Longest book
Thomas Hyer
>
> _Battlefield Earth_ weighs in at 1006 pages, but _The Stand_
>(The revised version) is 1461 pages long. I'm not sure if it's really
>science fiction, but if it is, then it gets my vote.
> Wishbringer
I've digressed here to talk about non-sf -- those offended should quit
now...
It's unwise to count pages -- they vary from the low 200's of words
in large-print kiddie books like _Mission Earth_ to the high 400's in
those trade-paperback annotated editions you have to cough up 10 bucks
for in college bookstores...
I used to look at things like this, and here are some of the things
I know, with errors +/- 5% (statistical) +/- 10% (systematic):
TITLE # WORDS (1000's)
(Bible) 700
Lord of the Rings 600
War and Peace 660
IT 600 + a few, don't recall for sure
Atlas Shrugged 740
Moby-Disk 220 (for comparison)
The Sound and the Fury 95
So I thought _AS_ would fend off all challengers, discounting the
uncut _Stand_ which is after basically literary vomit swept into
a big bucket...
Then I saw one of the aforementioned trade paperbacks: 1600 of
the densest pages I've ever seen, chockablock with murder, rape,
unbridled passion and some of the most disgustingly turgid prose
this poor world has ever had the misfortune to see. I refer, of
course, to the work that made _Tom Jones_'s reputation: Samuel
Richardson's _Clarissa_. I don't want to accidentally say anything
flattering about this one-man case for testing the Grandfather
Paradox, but the man's sheer _endurance_ simply stupefies me.
The whole affair weighs in at 930 Kwd by my (approximate) count --
I had to do this hastily lest I approach too closely the inevitable
event horizon. In the absence of radical advances in bookbinding
technology, let us pray that this gruesome exercise in protracted
sadism reign unchallenged, that there may be Peace in Our Time.
Thomas Hyer _____________________
/Half the time, even \ words
-S---L------A---------C-----< _I_ don't share my / \ support
\ opinions. / like
------------------ bone...
Ryk E Spoor
Does anybody read Van Vogt anymore? Surely you jest.
Van Vogt wrote some of my all-time favorite stories; somewhat
dated now, true, but still some of the finest SF/Space Opera writing
you can find anywhere. The Null-A trilogy, Slan, The Silkie, Supermind...
These stories are damn good for any era.
You want turgid and wandering? try Moby Dick.
Sea Wasp
(saki)
> Then I saw one of the aforementioned trade paperbacks: 1600 of
>the densest pages I've ever seen, chockablock with murder, rape,
>unbridled passion and some of the most disgustingly turgid prose
>this poor world has ever had the misfortune to see. I refer, of
>course, to the work that made _Tom Jones_'s reputation: Samuel
>Richardson's _Clarissa_.
My Penguin edition is 1499 pages. Does that make it any easier? :-)
Actually, it made *Lovelace's* reputation...and Lovelace was surely a
character model for Henry Fielding when he later wrote "Tom Jones."
But turgid? It was the style of the times, and to each his own and
all that...but I find the epistolary excesses of "Clarissa" to be
far more literary and quaintly enjoyable than some of the more
staccato SF prose, such as A.E. Van Vogt...does anyone read him
anymore?...or the indulgent effusion of Mailer or Barth (in the
non-SF realm).
>I don't want to accidentally say anything
>flattering about this one-man case for testing the Grandfather
>Paradox, but the man's sheer _endurance_ simply stupefies me.
I was going to mention "Clarissa" when I saw this thread beginning,
but thought the better of it because originally it was released in
serial form, bit by bit to whet the appetites of literate London in
the 1740's. By all accounts, the locals were as anxious for each
episode as moderns can be today over some overly-puffed television
mini-series. So I'm not sure if its original format precludes its
status as the biggest book of all time.
--
--------------------------------------
"And that pose is out too, Sunny Jim."
--------------------------------------
* saki (d...@ism.isc.com) *
Stephen [Steve] R. Smoot
|> Does anybody read Van Vogt anymore? Surely you jest.
|> Van Vogt wrote some of my all-time favorite stories; somewhat
|> dated now, true, but still some of the finest SF/Space Opera writing
|> you can find anywhere. The Null-A trilogy, Slan, The Silkie, Supermind...
|> These stories are damn good for any era.
