Sunday, December 21, 2014

word of the day: roman-fleuve

The word of the day is roman-fleuve:

a novel or series of novels dealing with a family or other group over several generations (dictionary.com)


"I look upon the items in each issue of the Robesonian as a few more paragraphs or pages or even chapters in a novel that I have been reading for a long time now and that I expect to keep on reading as long as I live, a sort of never-ending to-be-continued serial about the ups and downs of a group of interrelated rural and small-town families in the South, a sort of ever-flowing roman-fleuve."

 - Joseph Mitchell, "Days in the Branch: Remembering the South in the city", 1 December 2014 The New Yorker

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