JOHN MADERA—Writer, Editor, Publisher

The Brotherhood of Mutilation and Last Days, by Brian Evenson
Most likely, the only way new readers are going to come to these novellas now will be through their combined form in Evenson’s novel Last Days, but it’s still interesting to think of how they once existed independently of each other. It’s hard for me now to imagine how terrifying The Brotherhood of Mutilation must have been by itself, published years before the answers that Last Days delivers. Of course, the answers have a high cost—both physically, in the increasing number of amputations required of Kline, the detective at the heart of the mystery, and also spiritually, as Kline’s actions take him further away from what little about him remains human. Perhaps, in that sense, The Brotherhood of Mutilation suggested a wider range of options for Kline’s future, options that in Last Days are narrowed down to a single, horrific thread.

The Name of the World, by Denis Johnson
This was published as a novel, but I don’t believe it for a second. 120-some pages of big fonts and wide spacing, and I’m claiming this as a novella. And it’s better for the classification, I think. The Name of the World is a great book, I think, but it would be too slight if read as a traditional novel—the story here is too simple, and the resolution less than conclusive. Michael Reed, a one-time senatorial aide and current professor, is trapped by grief after his wife and daughter die, relying on the kindness of strangers to keep him from having to take any real action: “People gave me gifts, people liked me, maybe because they sensed I was virtually dead and couldn’t hurt them.” It takes a free-spirited performance artist/amateur stripper named Flower Cannon to break him out of his rut, and although that sounds like the worst possible plot imaginable, it’s done in a vague and magical way here, which keeps the book from being trite and allows it to come closer to accomplishing it’s own goals of revealing “the danger in hiding oneself away from the nauseating vastness of a conscious human life.”

I Am Death, or Bartleby the Monster (A Story of Chicago), by Gary Amdahl
The first novella in a collection of novellas, Amdahl’s I Am Death is reluctantly narrated by Jack, a Chicago journalist, who’s contacted by a mobster who wants Jack to write his biography. Unfortunately, the mobster takes after Melville’s Bartleby, in this case by preferring that his lawyer speak for him at every opportunity, preventing any real work from getting done. Jack and the lawyer, George Swanson, speak to each other in large, self-absorbed sentences, simultaneously self-aware enough to be grandiose while still being blind enough to miss the implications of their own words. At one point, Jack writes himself a note to remind himself that he is “going to pieces in a calm and methodical way,” while the lawyer compares himself to Al Jolson, saying, “Guy spends his whole life being someone else… They couldn’t be Jews so they put on blackface. See, this is George Swanson in mob face.” The novella sets up a great tension between the kind of people who compromise themselves to become successful (or even to have the chance of being successful) and those who cannot or will not, and so are destroyed by the everyday terror of their lives.

Kneller’s Happy Campers, by Etgar Keret
Like all of Keret’s best work, the concept here is fantastic: A world much like our own, only it’s an afterlife populated by nothing but suicides. So it’s kind of shitty there, and no one smiles, and our sad-sack narrator has to go on a road trip to find his ex-girlfriend, who’s also killed herself, only to get mixed up in a variety of angelic plots, messianic craziness, and the usual Etgar Keret mix of violence, confusion, and people trying to be sweet to each other but mostly failing. At one point, the narrator is so depressed he contemplates killing himself again, only to realize that if the punishment for killing yourself is this bad, the punishment for being dumb enough to do it twice must be even worse. Every time I think of that I can’t help but smile, even though I know it shouldn’t be funny. But in Keret’s hands, of course it is, because even though it’s a bad moment for the protagonist, you can almost feel Keret having to restrain his imagination from offing his character just so he could describe this new, worse double-suicide afterlife. It’s the longest thing Keret’s written that I know about, and while it’d probably be a short story if written by anyone else, it felt absolutely epic coming after a couple dozen of his two or three page stories.

Matt Bell is the author of two forthcoming chapbooks, How the Broken Lead the Blind (Willows Wept Press) and The Collectors (Caketrain), and his fiction has appeared or is upcoming in magazines such as Conjunctions, Meridian, Barrelhouse, Monkeybicycle, and Keyhole. Find him HERE.

“Novella” is a tough word because it sometimes implies a lack of… bigness. But here are some short books that I’ve been influenced by:

The Revisionist, by Miranda Mellis
A beautiful and fractured diorama of the future.

The Horla, by Guy De Maupassant
Three versions of a similar story: Man goes mad. Lucid and terrifying.

EVER, by Blake Butler
This book contains something new.

The Immoralist, by André Gide
Sorrowful and difficult.

Tracer, by Frederick Barthelme
Oh, boy. This book is funny and gorgeous. I think Barthelme really paints with light here.

Light Boxes, by Shane Jones
An exciting new myth.

Ken Baumann lives in Los Angeles, California. He edits the online literary journal No Posit and co-edits the print literary journal No Colony. He’s a founding member of BRAIN, an artist collective. His first novel, Interim, is currently running, looking for someone to bite. Find him HERE.