I like him too, but the third Null-A is really weak, as are a lot of the "short
stories woven together into novels" he did.
-s
Paul S Shannon
>I...@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (Thomas Hyer) writes:
>> TITLE # WORDS (1000's)
>
>>(Bible) 700
>>Lord of the Rings 600
>>War and Peace 660
>>IT 600 + a few, don't recall for sure
>>Atlas Shrugged 740
>>Moby-Disk 220 (for comparison)
>>The Sound and the Fury 95
>
>three volumes, all in teeny-weenie-eye-strain-o-vision print.
>--
> Doug Moran | Subgenius beach party, subgenius beach party
>pyramid!ctnews!zip!dougm | Subgenius beach party, subgenius beach party;
>do...@zip.Convergent.com | it never stops.
What about the Mahabhrata (the Song of India)? It's supposed to be, what
20 times longer than Paradise Lost? A monstrous work in any case.
Abhijit Khale
>
>What about the Mahabhrata (the Song of India)? It's supposed to be, what
>20 times longer than Paradise Lost? A monstrous work in any case.
>
Abhijit
Il Oh
>>I...@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (Thomas Hyer) writes:
>>> TITLE # WORDS (1000's)
>>
>>>(Bible) 700
>>>Lord of the Rings 600
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It's not actually a single book, is it? I'm sure you could come upt with
some seriously long books if you counted all the books in a series.
--
"I'm sorry. | Il Hwan Oh
If you were right, | University of Washington, Tacoma
I would agree with you." | i...@cac.washington.edu
-- Dr. Malcolm Sayer, _Awakenings_ |
Sherrian Lea
|> No one's pointed this out yet.
|>
|> >>I...@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (Thomas Hyer) writes:
|> >>> TITLE # WORDS (1000's)
|> >>
|> >>>(Bible) 700
|> >>>Lord of the Rings 600
|> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|>
|> It's not actually a single book, is it? I'm sure you could come upt with
|> some seriously long books if you counted all the books in a series.
Yes, it is. A series consists of separate works involving related
characters or scenarios. A single book divided into volumes is not a series
No part of _Lord of the Rings_ is independent;
it is no more a series than _Remebrances of Things Past_, also published
in a three-volume edition. Same for _Cyteen_ in paperback.
A continuous work is defined by plot and structure, not by the covers.
Sherrian
Paul S Shannon
Actually, it is supposed to be a single novel. It was originally
billed as a "triple-decker" novel, that required 3 volumes. If you
want to divide LOTR into books, you'll get six of them.
Timothy Alan Mohler
you'd far outdistance anything else mentioned in here. Except possibly
the Executioner (Mack Bolan) or Hardy Boys series, both of which clokc
in somewhere near a hundred books, each of two hundred pages or so..
Tim
Il Oh
In that case, how does the Bible count as a sigle book?
James 'Kibo' Parry
>> i...@cac.washington.edu (Il Oh) writes:
>>|> No one's pointed this out yet.
>
>>|> >>I...@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (Thomas Hyer) writes:
>>|> >>> TITLE # WORDS (1000's)
>>|> >>
>>|> >>>(Bible) 700
>>|> >>>Lord of the Rings 600
>>|> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>>|> It's not actually a single book, is it? I'm sure you could come upt with
>>|> some seriously long books if you counted all the books in a series.
>
>>Yes, it is. A series consists of separate works involving related
>>characters or scenarios. A single book divided into volumes is not a series
>>No part of _Lord of the Rings_ is independent;
>>it is no more a series than _Remebrances of Things Past_, also published
>>in a three-volume edition. Same for _Cyteen_ in paperback.
>>A continuous work is defined by plot and structure, not by the covers.
>
>In that case, how does the Bible count as a sigle book?
As long as we're at it,
does the Encyclopaedia Britannica count?
do bound volumes of magazines going back decades count?
In any case, if we're limited to single, undivided pieces of fiction,
I'll write a nice long story to top everything. ("Mr. Massmurderer, you
are accused of the murders of the following seventeen million people
with your homemade hydrogen warhead: Aarfy A. Aachen, Abigail A. Aantsypants,
[insert rest of several dozen phone books here]
Just think, in terms of volume, I'd beat Asimov.
