To Novelists: "Spread Yourself."

Here's some writing advice from John Le Carre -- from one of his characters, anyway. The editor Mencken in The Honourable Schoolboy, giving some parting wisdom to Jerry Westerby before the latter embarks on his trip to Hong Kong. His ostensible reason for going is journalism. His true reason is to spy. But there's some hope he'll make progress on the novel he's supposed to be writing, hence the advice:

"Mind my saying something?" Mencken repeated. "Longer sentences. Moment you journalist chappies turn your hand to novels, you write too short. Short paragraphs, short sentences, short chapters. You see the stuff in column inches, 'stead of across the page. Hemingway was just the same. Always trying to write novels on the back of a matchbox. Spread yourself, my view."

Le Carre wrote that about thirty years ago. Reading it now, when novels read like screenplays and movies have become a compilation of video game cut screens, even journalistic brevity probably strikes us as verbose. I can't help feeling nostalgic for a time when the problem with newspapers was that they were too succinct rather than too wordy. 
    Which is probably why this post at Criminal Element about "Patterson Syndrome" cracked me up: What's Killing John Doe: Patterson Syndrome and Summaries. When I flip through a book and find a page spread like the one pictured above, back on the shelf it goes.
    I don't have time for such a fast read.