Economy of Words

Note: Shortly after I posted a badly scanned image of the cover to Claire Fraude's Sweatshop of Love ( a couple of posts ago) - I was contacted by the editor of an internationaly acclaimed and long running journal of literary criticism. It seems that "Claire Fraude" is in fact the nom de plume of a very famous contemporary American author who would rather not have her Harlequin past revealed to her millions of current readers-as they are largely comprised of Born Again Evangelical Christians.
No one has been able to locate a copy of this book, explained the harried editor, and now there was no time for anyone to read it before deadline .
Did I have a copy? Yes.
Could I write a brief, very simple review of it? Just a summary? Uh huh. Yes.
In two hours? Sure.

So I emailed this:

Sweatshop of Seduction by Claire Fraude aka xxxxxxx x xxxxxx

A review by Allan xxxxxx:

I hate Fraude's Sweatshop. The author is a puddinghead.

-- -- -- -- ---- -- -- -- -- ---

A few minutes later I get this email:

" ... simply giving an opinion followed by an ad hominem attack does not meet the standards of xxx xxx xxxxx...blah, blah... "

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What a dick. I write two measly sentences and he can't even bother to read them. If he had, he'd have known that I was writing about a book and not about 'hominem,' who I understand to be a "rap" singer of some sort. And it's clearly not an ad for anything.

I don't know how that guy got his job. He doesn't even seem to know the basics.

I think simply calling the author Puddinghead and being done with it is not such a bad form of literary review. Economy of words, you know.
Economy of words is a way of describing the technique of using fewer words to make your statement- you could also look at it as a ratio of words:concepts. Let us say that you communicate one concept every 10 words or so... at first thought this may seem an economical usage of words, however 10:1 is a riot of waste and a flagrant display of literary excess.
A truly thrifty writer should strive for a ratio of 3:1 or even 1:1.

An example of a 1:1 word/concept ratio in literary criticism would be:
"I hate Fraude's Sweatshop "
Broken down thusly:
I- introduces the concept of self -the writer.
hate- describes one specific powerful subjective emotion.
Fraude's- identifies the author of the book in question.
Sweatshop- in this example the entire title of the book in question is Sweatshop of Seduction but since that appears in the article's title, it is referred to here simply as 'Sweatshop'- cleverly shaving two superflous words from the sentence, which would otherwise have an W/C ratio of 3:2

Less is not only more, but it is also better.