Yesterday’s note included a reference to an essay on chapbooks by Roy Bearden-White. He asked: If you get away from questions about labels — about whether a piece of work is a tract, brochure, pamphlet or chapbook — what would you call a 24-page story?
The answer: A short story.
Professor Bearden-White, who taught English at South Plains College in Texas, pointed out that some critics, looking at German chapbooks in the early 19th century, have had second thoughts about the origins of the short story.
Bearden-White pointed out that novels and essays were originally people’s literature, writing that appealed to the lower classes. In the early days, novels were the kind of things that were looked down upon.
Bearden-White was interested in these twin questions:
• Can people put good writing into humble forms?
• To what extent do people actually do so?
He was an English scholar who was fascinated by ghost stories and pulp fiction of earlier eras. He was interested in the comic books and graphic novels of our day.
• Sources: Roy Bearden-White, “A History of Guilty Pleasure: Chapbooks and the Lemoines”; The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 103(3), September 2009, pp. 284-318.
I thought I recognized a kindred spirit and looked for his address at the college in hopes of sending him a note. I found, instead, his obituary:
https://www.krestridgefuneralhometx.com/obituaries/roy-bearden-white
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