In terms of speed, I'd beat the late L. Ron Hubbard, still typing onto
that endless roll of paper on the typewriter in the sky.
And I'd just have to sell *ONE* fifteen-trillion page volume to make a
fortune!
--
James "Kibo" Parry ki...@rpi.edu
132 Beacon St. #213, Boston, MA 02116
(617) 262-3922
Michael A. Delong
>
>>>I...@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (Thomas Hyer) writes:
>>>> TITLE # WORDS (1000's)
>>>
>>>>(Bible) 700
>>>>Lord of the Rings 600
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>It's not actually a single book, is it? I'm sure you could come upt with
>some seriously long books if you counted all the books in a series.
I'm of two minds on this one.
1)Technically, the Protestant Bible consists of 66 "books", but they aren't
necessarily a series.
2)Sometimes an author publishes a novel in several volumes, each with a
different title - C.P. Snow's _Sons and Strangers_, for example,
or Harold Brodkey's _Women and Animals_, which supposedly sits rather
gloriously in several large filing cabinets in his home, and is
alledged to be The Great American Novel.
So is a single novel a single book?
Perhaps Bacon considered _The Complete Works of William Shakespeare_
to be a single work - if so it should be included above, too. :)
>--
> "I'm sorry. | Il Hwan Oh
> If you were right, | University of Washington, Tacoma
> I would agree with you." | i...@cac.washington.edu
> -- Dr. Malcolm Sayer, _Awakenings_ |
Mike DeLong.
------------
"The room should keep a count of the number of philosophers in it."
-- C.A.R. Hoare, _Communicating Sequential Processes_
David P Brennan
>In article <1991Apr18.0...@milton.u.washington.edu>, i...@cac.washington.edu (Il Oh) writes:
>|> No one's pointed this out yet.
>
>Yes, it is. A series consists of separate works involving related
>characters or scenarios. A single book divided into volumes is not a series
>No part of _Lord of the Rings_ is independent;
>it is no more a series than _Remebrances of Things Past_, also published
>in a three-volume edition. Same for _Cyteen_ in paperback.
>A continuous work is defined by plot and structure, not by the covers.
>
If this is true, how do we define something like _Gor_ or any of
the mega-series from Anthony? Just the Xanth set would qualify as
one of the longest, hmm?
Dave Brennan
UPitt SLIS
dpb...@unix.cis.pitt.edu
Mike Godwin
>Yes, it is. A series consists of separate works involving related
>characters or scenarios. A single book divided into volumes is not a series
>No part of _Lord of the Rings_ is independent;
>it is no more a series than _Remebrances of Things Past_, also published
>in a three-volume edition.
The seven books of REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST (not "Remembrances")
each have far more thematic unity than any book in THE LORD OF THE
RINGS.
--Mike
--
Mike Godwin, |"Most pernicious of French imports is the notion that
mnem...@eff.org | there is no person behind a text. Is there anything more
(617) 864-0665 | affected, aggressive, and relentlessly concrete than a
EFF, Cambridge, MA | Parisian intellectual behind his/her turgid text?"
Mike Godwin
>I don't know how long it is, but Proust's REMEBERANCE OF THINGS PAST is
>three volumes, all in teeny-weenie-eye-strain-o-vision print.
You're thinking of the two-volume set that was marketed before
Terence Kilmartin revised and updated the Moncrieff translation.
That had print so small that one was tempted to say the only
purpose of the edition was to have it on one's bookshelf--except
that the individual volumes from the same publisher also had the
same small print.
The new three-volume Kilmartin-Moncrieff translation has print of
a perfectly respectable and readable size.
(So, read it!)
Matt Austern
>
> The new three-volume Kilmartin-Moncrieff translation has print of
> a perfectly respectable and readable size.
>
I read the original Moncrieff translation. I know that the revision
exists, but I haven't looked at it. Is it a major improvement? (Yes,
I know about Moncrieff's gross mistranslation of the titles. How
about the text itself?)
