On Mon, 28 Jun 2004, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: >Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com> writes: > >>> Someone's definition of "novel" is "long prose work with something wrong >>> with it", >> >> That's a good one! And I take the liberty to agree with the author: >> the voice is fine. > >And doesn't show up in google. I like it too, but want an >attribution. When an exact match fails, try searching on significant subphrases. Searching on "prose work" and "something wrong" results in: I think of movies the way the poet, essayist and novelist Randall Jarrell defined the novel: "A novel is a prose work of a certain length that has something wrong with it". And also: I like Randall Jarrell's brilliant generic critique of a novel: "A prose work of some length that has something wrong with it". I thought about what Jarrell said, and realized it sounded like each of the dozen or so review I've written. I only review work I like, but feel obligated to point out some perceived flaw, omission, or weakness. I'm not sure I'll ever write another review again now that Jarrell's exposed the formula: "I liked it except for a little thing or two here and there". Searching on "Randall Jarrell", "novel", "wrong" one finds other variations on the quote: Randall Jarrell said a novel is sixty thousand words of discursive prose with something wrong with it Randall Jarrell once defined a novel as "a long stretch of prose with something wrong with it," WHEN POET AND CRITIC RANDALL JARRELL DEfined the novel as a long narrative that tends to have something wrong with it, he did not mean printer's errors. somebody once told me that Randall Jarrell defined a novel as a long piece of narrative prose containing something wrong with it. As you can see, it's a rather annoying set of varying words to express the concept, but no definitive citation. I ran into the same problem trying to track down exactly how and when William Gibson uttered his famous line about the future being here but unevenly distributed. G. K. Chesterton's original wording about children and belief and monsters is very different from the pithier words usually assigned to him. Anyway, that's the best I can find. Bah.