I once—and, happily, to date, only once—encountered the term “prose novel,” which is as brain-clonking a redundancy as “fiction novel” but which I eventually realized was meant as a retronym:*1 In a world full of graphic novels, the user of the term had apparently decided, one must identify a work of fiction containing a hundred thousand words, give or take, but lacking pictures as a “prose novel.” Decency forbids. One need no more refer to a novel as a “prose novel” than one need refer to a concoction of a lot of gin and as little vermouth as is humanly possible as a “gin martini.” Martinis,
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