--
Matthew Austern Just keep yelling until you attract a
(415) 644-2618 crowd, then a constituency, a movement, a
aus...@lbl.bitnet faction, an army! If you don't have any
aus...@physics.berkeley.edu solutions, become a part of the problem!
Mark Gellis
The Bible? The Lord of the Rings? You people are amateurs! If we're
talking about single works of fiction, in English (the Bible doesn't
really qualify here--it was not originally written in English, or by
a single author or group working together at one time--but it is useful
as a standard of reference) I don't think anyone beats Richardson's
Clarissa, which logs in at more than one point one MILLION words. Nearly
twice the length of Lord of the Rings. It's a pretty good book, too.
(It was originally published in three volumes--I understand some gentleman
of the 18th Century recalls a scene where his three daughters are reading
it, one volume to each girl, tears streaming down all three faces.)
Enjoy.
Lynn Alford
>In article <1991Apr18....@athena.mit.edu> sa...@athena.mit.edu (Sherrian Lea) writes:
>>Yes, it is. A series consists of separate works involving related
>>characters or scenarios. A single book divided into volumes is not a series
>>No part of _Lord of the Rings_ is independent;
>the mega-series from Anthony? Just the Xanth set would qualify as
>one of the longest, hmm?
No, because those books are independent of each other. There is no
continuous story line between them all either, they only share the same
background world. You can call it a series, but you could not say it
makes one volume.
Lynn
--
Remember, you can't count on computers when the chips are down.
Disclaimer; there has been no opinion in this post. If you read
something you thought was an opinion, you had best see your doctor
immediately. There was no opinion.
meaghan elizabeth parker
There's a Chinese epic called Tale of the Stone( I think ). It's out in
paperback from Penguin and runs to eight volumes( give or take a couple).
If one were to check Books In Print, one could add the length of the pages
together and see how it compares. I'm willing to bet that it's longer, though
probably not better,than Proust.
Yours,
Ben Wiener
e-mail:me...@midway.uchicago.edu
Sherriann Lea
|>
|> "I'm sorry. | Il Hwan Oh
|> If you were right, | University of Washington, Tacoma
|> I would agree with you." | i...@cac.washington.edu
|> -- Dr. Malcolm Sayer, _Awakenings_ |
Sherrian
Michael Jason Lewis
don't spring to mind) is _Battlefield Earth_ by L. Ron Hubbard. No idea on
thousands of words, but 1066 pages in medium-small print.
If anybody knows how long it is in words, feel free to supplement my ignorance..
Mike Lewis
tr...@leland.stanford.edu
DNAS...@esoc.bitnet
My newsfeed is normally a bit slow across here, but I wonder if
anybody has mentioned anything by Richardson yet (Clarissa?).
The tale(s?) of Genji is(/are) also good for propping up a
wobbly table.
Dave Nastaszczuk. ESOC, 6100 Darmstadt, Germany.
richardson craig s - CS500
Pshaw. There is at least one Western series (Longarm) well over 100...
Trash Westerns come in at about the same weight as Trash action/adventures.
Why is this cross-posted to r.a.sf-lovers? I consider Longarm to be fantasy :)
--Craig (Bleeds *Mariner* Blue)
--
To come to know your enemy, first you must become his friend.
And once you become his friend, all his defenses come down.
Then can you choose the most fitting method for his demise.
- Tokugawa Ieyasu
Francis Muir
Sherrian Lea writes:
A single book divided into volumes is not a series No part of _Lord of the
Rings_ is independent; it is no more a series than _Remebrances of Things
Past_, also published in a three-volume edition.
The seven books of REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST (not "Remembrances") each have
far more thematic unity than any book in THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
Proust's novel, *A la recherche du temps perdu*, consists of sixteen volumes,
not seven. Methinks Mike was short-changed by his bookseller. As to the
translated title, it is an abomination not worth quarreling over. *Looking for
my Lost Past* is simple and close, and makes clear the personal context.
We could have a great thread translating the volume titles. So who will jump in
with a better one for *Du cote de chez Swann*? *Swann's Way* is truly awful.
