the new limits of "novel"

[Jonathan Lighter]

CNN speaks of "Tennessee Williams' famous novel, 'Streetcar [sic] Named
Desire.'"

Surely this is just a blunder, but nowadays who knows?

In fact, how cane we be so sure that it really was unintentional? Couldn't
"novel" now have expanded further to mean "extended literary creation"?

I don't want to think so. Surely the boundary between "fiction" and "drama"
is still widely recognized. It's easier to assume that somebody at CNN just
didn't know what he was talking about.

Time will tell.

JL

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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