_________________________________________________________________________________
/ Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized \
| that like most books, it had too many words. The plot was the same one that all |
| James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but James |
| Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive women. |
| There, that's it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took *thousands* of |
| words to say it. |
| |
| Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic Fyodor |
| Dostoyevsky. It's about these two brothers who kill their father. Or maybe only |
| one of them kills the father. It's impossible to tell because what they mostly |
| do is talk for nearly a thousand pages. If all Russians talk as much as the |
| Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a major world power. |
| |
| I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise the question |
| of whether there is a God. So why didn't he just come right out and say: "Is |
| there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me." |
| |
| Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words: |
| |
| * "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize |
| |
| nature and will kill you. * "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy. |
| |
\ -- Dave Barry /
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
\
\
.--.
|o_o |
|:_/ |
// \ \
(| | )
/'\_ _/`\
\___)=(___/