The second volume, *A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs* is "officially"
translated as *Within a Budding Grove*. Really.
fido
fra...@hanauma.stanford.edu
unknown tilde escape
Stephen P. Guthrie
is the most average in length, aand what is the standard deviation
of book length. Also the curtosis and skewness would be useful data.
marc.colten
My candidates for the longest book (at least in the English language,
one volume, not-a-series, self contained category) are
Atlas Shrugged - by Ayn Rand
The Source - James Michner
marc colten
WARNING: I like getting e-mail, but sometimes my answers are "undeliverable"
=============================================================================
(?) ______ ||\ ||
. | | || ||| Signature in progress.
__ O ! | | || ||| Still looking for the "perfect" quote.
__(_.)-/|\/|_| |___| \||| Watch this space for details.
| |______| \ || marc colten
| | / \ \||
=============================================================================
Stephen P. Guthrie
>with a better one for *Du cote de chez Swann*? *Swann's Way* is truly awful.
>The second volume, *A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs* is "officially"
>translated as *Within a Budding Grove*. Really.
>
The Sweet Cheat Gone
Lisa S Chabot
Yes, me too. Also, what is the newsgroup's shortest book discussion, what
is the average flame war length, and how to wait the averages based
on hops or miles.
I'm not sure this counts, but _Shrink_Lits_ has reduced 70 of the western
world's great books to less than a page of verse each. Should be considered
by anyone wanting to cheat on the RMGROUP reading lists.
--
It is dreadful to think that other people's grandchildren may
one day rise up and call one amiable.
Richard Caley
mg> The seven books of REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST (not "Remembrances")
mg> each have far more thematic unity than any book in THE LORD OF THE
mg> RINGS.
Suprise!
I didn't see anyone claiming Tolkien was as good as or better than
Proust[*], only that LotR is a single work, not a series.
If it is seen as a series it is, of course, nine(?) books not three.
[*] Though no doubt someone will...
Rich Holmes
>In article <1991Apr18.0...@milton.u.washington.edu> i...@akbar.UUCP (Il Oh) writes:
>In any case, if we're limited to single, undivided pieces of fiction,
>I'll write a nice long story to top everything. ("Mr. Massmurderer, you
>are accused of the murders of the following seventeen million people
>with your homemade hydrogen warhead: Aarfy A. Aachen, Abigail A. Aantsypants,
>[insert rest of several dozen phone books here]
>
Sorry, but there are several published stories longer than this. One, in
the form of a poem, is by Martin Gardner and goes (from my notoriously bad
memory):
One day
A mad meta-poet
With little to say
Wrote a mad meta-poem
That started, "One day
A mad meta-poet
With little to say
Wrote a mad meta-poem
That started, 'One day
A mad meta-poet
With little to say
Wrote a mad meta-poem
That started...
...sort of close.'
Were the words that the poet
Finally chose
To bring his mad poem
To some sort of close."
Were the words that the poet
Finally chose
To bring his mad poem
To some sort of close."
This beats you, Piers Anthony, L. Ron Hubbard, and James Michener, cubed.
--
- Rich Holmes ri...@suhep.bitnet or ri...@suhep.phy.syr.edu
Syracuse U. Physics Dept. or if you must: rsho...@rodan.acs.syr.edu
The Kuwaitis have oil. The Kurds don't. End of story.
Mark Gellis
I mentioned Clarissa a few days ago. I guess the newsfeed is a bit slow
because no one seems to be responding to my post...the fact of interest is
that CLARISSA logs in at about one point one MILLION words, about twice
the length of LOTR. And it really is a pretty good story, if you like
very long, sad epistolary novels--it has some really fascinating characters,
though.
Jonathan W. Fitton
Where does L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth Dekology fit in here? As far
as I can tell (I've only read the first three volumes), it revolves
around a common plot, with the same characters, etc.
As for single volume works, his Battlefield Earth probably ranks up
there (1000+ pages in paperback).
Jon
djh...@garnet.berkeley.edu
Well .. it is usually published in one volume ... you could describe
it as two books if you wanted... which leads to the old joke about
how Ace was going to condense the Old and New Testament to (I think)
forty-five thousand words each and put it out as an Ace Double with
the following titles:
"MASTER OF CHAOS"
and
"THE THING WITH THREE SOULS"
Whatever ....
