Word count is one of those things new writers worry about but deny worrying about because we’re not supposed to be worrying about it. According to Wikipedia’s entry on word count, the typical word count of a novel is at least 80,000 words. I’ve heard through the publishing world grapevine than most agents and editors will generally take a query for a first novel more seriously if the word count is between 80,000 and 100,000.
Instead of sleeping, I compiled in an Excel sheet novels I read growing up. They’re mostly classics because those are the only ones where word count is easily obtained. More contemporary fiction would require more digging. I wouldn’t say I personally love every one of these books, but I would regard them as classics, as great novels in themselves, even if the particular author wasn’t that impressive of a writer.
Author — Book Title — Word Count
(in case it wasn’t obvious)
| Alan Paton | Cry, the Beloved Country | 83,774 |
| Alice Walker | The Color Purple | 66,556 |
| Amy Tan | The Kitchen God’s Wife | 159,276 |
| Amy Tan | Joy Luck Club | 91,419 |
| Ayn Rand | Atlas Shrugged | 561,996 |
| Ayn Rand | The Fountainhead | 311,596 |
| Betty Smith | A Tree Grows in Brooklyn | 145,092 |
| Charles Dickens | A Tale of Two Cities | 135,420 |
| Daniel Defoe | Moll Flanders | 138,087 |
| Emily Bronte | Wuthering Heights | 107,945 |
| Erich Remarque | All Quiet on the Western Front | 61,922 |
| Ernest Hemingway | The Sun Also Rises | 67,707 |
| Frank Norris | McTeague | 112,737 |
| Fyodor Dostoyevsky | Crime and Punishment | 211,591 |
| George Eliot | Middlemarch | 316,059 |
| George Orwell | Nineteen Eighty-Four | 88,942 |
| Harper Lee | To Kill A Mockingbird | 99,121 |
| Harriet Beecher Stowe | Uncle Tom’s Cabin | 166,622 |
| Henry David Thoreau | Walden | 114,634 |
| Honore de Balzac | Pere Goriot | 87,846 |
| J.D. Salinger | The Catcher in the Rye | 73,404 |
| James Fenimore Cooper | Last of the Mohicans | 145,469 |
| Jane Austen | Persuasion | 87,978 |
| John Knowles | A Separate Peace | 56,787 |
| John Steinback | The Grapes of Wrath | 169,481 |
| John Steinback | East of Eden | 225,395 |
| Joseph Heller | Catch-22 | 174,269 |
| Kurt Vonnegut | Slaughterhouse-Five | 49,459 |
| Kurt Vonnegut | Welcome to the Monkey House | 99,560 |
| Leo Tolstoy | War and Peace | 587,287 |
| Margaret Atwood | Alias Grace | 157,665 |
| Mark Twain | The Adventures of Huck Finn | 109,571 |
| Mark Twain | Life on the Mississippi | 127,776 |
| Maxine Hong Kingston | Woman Warrior | 70,957 |
| Milan Kundera | The Unbearable Lightness of Being | 85,199 |
| Nathaniel Hawthorne | The Scarlet Letter | 63,604 |
| Oscar Wilde | The Picture of Dorian Gray | 78,462 |
| Ray Bradbury | Fahrenheit 451 | 46,118 |
| Ray Bradbury | The Martian Chronicles | 64,768 |
| Toni Morrison | Song of Solomon | 92,400 |
| Virginia Woolf | Mrs. Dalloway | 63,422 |
| William Faulkner | As I Lay Dying | 56,695 |
| William Golding | Lord of the Flies | 59,900 |
The Stats:
Average word count of the Great Novels is 136,604 words. That’s like the literary institution’s recommended word count for first novels plus a long novella! But the arithmetic mean isn’t very helpful here because we’ve got some doozies on this list.
Median word count is 99,341 words. That’s longer than Wikipedia’s estimation of the typical novel length, but just about right as a target word count for budding novel writers.
Longest novel on the list is Tolstoy’s War and Peace (surprise, surprise) at 587,287 words. Note that Ayn Rand’s cult classic Atlas Shrugged isn’t that far behind, at 561,996 words.
Shortest novel on the list is Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, one of my personal favorites, at 46,118 words. Most of Hemingway’s novels make pretty slim books too.
Word count on the Bible, Old and New combined: 774,776 words according to Source A and 788,280 words in the King James according to Source B. But the Bible’s word count isn’t relevant here because first of all, it’s not by one author unless you want to go there with me and say it’s God and in that case, well, it’s God, so yeah.
Then again, considering the oeuvres of certain writers, like John Steinbeck, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Francine Prose, and even Amy Tan, they’ve already written way more than 700,000-ish words.
Need A Life:
I can’t believe I just sat here and compiled that list. By the way, I came up with each book off the top of my head, either by author name or by title. I wrecked my brains from the excursion. I need to go do something like shop for shoes or eat ice cream now…. Ugh.
