--- Mario Taboada <
matrxtech@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Size doesn't matter. I've just finished
(yet
> another)
> superb Carl Wilcox novel by Harold Adams,
which
> tells the
> story in about 200 pages, which feels
absolutely
> right.
I'm in the middle of JDM's THE BRASS CUPCAKE (1950) because
1. someone (Mr. T?) mentioned that it's one of his best and
2. the murder victim is from Boston, so I thought it might
have a greater Boston element than it apparently has. Anyway,
I just noticed that many of JDM's Gold Medal publications
seem to run 176 pages, including front material. I seem to
remember learning at some point that all books have or had a
number or pages evenly divisible by eight because of the way
they are / were bound.
Anyway, I flipped through a number of JDM Gold Medals.
They were all either 176 or 208 pages long, but the
typeface varied considerably, and there was very little white
space. Compare that to Parker, for example, who's works seem
to have larger and larger type faces and margins as the years
have gone by. I'm sure this is about publishing--editors now
want books of 400+ pages, whereas Faucett was trying to spend
as little money on paper as possible so as to make a profit
at 50 cents a copy.
This may, however, tend to explain some of attitudes towards
these two writers. We tend to talk about JDM in terms of
tight writing, Parker in terms of "fluff"
(yes, I know I'm generalizing; forgive me if you disagree
with one or both of those statements.) While I can back up
both of those statements based solely on their writing, I
have to believe that the presentation of their writing also
comes to bear on our analysis of these writers. JDM does not
seem to be wasting any space (on the page), whereas Parker
clearly is.
Just a thought.
G.
===== George C. Upper III, Editor The Lightning Bell Poetry
Journal http://www.lightningbell.org/
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