Source link : https://las-vegas-news.com/these-10-short-books-took-decades-to-write/
There’s a quiet paradox at the heart of some of literature’s most beloved short books: the thinner the volume, the longer it sometimes took to write. A few hundred pages, or even fewer, can represent the labor of a decade or more – whole stretches of a writer’s life poured into something a reader might finish in an afternoon. That kind of compression isn’t laziness. It’s obsession.
The books on this list are all relatively slim. Some clock in well under two hundred pages. What they share isn’t length but depth, and a writing history that most readers never think about when they pick them up off a shelf. Behind every one of these compact masterpieces is a story that’s almost as compelling as the book itself.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1941–1951)
Though The Catcher in the Rye is Salinger’s only novel, and fairly short, it took the author ten years between the time he started writing it and the time it was published. The circumstances that slowed him down were genuinely extraordinary. It’s a bit difficult to write a book when you get drafted as a soldier in World War II – and that was exactly the situation Salinger found himself in. The novel didn’t even start as a novel: he originally wrote it as a series of short stories because he was unfamiliar with writing longer fiction.
Still, he didn’t forget his story in the line of duty. It’s said he carried…
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Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-04-21 18:05:00
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