Dorothy J. Heydt
djh...@garnet.berkeley.edu
University of California,
Berkeley
Sean P. Engelson
In article <1991Apr19.0...@marlin.jcu.edu.au>, cp...@marlin.jcu.edu.au (Lynn Alford) writes:
|> In <117...@unix.cis.pitt.edu> dpb...@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David P Brennan) writes:
|>
|> >In article <1991Apr18....@athena.mit.edu> sa...@athena.mit.edu (Sherrian Lea) writes:
|> >>Yes, it is. A series consists of separate works involving related
|> >>characters or scenarios. A single book divided into volumes is not a series
|> >>No part of _Lord of the Rings_ is independent;
|>
|> >the mega-series from Anthony? Just the Xanth set would qualify as
|> >one of the longest, hmm?
|>
|> No, because those books are independent of each other. There is no
|> continuous story line between them all either, they only share the same
|> background world. You can call it a series, but you could not say it
|> makes one volume.
No exactly. The point is that the volumes, to qualify as a single work, must
share the same story *sequentially*. Id est, each volume continues the same
coherent story-line. This contrasts with the parallel approach, as used in
Xanth, where each volume *repeats* the same (in)coherent story-line. OK?
--
Sean Philip Engelson, Poet Errant Make your learning a fixture;
Yale Department of Computer Science Say little and do much;
Box 2158 Yale Station And receive everyone with
New Haven, CT 06520 a friendly attitude.
Mike Godwin
edu (Francis Muir) writes:
>
>Proust's novel, *A la recherche du temps perdu*, consists of sixteen volumes,
>not seven.
Right. Which is why, when I referred to the English translation, which
originally appeared in seven volumes, I used the Moncrieff title.
While nothing like an accurate translation, it summons up Shakespeare to
my sessions of sweet silent thought, and so I cannot really complain.
>Methinks Mike was short-changed by his bookseller. As to the
>translated title, it is an abomination not worth quarreling over.
Kilmartin made a conscious decision to keep the Moncrieff title, and
I don't blame him. But while it is hardly an abomination, it certainly
doesn't merit a quarrel, so I agree with you on that small point.
>*Looking for
>my Lost Past* is simple and close, and makes clear the personal context.
I prefer Nabokov's suggestion: "In Search of Lost Time." Marcel's search
is everyone's search. The "personal context" is, I think, too narrow a
reading of what Proust is up to.
>We could have a great thread translating the volume titles.So who will jump in
>with a better one for *Du cote de chez Swann*? *Swann's Way* is truly awful.
>The second volume, *A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs* is "officially"
>translated as *Within a Budding Grove*. Really.
SWANN'S WAY doesn't bug me, but WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE is pretty lame.
But this suggestion surprises me--I thought you just said there were
16 volumes. Yet your invitation refers explicitly to the seven volumes we
English-speakers are more familiar with. What gives?
>fra...@hanauma.stanford.edu
> unknown tilde escape
As for tilde escapes, what about unknown tildes really frightens you?
Mike Godwin
>
>I read the original Moncrieff translation. I know that the revision
>exists, but I haven't looked at it. Is it a major improvement? (Yes,
>I know about Moncrieff's gross mistranslation of the titles. How
>about the text itself?)
The text itself is also improved. It's franker and slightly closer in
feel to the French. It's best to think of it as a Kilmartin-Moncrieff
collaboration. (Oh, yes, and there's that third translator whose name
I always forget.)
Mike Godwin
> What I'd like to know is how they came up with
> The Sweet Cheat Gone
Uh, because Albertine was sweet, and a cheat, and "disparu"?
Robert Firth
>Proust's novel, *A la recherche du temps perdu*, consists of sixteen volumes,
>not seven. Methinks Mike was short-changed by his bookseller. As to the
>translated title, it is an abomination not worth quarreling over. *Looking for
>my Lost Past* is simple and close, and makes clear the personal context.
As does the title 'Remembrance of Things Past', surely - at least
to those who remember the sonnet from which it is taken.
P W Stephenson
> [we got on to Proust via long books..]
>SWANN'S WAY doesn't bug me, but WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE is pretty lame.
