On Brevity

Wordy Rappinghood album cover art by Tom Tom Club © Sire Records, 1981

“Brevity is the soul of wit,” said Polonius in Hamlet in 1599––although that was partly a joke, because he was a long-winded fellow.

About 170 years later, Mark Twain wrote a letter on this subject echoing a thought from the French philosopher Pascal:

“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

Pondering both statements, I drew up a list of 21 short novels––some fiction, some science fiction, some fantasy—that all resonated with me and I ranked them by their weight in words, like sacks of potatoes:

• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (26,496 words)

• Animal Farm (29,605)

• The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (36,363)

• The Stainless Steel Rat (40,101)

• The Turn of the Screw (42,349)

• Fahrenheit 451 (46,118)

• The Great Gatsby (47,094)

• Slaughterhouse Five (49,459)

• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep? (48,250)

• A Kestrel for a Knave (49,250)

• The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (50,895)

• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (50,315)

• Life, the Universe, and Everything (50,460)

• So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (40,455)

• Solaris (51,000)

• To The Stars My Destination (59,000)

• Lord of the Flies (59,900)

• Brave New World (63,766)

• The Martian Chronicles (64,198)

• Ubik (66,609)

• Dandelion Wine (66,750)

Both Nebula and Hugo Awards classify a novel as a work of fiction containing "more than 40,000 words." The Pulitzer and Nobel prizes for literature each use that benchmark, whereas there is a recent trend for novels to run between 70,000 and 100,000 words. If you seek clarity from publishing industry bloggers, be careful where you step: they’ll have infographics that will smother you in concrete.

It’s also tricky if you look to Stephen King (+160K), George R.R. Martin (+348K), Charles Dickens (+375K), the ghost of Harold Robbins (+100K), or other best-selling novelists for guidance. Their word counts appear to be unfettered to mundane metrics. Dame Agatha Christie––who, after William Shakespeare, is widely touted as the most prolific scribe of her day with more than 800 whodunnits and other books to her name––had a slender average of “between 40,000 and 60,000 words,” it says here. Ditto modern thriller maestro James Patterson who clocks in at 70K.

So, I'm curious: do you feel short-changed if a novel fails to fill the girth of your grip?

How long does that piece of string need to be?

(N.B. this blog is 400 words).