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I'm currently reading Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. And I noticed that it is broken down into short chapters, and each of these chapters are "satisfying" by themselves, kind of an essay with a beginning and an end, plus some sort of cliffhanger. Some chapters are actually an "interruption" of the flow of the story to discuss a historical period or a branching storyline. Anyway, it made me wonder if the book had first been published as a serial, and I learned that yes, it had been.
It looks like many novels that we consider classics today were originally published in serial form in popular magazines, and this was especially popular in the 19th century on both sides of the pond. People would follow these stories and discuss them, speculating on what might happen next, like we do today with shows like The Walking Dead and Lost.
It got me thinking. Many people, here and elsewhere, say that they wish they were better-read, especially with classic literature, but they have trouble concentrating, or some type of attention-deficit problem. I suggest that these folks try to read literature from "classic" authors that was originally serialized. The stories are usually broken down into nice digestible chunks, which I think would be great for someone with attention/concentration issues.
I've red a bunch of works by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins that had been serials, and now I see that Mark Twain had a bunch of these too. I was surprised to see that Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin had also been a serial. A lot of the famous Russian authors (Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky) also first published their novels in serial form. You also have Ernest Hemingway, Agatha Christie, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad, and Frances Hodgson Burnett on the list.
Which have you read? Was it apparent to you from reading the novel that it had originally been a serial? Did you like that (brief digestible chapters) or did it bother you (interrupted flow, choppiness)?
I read Stephen King's The Green Mile when it was released in serial form (six small booklets of about 90 pages each, IIRC, published monthly). However, I never read it again once published as a single work.
I don't recall noticing that the form was any different that a novel, though I'm guessing that the demands of the serial form did affect how King wrote the story as a whole, as well as the creation of each installment.
Interesting idea, but don't think it would work. The serialized novels were meant to hook people and probably kept every installment unresolved. I don't think modern readers would like that.
We must recall that Charles Dickens invented the 'cliffhanger'.
When Dickens was approached about writing Pickwick Papers (for he was initially approached to write 'captions' for cartoons to be done by a famous, but alcoholic and poor, cartoonist, Seymore), Dickens persuaded the publisher and Seymore for him (Dickens) to actually write a book, to be published monthly, each installment in three chapters.
Chapman and Hall (the publishers) at first objected: It is a novel idea, they said, but what would get the public to buy the second installment?
Dickens replied: Because at the end of the third chapter I will have the hero walking along a cliff by the sea; the hero will trip, and fall over the cliff, saving himself at the last second by grabbing the edge.
As he is hanging on for dear life, he will hear someone coming. But is it someone who will save him, or will it be the villain who will stomp on his fingers, causing him to fall to his death?
Said Dickens, the only way for the public to find out will be to buy the next installment.
Dickens thus invented the 'cliffhanger'. If one reads Pickwick today, three chapters at a time, you will see the device in play.
I think the key for reading these originally-serialized novels is finding out where the cutoffs were. Like the 3-chapter thing with Pickwick; I wouldn't have known that. I'd have thought each chapter had been published separately, so I'd have said that it didn't really feel like discrete chapters with cliffhangers or resolution at the end of each. when I read Collins' The Moonstone and The Woman in White, I remember the cutoffs being obvious, and it made sense in the presentation/unforlding of the story.
I didn't know King did that. I was referring more to stories that were first published in magazines , in much shorter chunks that that.
TS, if you view the special features at the end of the Blu-ray version of the movie The Green Mile (with Tom Hanks), Mr. King will tell you all about it... and then some!
DH picked it up on sale at Walmart for $10 I think.
Cheers,
Mahrie.
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