Agreed, SWANS's WAY reads OK titlewise. However, it doesn't bring out Proust's
original point --- that his narrator's walks by Swann's house (which
I think is what DU COTE DU CHEZ SWANN refers to) are somehow
connected with his idea of the way Swann leads his life, compared with
that of the Guermantes in vol. 3. Someone (can't remember who) is
working on a new translation and is calling it THE WALK BY SWANN'S
PLACE, give or take the odd synonym. Sounds to me like that goes too
far the other way, but my French isn't good enough to pick up the
nuances of Proust's titles anyway. So feel free to ignore me :-).
Peter Stephenson
p...@uk.ac.ed.castle
John Burke
>In article <ycmg!h...@rpi.edu> ki...@jec311.its.rpi.edu (James 'Kibo' Parry) writes:
>>In article <1991Apr18.0...@milton.u.washington.edu> i...@akbar.UUCP (Il Oh) writes:
>>In any case, if we're limited to single, undivided pieces of fiction,
>>I'll write a nice long story to top everything. ("Mr. Massmurderer, you
>>are accused of the murders of the following seventeen million people
>>with your homemade hydrogen warhead: Aarfy A. Aachen, Abigail A. Aantsypants,
>Sorry, but there are several published stories longer than this. One, in
>the form of a poem, is by Martin Gardner and goes (from my notoriously bad
>memory):
>
>One day
>A mad meta-poet
>With little to say
...poem of infinite length deleted, so my news program will still post
my reply...
>This beats you, Piers Anthony, L. Ron Hubbard, and James Michener, cubed.
>
> - Rich Holmes ri...@suhep.bitnet or ri...@suhep.phy.syr.edu
Better still is John Barth's masterpiece of narrative geometry. I
forget the title, but it appears in the 'Lost in the Funhouse'
collection, I'm pretty sure. It consists of the phrase "once upon a
time " on one side of a strip of paper and "there was a story which
began" on the other side, and the instruction to cut the strip out,
give it a half twist, and tape the ends together---instant,
neverending story. Actually, two infinite stories, depending upon
where you start...
Brings to mind the story 'The geometry of narrative' from _Analog_
some years back, an interesting little exercise in which the author
actually created a narrative which was a Moebius strip (rather than
being an infinite regression which was simply printed on one, as
Barth's story was).
John
----------------
"This is my satori...zen in the art of buttering bread. No bread, no
butter, no knife, just a gesture...movement...space...the void."
Gorodish, in _Diva_
--------
"Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what
the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of."
They Might Be Giants, "Where Your Eyes Don't Go", _Lincoln_
----------------
Mitchell Marks
members of the American expatriate Parisian 20's/30's gang were
sitting around, and got into a contest to compose the shortest short
story that would still feel like a story. We should insert here
Fitzgerald's attempt, etc. But the topper is attributed to Hemingway:
For sale: baby clothes. Never used.
--
Mitch Marks mitc...@cs.UChicago.EDU
--But...but...I can see with my own two eyes that it's...
--Hey, who're you gonna believe: *me* or your own two eyes?
Lisa S Chabot
About which Mike Godwin wrote:
>As for tilde escapes, what about unknown tildes really frightens you?
This is a common problem with mails...
Doug Moran
>... which leads to the old joke about
>how Ace was going to condense the Old and New Testament to (I think)
>forty-five thousand words each and put it out as an Ace Double with
>the following titles:
> "MASTER OF CHAOS"
> and
> "THE THING WITH THREE SOULS"
Hey, yeah! Then they could get, like, Arnold to play the title role in
the movie version of CHAOS! Yeah! And Michael Keaton as the Thing With
Three Souls in the sequel! And then there could be a climatic battle
scene in the third and final installment (unless the first two make a lot
of money, in which case all bets are off): NOSTRADAMUS' REVENGE.
--
Doug Moran | Subgenius beach party, subgenius beach party
pyramid!ctnews!zip!dougm | Subgenius beach party, subgenius beach party;
do...@zip.Convergent.com | it never stops.
USENET News System
weighs in as the longest book (~ a foot thick, according to one
of my professors who mentioned reading it (while we were studying _Swan's Way_,
incidently). I'm not sure of the author, although I could find out if anyone
is interested.
From: grw...@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Gregory R Weiss)
Path: phoenix!grweiss
--Greg Weiss