smokerblog

The Long and the Short of It

Seth pointed me to the Grumpy Old Bookman's site, specifically his post about Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle and less specifically his extended rant about the "problem of length" (which ironically required four lenghty posts: 1, 2, 3, and 4). I admire the GOB and I concede his point that some authors punish their reader, thinking that a long book imparts gravitas when, in fact, the additional mass merely increases his book's gravitational pull.

But there is more going on here. There is also the matter of taste. For instance, the GOB appreciates Neal Stephenson despite his tendency for excessive verbosity, but some readers are just as likely to throw Quicksilver across the room in frustration (risking rotator cuff injury, for sure). By the same token, I enjoyed The Corrections, one of the books the GOB compares to a "slab of concrete." And don't even get me started on Infinite Jest (a book I can't put down, herniated disks notwithstanding) or The Tunnel (a book that I no longer have the strength to lift).

Truth is, when I enjoy an author's writing, I don't want it to end. The short books written by Italo Calvino and Michael Ondaatje consistently leave me hungry for more after I eat through them in one or two sittings. Don DeLillo's slim Cosmopolis utterly failed to excite me, but I tore through his 3-inch thick Underworld held me spellbound. But then, it should be obvious that, like Stephenson, I am not an adherent of the Cult of Brevity. While "short and sweet" might be good advice for young writers still honing their skills, almost all of the emphasis should be on the second half of that dictum, not the first.