The Novellas and the Short Stories

Abstract

‘Short fiction was never his forte,’ says Douglas Day (p.443). Time and time again Lowry begins with something that looks like a short story but uses it only as a means of expanding his ideas into some other form. There is also an intermediate stage which Lowry called ‘novella’ — as though this represented a finite and finished genre in itself. But often his novellas represent nothing more than short stories on their way to becoming novels. Apparently on many occasions he did not think about material and predetermine its mould; he simply worked it over and gave it whatever name suited its length at that particular juncture. He nowhere offers a precise definition of what, for him, forms the necessary boundary between short story, novella, and novel. Both Under the Volcano and October Ferry were planned as short stories, and simply grew until they had achieved novel-hood.