Annie Ernaux: Simple Passion

Annie Ernaux is this year’s Nobel laureate for literature. I have to confess, I’d not heard of her but as I read about her and her work, I was intrigued and purchased a copy of her book Simple Pleasure.

Wow.

First, it is very well written, engaging, and beautiful. Truly. It is a memoir based on her experience of being the other woman with a married man. She describes female desire—emotional and physical—in a way that every writer should read because it is a lesson on the form. She writes fluidly but concisely.

Second, this memoir breaks just about every publishing rule there is—all the big ones, anyway—other than write well. The biggest break in convention is that the book is only about 80 pages. In fact, as I read more about her, most of her books are in that page range. The exception is her most recent work that comes in at about 250 pages.

It is my hope that with this honor for Ernaux that the publishing world sits up and takes notice, a book needs to be as long as it must be, no longer and no shorter. In a distracted world where publishing is competing for reader’s time with Instagram, Twitter, and extremely good streaming series, it’s past time for publishing to start breaking their self-imposed molds.

Short—not too short—can sell, sell well, and provide readers with an incredible reading experience. Too many novels and other books that I’ve read over the past twenty years seem to flame out about midway through. And that’s where I put them down. It sometimes/often feels like the author is writing to hit a page/word count rather than keep their story tight and compelling.

It is also my hope that literary journals—the first line of the publication pathway for story collections—wake up to the fact that there are many readers for tighter, more atmospheric pieces. Yes, a compelling narrative arc in a short story is rewarding but so too is a concise recreation of a feeling or sensation a la A Clean Well-Lighted Place and many others. Diane Williams is single handedly trying to reform the art.

Perhaps publishing will see this success and start saying yes to work that is compelling and meets many definitions.