From akriman@darwin.helios.nd.edu Thu Jul 18 18:09:41 2002 Received: from mailscan3.cac.washington.edu (mailscan3.cac.washington.edu [140.142.32.15]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with SMTP id g6J19eNn027438 for ; Thu, 18 Jul 2002 18:09:40 -0700 Received: FROM mxu2.u.washington.edu BY mailscan3.cac.washington.edu ; Thu Jul 18 18:09:40 2002 -0700 Received: from mailspool.helios.nd.edu (mailspool.helios.nd.edu [129.74.250.7]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.06) with ESMTP id g6J19dJX017816 for ; Thu, 18 Jul 2002 18:09:39 -0700 Received: from darwin.helios.nd.edu (darwin.helios.nd.edu [129.74.250.114]) by mailspool.helios.nd.edu (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id UAA02172 for ; Thu, 18 Jul 2002 20:09:38 -0500 (EST) Received: (from akriman@localhost) by darwin.helios.nd.edu (8.11.2/8.10.1/ND-cluster) id g6J19cR12915 for classics@u.washington.edu; Thu, 18 Jul 2002 20:09:39 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 20:09:39 -0500 (EST) From: Alfred M Kriman Message-Id: <200207190109.g6J19cR12915@darwin.helios.nd.edu> To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: historical fiction David Meadows posted last Friday > DW's latest ... > ... tweaked a question that has been > lurking in my mind for quite a while. Once upon a time, serial > fiction was commonplace in newspapers and/or magazines. Anyone > know why it isn't any more? And is anyone aware of any > historical fiction (specifically of Greek or Roman genre) that > was ever serialized? I don't think a reply to the first question was posted, and I only have guesses, but for what little it's worth... The decline of serialized novels might share some causes with the decline of continuing-storyline newspaper comic strips (like Mary Worth, Judge Parker, Brenda Starr, and similar ones now fallen by the wayside). A friend of mine with an interest has heard or read a comics-industry professional [[1]] claiming that such strips suffered because (1) people were buying the paper too infrequently to follow the story and (2) in order to preserve continuity for infrequent readers (thrice weekly, say), writers repeated information more, making the stories proceed more slowly and thus making them more boring. > ... (On the other hand, some strips > that are ostensibly humor strips, like "For Better Or Worse", "Jumpstart" > and "Funky Winkerbean" now have strong continuing storylines, often > with dramatic developments happening quickly enough to send me to the > Web to see what I missed. However, even these usually repeat the > basic development a couple of times so you know what happened.) Note also that many buy only the Sunday paper, or a different paper on Sunday. For this reason, continuing storylines are suspended on Sundays (sounds like NYC parking). > (This is very clearly > seen in "Monty" and "For Better or Worse", for example.) I think the irregularity of newspaper buying habits was one cause effecting the disappearance of novel serialization in daily papers. Another factor must have been competition from new (now old) broadcast media and cheap paperbacks. I figure that novel serializations, and the magazines that published them, survived through much of the 20 c. on inertia -- an aging readership bought magazines fighting a rearguard action to continue doing their preferred thing. In any case, there used to be a market for a weekly literary (paper) journal, and that seems long gone. The _Saturday Review_ springs to (the lamenting) mind; it went monthly, in effect, in Jan. 1973. (Technically it "split" into four monthly parts -- SR's of the arts, education, sciences, and society -- and was a bimonthly during its final agony Mar/Apr 1983 - May/June 1986.) Doubtless this history reveals something dire about the ongoing collapse of civilization and also about shrinking attention spans. It's easy (for nonprofessionals like me, anyway) to forget that entertainment is something of a constant. Delivery formats come and delivery formats go, but mostly by replacing and being replaced. The Grimms and others preserved for us the final years of a story- telling culture that industrialization and night-time lighting (hit it, John!) put to an end. Okay, the last paragraph was in lieu of an answer to DM's second question that would have given this post a shred of classical content. Second try: given their lengths, I suppose Homer's epics were each fare for more than one day -- a sort of serialization. Or had the Greeks already perfected the cast-iron butt? And what just and delicious deserts were meted out to people who coughed repeatedly and unnecessarily during performances? AMK [[1]] Not knowing he would be asked for a cite years later, he didn't record one. It may have been mentioned by Mort Walker in his history of the comic strips, _Backstage At The Strips_, or it might be from > interviews with Stan Lee when Spiderman was starting as a strip, > either in print or on NPR. Or it might have been someone else, but > Stan Lee and Mort Walker are the most likely sources. .