handslive

One of those days. I'd leave early if I thought I could.

So I'm reading the December 2002 issue of F&SF and I get to one of the book review columns (Musing On Books by Michelle West) and she's got the following tidbit about reading a lot of fantasy fiction for the World Fantasy Awards that seems worth quoting:

High Fantasy takes more imaginative energy for me to read. When I'm running low on reader steam, my ability to absorb the strange names and cultures in even the best of fantasy novels dims. This is very unfortunate, because I love high fantasy.

With a novel, it's clear within a chapter or two whether or not I'm going to like the book. Novels, oddly enough, have a greater range of quality in the word-for-word writing than short fiction -- which is to say that short fiction seems, to me, to be more uniformly polished. I can think of a handful of short stories in which I cringed at dialogue, for instance; I run out of space if I start to list novels of which that's true.

Short fiction fails most often in the end; I can't read the first few pages and decide, on that basis, whether or not the story works for me. I tend to think of this problem as a structural problem, although it could also be broken down into the "What was the point of that exactly?" response.

A lot more short stories are published in any given year than are novels.

My own thinking on this, point by point:

I actually find that high fantasy is easier when I'm low on reading energy. In large part this is because 90%, maybe even 95%, of high fantasy follows a very standard heroic quest plot line. The characters usually fall quickly into their preset categories and I don't have to worry about anything but the "concept" and the thrill of the ride. In any case, a well done story, especially one that is in the 5%, is actually invigorating for me to read. Sort of fuels up the ol' brain cells, I guess.
I think I mostly agree with point 2 if we're talking about published fiction. I'm lucky that the quality of published fiction I read mostly results in far better short fiction than long fiction (I like F&SF's material very much and their standards are higher than the ones I apply to my own purchases of novels). But I still think what she says is correct in this case.
I'm not sure I agree here. I usually have to read at least as many words into a novel before really making up my mind to hate it as I would have to read in a similar short story. In terms of percentage this may look like short stories work better until the end, but I think that it may simply take that long to establish whether the author will save themselves or not.
I'm guessing that 4 is no surprise. There's probably a broader range of writers, too; namely writers who haven't, won't, or can't publish a novel.

As you can tell, work is very busy today.