Preface: After failing to find a definitive definition of novella, I gave up and compiled a list based on my own opinion. So, if you don’t agree with some of my selections as novellas, scram.

1. Notes From Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky (translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)
“In every man’s memories there are such things as he will reveal not to everyone, but perhaps only to friends. There are also such as he will reveal not even to friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. Then, finally, there are such as a man is afraid to reveal even to himself, and every decent man will have accumulated quite a few things of this sort. That is, one might even say: the more decent a man is, the more of them he will have.”

Dostoevsky’s mini-masterpiece—a classic tale of rebellion versus redemption. Notes is a delicious character study of a man torn apart by society. Also, the inspiration for Paul Schrader’s brilliant screenplay Taxi Driver. Although not traditionally seen as a novella, next to the bulk of Dostoevsky’s work, Notes is a freakin’ novella.

2. The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros
“I like to tell stories. I tell them inside my head. I tell them after the mailman says, Here’s your mail. Here’s your mail, he said.”

Only one thing to say about Mango Street: this book will break your little precious heart.

3. The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
“Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”

There is nothing new to be said about Old Man: epitome of style, precise dialogue—a phenomenal feat. Get over your high school baggage and pick up a copy from your local independent bookseller.

4. The Optimist’s Daughter, by Eudora Welty
“The procession passed between ironwork gates whose kneeling angels and looping vines shone black as licorice.”

In her Pulitzer Prize-winning work, Eudora Welty writes in sparse, compact prose. First published in The New Yorker as a short story, Daughter slays. And watch out for the breadboard at the end. Only object in fiction to ever make me cry. Read this book for its lush history, condensed scope, and raw vision of a family history.

5. In the Penal Colony, by Frank Kafka
“The Condemned Man had an expression of such dog-like resignation that it looked as if one could set him free to roam around the slopes and would only have to whistle at the start of the execution for him to return.”

After conferring with writer/poet/chef Joe Stracci, we both agreed—In the Penal Colony is far superior and more interesting than Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. In this horrifying story about torture and execution, Kafka’s prose is succinct, yet meandering and cloudlike, creating a lovely detached narrative. So, really, at the end of the day, I have to ask: got Kafka?

6. The Name of the World, by Denis Johnson
“I held imaginary conversations with a man named Bill, in which I went over the same ground I’d been going over since the deaths of my wife and daughter. While I went around looking paralyzed or detached, my thoughts ripped perpetually around a track like dogs after a mechanized rabbit.”

Johnson crafts a bold and heavy-hearted tale of a grief—a college professor dealing with the death of his wife and daughter. Oh, and then he meets Flower Cannon: a cellist, stripper, Protestant, performance artist, painter, healer. In a word: amazing. Johnson’s novella reads like a re-imagined Alice in Wonderland—each character in flux, shedding and growing new layers of reality.

7. The Secret Sharer, by Joseph Conrad
“It was very much like being mad, only it was worse because one was aware of it.”

Although not as deep and intense as Heart of Darkness, Secret holds a simplicity that makes it unique and fresh. You can see Conrad’s progression as a writer and thinker, moving towards the issues at play in Heart. The Secret Sharer is a tight little novella—lean and empty of frilly plot lines—the dissection of a soul. Scary stuff.

8. Tumble Home, by Amy Hempel
“The tide this time of year washes hundreds of tiny starfish up onto the beach. It leaves them stranded in salty constellations, a sandy galaxy within reach.”

Amy Hempel is a sentence pugilist. Her words are emotional wrecking balls. Tumble Home is written in the classic epistolary form and, really, you don’t even need to know that. I could tell you what the book is about, but it, too, wouldn’t matter. These last two sentences—how can you not read every word that comes before them?

9. Zooey (of Franny & Zooey), by J.D. Salinger,
“A more general and surely less parochial view was that his face had been just barely saved from too-handsomeness, not to say gorgeousness, by virtue of one ear’s protruding slightly more than the other.”

Salinger is king, layering his fiction with juxtaposing narratives and counterpoint structural form, brimming with emotional heft like none other. Again, with the high-school baggage, donate it to Good Will. If a writer, go back and read all Salinger. You’ll be a better hack for it.

10. The Enchanter, by Vladimir Nabokov
“Coarse carnality is omnivorous; the subtle kind presupposes eventual satiation.”

Nabokov’s novella, although well-written, alone, is wholly unsatisfying. However, when explored in the shadow of her older and more mature cousin Lolita, The Enchanter becomes a completely different work—compelling as a gorgeous failure that, ultimately, fueled the creation of one of the world’s greatest novels. Read it to see raw inspiration and trial-and-error at its most splendid.

J.R. Angelella was born in Baltimore and lives in Brooklyn. He graduated with an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and has published fiction in the Boston Literary Magazine, Twelve Stories, Word Riot, Flash Magazine, and The Literary Review. He is currently at work on his first novel. Find him HERE.