I have wondered this for a while

[james_davis_nicoll]

What's the point of the subtitle "a novel"?

Comments

[dsrtao]

It allows literary theorists to skip the tedious "but what kind of work is this, really?" analysis which would otherwise be good for an undergraduate paper.

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

It sounds funny because it states the obvious.

Alternatively, it sounds melodramatic because it states the obvious.

[synabetic.livejournal.com]

It's to help people from confusing the book with a box of candies.











What. It could happen!

[aisb23.livejournal.com]

I can see the usefulness in cases like Gore Vidal's "Burr: A Novel" as perhaps either the author or publisher did not want someone not familiar with Vidal's work to think it a serious biography of Aaron Burr rather than a piece of historical fiction.

Other than that, it seems to be utterly pointless.

[mayakda.livejournal.com]

It's so pretentious, isn't it?

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I think it's in some ways a relic from distinguishing "a novel" from "a romance".

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

If it's eighteenth century, it's a Novel because it is by a Lady.

Or a drunken Oxford undergrad, take your pick.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Keeps people from mistaking it for a 300 page short story.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Keep people mistaking it for a pile of beets and inadvertantly eating it.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

It keeps people from wondering why this comic book has so many pages, and no pictures.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It helps, now that Amazon.com sells things like farm equipment and home security devices.

[arkessian.livejournal.com]

Well, somebody might think it was true, otherwise...

[will-couvillier.livejournal.com]

Couldn't say. I, personally, would think that a person could easily tell if a work is "a novel" rather than "a collection", "a chapbook of modern verse", "a pop-up book", or any other such simply by thumbing through it...

[jeffr23.livejournal.com]

"The Title I have chosen for this book is too short, and needs some ballast to weigh it down lest it float off into the Aether."

[n6tqs.livejournal.com]

It keeps it from being shelved/filed in the nonfiction sections?
As you know, Bob....

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

Redundancy comes to mind. Again and again.

Y'all are very persnickety: a comment

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

OK, sure, "...A Novel" is mostly an unnecessary thing to tack onto the title of a novel. But if the author or the publisher happen to think that it rounds out the name of the book in a euphonious fashion, why kick? When you get right down to it, the novel itself probably isn't all that necessary to the grand scheme of things.

[j-larson.livejournal.com]

So it won't accidentally be put on the non-fiction shelves?

Surely there's some fun to be had with that convention. "The Holy Bible: A Novel", "Lose 10 Pounds in One Month: A Novel", "Introduction to C++: A Novel", ...

[montoya.livejournal.com]

It lets Damon Knight make a pun.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

It's a market signal -- it tells people that the book is upmarket or elevated.

You can see this by the defensiveness in the other comments to this post.

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

Presumably to keep it from being mistaken for biography, history, or memoir (or other less-likely sorts of nonfiction).

Although I like that "Chosen title is too short; needs ballast" idea too.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

I cannot offer a definitive answer to your question, but you never have the "a novel" subtitle on eldritch tomes, or those books that have a hollow interior for keeping guns or booze inside them.

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

Well, last week I was reading a novel called Eleanor vs. Ike, about a Presidential race between Eleanor Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and had someone comment that it was good to see people reading non-fiction.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

It's so those Yip Yip guys on Sesame Street know how to distinguish it from a radio.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qxWGr8VhzQ

[bibliotrope.livejournal.com]

Believe it or not, some people have trouble with the distinction between "fiction" and "non-fiction". "I don't want 'non-fiction.' I want something real. Because 'non' means 'no'. So 'fiction' is the true stuff, and 'non-fiction' is made up, right?" Librarians run into this way of thinking a lot when trying to explain things like call numbers to patrons.

"Novel" clarifies it a bit. Most of them know a "novel" is a made-up story and not true. It is a little jarring in a lot science fiction though, especially far-future stuff with space travel and such.