Paid by the word

2008-07-17T17:31:38+00:00

I’m beginning to get a little testy about this old saw that Dickens is overwordy “because he was paid by the word.” It was amusing when my dad teased me with it in high school; no more. Boz’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 line.

In short, Dickens is Dickens. Florid, earnest, wordy, absurd, circumlocutory Boz, essentially and eternally himself. If you don’t like him, don’t seek beyond the truth: you don’t like Dickens. Why don’t you read some Hemingway instead?

Is asperity quantized?

2007-08-05T13:34:23+00:00

Yesterday I heard Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever” on NPR’s Selected Shorts. She uses, as so many writers before and since, the phrase “a touch of asperity.” Why is it always a touch of asperity? Not a generous helping, or a tablespoon, or a sprinkling? Does asperity only naturally occur in the amount ‘touch’?

Posts tagged with "cliche" - Faerye Net

Paid by the word

Is asperity quantized?