That’s a Long One/”Sironia, Texas”

I have touched on this briefly during the nascent days of this blog, but my fascination with long form works continues unabated. A bit ago, I took a look at what are considered the longest novels in existence, and like most things, there’s a bit of a debate about it. There have been attempts to just create things that are “just long”; “The Blah Story” which is 23 volumes, a number of which contain “records” of their own (this one has the longest word! this one has the longest poem!, says a self congratulatory blog promoting the work). Fron what I can tell, “The Blah Story” is an exercise in being annoying, featuring sentences like ‘”I always blah a blah to blah a blah,” he blah blah.’” It’s a troll; and the author’s Amazon page contains a number of other, similar trolls. I gather he uses a computer to generate a lot of his content, and while I enjoy a good troll as much as anyone, and in a more generous light I might argue that these works ask questions about what art is, the conclusion I came to is that it exists simply to blah. 

So, let’s dismiss the self consciously artsy experiments, and focus on what general critical consensus says. In that case, Proust is the king. “In Search of Lost Time” has 1.5 million words, give or take. In translation, it’s around 4,500 pages. Some people list “Atramene ou Le Grand Cyrus”, and others dismiss it, saying it’s not a single work, but a book series. This is something that constantly plagues this discussion. Is “The Lord of the Rings” a single work, or a three-book series? I don’t think of the individual books of “The Lord of the Rings” as stand alone works, but I’ve seen arguments from both sides (and, having never gotten through all three books, I don’t feel entirely qualified to weigh in). Most lists of “longest books” leave off L. Ron Hubbards’ “Mission Earth” series, which is 10 volumes and 1.2 million words. It has a reputation for being dreck, but never mind the quality, feel the width! They are left off because it’s a book series not a book. But most summaries describe a plot that is spread out amongst all ten books. Is that not a single work?

This all gives me a little bit of a headache. Most of the time, it’s a distinction without much of a difference; Proust’s work is a single work because people say it is, Hubbard’s isn’t because people say it isn’t. “In Search of Lost Time” is a slippery narrative about memory, so the ‘seven volume novel’ is a seven volume novel because that’s the consensus, despite the fact that it was published over time as seven different books (between 1913 and 1927).

(Full disclosure, I’ve only read the first volume, “Swann’s Way” and while I recall enjoying it, I don’t recall wanting to dive into the second book right away. Maybe I’ll get to it, maybe not. I understood what people see in it, but I only have so much time.)

If we want to eliminate the ‘series’ argument, we switch gears “longest book in a single volume or published all at once” (so a book could be in a few volumes, but published on the same day as a single work). The actual record for longest single volume work is the Manga “One Piece” which was stunt published in a 21,000 page book which is apparently physically unreadable, existing more as an art object than a book. It’s also a manga, so I’m gonna exclude it because I don’t count comic books, however well put together, as germaine to this sort of discussion.

The general consensus is Samuel Richardson’s “Clarissa”, which while originally published in seven volumes, is now usually just put together into one. Oddly, Clarissa has has apparently received a recent boost in readership via tik tok, both as a sort of extreme! challenge and because “Clasrissa” is actually good. A friend of mine, who is an actual professor of English, recommends it highly, and it’s sitting in my to-read pile.

Depending on who’s doing the counting and when the article (or usually listicle) was written, most of the usual suspects are there. Vikram’s Seth’s “A Suitable Boy” (which I remember fondly), Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” (one of the dumbest books ever written), “Infinite Jest” (nobody has ever read “Infinite Jest”. Do not lie to me.). One book that appears in nearly every list is one I have never heard of: “Sironia, Texas”. Written and published in the late 50’s, it has fallen out of print. Copies go from fifty to several hundred dollars, depending on its condition. It sold respectably in its day, and then… vanished.

Its author, William Cooper was an oddball, who limited in person visits by the use of a kitchen timer, lived via an extremely regimented schedule, and despite being a wealthy businessman from a prominent family, appeared to wear the same clothes day in and day out while attending to his affairs.

“Sironia, Texas” depicts a thinly disguised Waco, Texas. It got mixed reviews, and when published, due to its length, it cost a fair chunk of change (about 100 dollars in today’s money for both volumes). That, and Cooper’s odd refusal to discuss foreign distribution appeared to ensure its short shelf life.

I’m not able to find much in the way of writing about this book (at least online): they talk about Cooper himself, they usually mention the aforementioned mixed reception, and one article I found was about the writer not reading the book, which is the kind of meta-textural thing I’d admire if I wasn’t directly seeking information about the “Sirnoia, Texas”. So I’m gonna give it a shot. Why? Because I’m fascinated by the idea that someone would commit to such a single long form work, get it published, and have it live an afterlife only as an entry in lists of longest books. I am reminded of other ‘event books’ from my youth, made into flashy TV mini series (like “Shogun” and “The Thorn Birds”) which no one talks about anymore. “Sironia, Texas” was the big book that couldn’t.

I’ll do this one in short entries as I finish things, and try and keep a regular schedule, which has been something of a problem as of late for this blog. I don’t think it’s going to be compelling enough to distract me entirely from my regular reading, so it will likely take a maddening amount of time, but I don’t know for sure, and that’s part of what’s interesting.

Let’s start at the end. 

The last sentence of the novel is “‘Oh — anything? I’ll take the lawn mower, please”. The page number is listed as 1731. What the fuck kind of journey ends on that sentence is a mystery. Let’s tear this fucker apart, and see. We’ll start soon.