to remind the audience that serialization is an outmoded form of fiction publication. (It's like people who listen to *Prairie Home Companion* yearning for the days of the radio show.) Maybe if *new* works of fiction were serialized, you might create some interest -- but, of course, this is done every month in magazines like *Harper's*.
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