![]() We seem to be coming adrift from the trim advice that dominated a generation of early and mid-20th-century writers. That might be positive, but the dangers of valuing length in and of itself could not be clearer. Are we, in the age of the soundbite, tweet and TikTok, becoming rebelliously nostalgic for an era when there seemed to be more time?Įvelyn Waugh once said there was nothing, no matter how momentous, that you couldn’t fit on to the back of a postcard Fantasy fiction is especially incontinent: the last Game of Thrones book, A Dance With Dragons, was 413,202 words, trumping the dimensions of the Victorian novel and in defiance of our distractible modern attention spans. The average length of those on the Booker prize shortlist, in 2019, was 530 pages. According to publisher Flipsnack, novels have been getting longer for a couple of decades. Length seems to be becoming dangerously confused with artistic prestige – as though short equals superficial or critically lightweight. Is the idea that sitting in a cinema interminably makes it more of an event, earns you epic stripes as a cinema-goer – makes you a co-hero along with Batman (whose most recent outing was three hours long)? Or are you more likely to be furtively checking the time in the dark? And Avatar: The Way of Water, the third highest-grossing film of all time, spills on for three hours 12 minutes. ![]() This year’s Oscar contenders have also been taking their – and our – time: All Quiet on the Western Front, Elvis and Tár are two-and-a-half hours long each. ![]() Martin Scorsese’s latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, has been in the news not for its content but because it is three hours 20 minutes long (and he has form on this – The Irishman was three hours 29 minutes). A growing trend for longer films and heftier novels has recently been attracting indignant comment. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |