My summer reading list includes two books by highly non-prolific authors. The first is the Pulitzer-Prize winning Gilead, Marilynne Robinson’s second novel, following her first by 22 years. Who among us has enough ideas to fill up more than one novel? One thing I liked about Gilead is that it was short and flowed naturally, as though it had been easy to write. It didn’t feel as though Robinson struggled for 22 years with a massive manuscript.
I’ve just started the second book, Mating, by Norman Rush, which won the National Book Award. Rush is an old guy who hasn’t written that much.
Disturbingly, if the best novelists are only allowed one book every decade or two, what does that say about the quality to be expected from a Weblog?
Bah. Weblogs are not novels.
Though they can be fictional — the online equivalent of an epistolary novel (‘Freedom and Necessity’ is my favorite in this form).