http://faerye.net/tag/canon Posts tagged with "canon" - Faerye Net 2008-07-17T17:31:38+00:00 Felicity Shoulders http://faerye.net/ http://faerye.net/post/paid-by-the-word Paid by the word 2008-07-17T17:31:38+00:00 2008-07-17T17:33:11+00:00 <p>I&#8217;m beginning to get a little testy about this old saw that Dickens is overwordy &#8220;because he was paid by the word.&#8221; It was amusing when my dad teased me with it in high school; no more. Boz&#8217;s novels were being serialized; magazine fiction is still, overwhelmingly, paid by the word. If the system is so flawed, then by rights these kvetchers must also hate all magazine story-writers from Asimov to Zelazny. I shudder to think what they must think of Dumas, who Umberto Eco informs me was paid by the <em>line</em>.</p> <p>In short, Dickens is Dickens. Florid, earnest, wordy, absurd, circumlocutory Boz, essentially and eternally himself. If you don&#8217;t like him, don&#8217;t seek beyond the truth: you don&#8217;t like Dickens. Why don&#8217;t you read some Hemingway instead?</p>