Novella? Long story? Short Novel? Whatever its genre, it's a nice piece of fiction by John Jeremiah Sullivan

Friend David B. led me to the "novella" Mother Nut, by John Jeremiah Sullivan, that appeared recently in the New Yorker - well, not exactly, as it was published only in the NYer online edition; a petty annoyance, but I often get notices of NYer online publications and sometimes they later appear in print - which I prefer to read and so I wait for the mag to arrive on Thursday - and sometimes not, in which case I miss the story altogether. That said, OK, what is a "novella," a term in dislike by the way (I think it was Katherine Ann Porter who railed against this neologism); to me, this is a long story or let's just call it a story, rather than a short novel, which in my view entails a somewhat less unified action - perhaps different POVs or time/place settings or multiple story lines? In any event, call it what you will, Mother Nut is a good piece of fiction - a first-person narrative in the vein of a somewhat older - not clear how much older - man looking back at some of the malfeasance and love lost in his youth, i.e., in his 20s or so. We don't learn about his childhood, college education, all that, but it begins w/ his recollection of his work as part of a research team on the demise of the American Chestnut; a highlight - a top-secret nocturnal visit to see one of the rare surviving chestnut trees; the lowlight, his being snubbed by the project leader - following which he left the team and went to live w/ his girlfriend on an agricultural commune. Her recollects her leaving him for another commune member and then his daring and somewhat incomprehensible effort to win back her love; I won't divulge too much of the plot, but suffice to say that he embarks on a mission to harvest some rare chestnut wood. No doubt JJS manipulates some of the events in this story - would anyone in his right mind have embarked on any such mission? Or perhaps the narrator was not in his right mind at the time? - and I think he owes us a little more info about the narrator in the present, but he does a nice job establishing the narrator's voice, sometimes as puzzled about his past antics as are we, and unlike many other young writers he still believes in plot, character, and narrative arc, so let's see more - in print! - from this writer.