Word count on past PEN/Faulkner Award winners:
| Chabon, Michael | The Amazing Adventures… | 216,020 |
| Banks, Russell | Cloudsplitter | 260,742 |
| Franzen, Jonathan | The Corrections | 196,774 |
| Cooper, Susan | The Dark Is Rising | 82,143 |
| Danticat, Edwidge | The Dew Breaker | 60,082 |
| Phillips, Caryl | A Distant Shore | 103,090 |
| Packer, ZZ | Drinking Coffee Elsewhere | 68,410 |
| Robinson, Marilynne | Gilead | 84,845 |
| Cunningham, Michael | The Hours | 54,243 |
| Kennedy, William | Ironweed | 67,606 |
| McMurtry, Larry | Lonesome Dove | 365,712 |
| Kingsolver, Barbara | The Poisonwood Bible | 177,679 |
| Guterson, David | Snow Falling on Cedars | 138,098 |
| Hegi, Ursula | Stones from the River | 197,517 |
| Canales, Viola | The Tequila Worm | 42,715 |
| Jin, Ha | Waiting | 89,297 |
| Jin, Ha | War Trash | 130,460 |
A few surprises here. I thought Ha Jin’s Waiting was longer than 89,000 words because that book lumbered like some sort of literary elephant and took me more than one night to read. Normally books don’t take me more than one night to read. I’m also surprised at the brevity of Michael Cunningham’s The Hours.
Thus far, I have about the same word count as Danticat’s Dew Breaker, but the characters have a lot more work to do before the end.
Word count on novels that fall under Amazon.com’s category of “Asian American Literary Fiction”:
Title–Author–Wordcount
| A Gesture Life | Chang-Rae Lee | 112995 |
| Native Speaker | Chang-Rae Lee | 108568 |
| Aloft | Chang-Rae Lee | 112481 |
| The Tapestries | Kien Nguyen | 107251 |
| The Village Bride of Beverly Hills | Kavita Daswani | 65450 |
| In Full Bloom | Caroline Hwang | 91577 |
| Breaking the Tongue | Vyvyane Loh | 135294 |
| Zen Attitude | Sujata Massey | 76157 |
| Queen of Dreams | Chitra Divakaruni | 93176 |
| Buddha Baby | Kim Wong Keltner | 80032 |
| The Dim Sum of All Things | Kim Wong Keltner | 81994 |
| Pastries | Bharti Kirchner | 101217 |
| Mambo Peligroso | Patricia Chao | 93491 |
| Somebody’s Daughter | Marie Myung-Ok Lee | 87811 |
| The Island of Bicycle Dancers | Jiro Adachi | 77821 |
| One Hundred Million Hearts | Kerry Sakamoto | 73996 |
| Dream Jungle | Jessica Hagedorn | 90764 |
| The Gangster of Love | Jessica Hagedorn | 90909 |
| Long Stay in a Distant Land | Chieh Chieng | 59856 |
| Beijing Doll | Chun Sue | 59913 |
| Shanghai Baby | Wei Hui | 79507 |
| Invisible Lives | Anjali Banerjee | 55328 |
| The People’s Republic of Desire | Annie Wang | 106032 |
| Candy | Mian Mian | 80434 |
| The Space Between Us | Thrity Umrigar | 102992 |
| Transparency | Frances Hwang | 65817 |
| Kept: A Comedy of Sex and Manners | Y. Euny Hong | 81287 |
| Typical American | Gish Jen | 79105 |
| Hundred Secret Senses | Amy Tan | 117799 |
| When the Emperor Was Divine | Julie Otsuka | 34381 |
| Becoming Madame Mao | Anchee Min | 104979 |
| Empress Orchid | Anchee Min | 134598 |
| The Inheritance of Lost | Kiran Desai | 106698 |
| Country of Origin | Don Lee | 84335 |
| Snow Flower and the Secret Fan | Lisa See | 99945 |
| Interpreter of Maladies | Jhumpa Lahiri | 62164 |
| The Namesake | Jhumpa Lahiri | 104172 |
| Free Food for Millionaires | Min Jin Lee | 207907 |
| The Woman Warrior | Maxine Hong Kingston | 69989 |
| Sons of Heaven | Terrence Cheng | 86681 |
| When My Sister was Cleopatra Moon | Frances Park | 56480 |
| American Son | Brian Ascalon Roley | 54858 |
| My Year of Meats | Ruth L. Ozeki | 104746 |
| When the Elephants Dance | Tess Uriza Holthe | 164718 |
| Night of Many Dreams | Gail Tsukiyama | 79151 |
| The Language of Threads | Gail Tsukiyama | 83953 |
| Lost Names | Richard E. Kim | 64073 |
(Not including the books named in other tables above that would count as “APA Literature”)
