the abyss means...

Let's do a quick bit of Mathematics:
There are 10 volumes of the Wheel of Time series. The first is 814 pages long. Let's say that the book has 750 pages of story, each with 400 words. That's 300,000 words. Over a series of ten books, that means 3 million words.

Then let's have a quick look at 'Of Mice and Men': it's 107 pages long. 300 words a page maximum. Looks like it would come in under 30,000 words (most of which are very short words; Steinbeck knew what he was doing).

This suggests that the Wheel of Time is 100 times longer than of Mice and Men.

I have nothing against Robert Jordan. He might be one of the most sublime talents in the world, but it seems a pretty big gamble. 30,000 words of Steinbeck, and I cannot shake the end of that book from my brain(*). Was there no way that it could have worked out well? Could it not have been happier? Is Robert Jordan really going to be a hundred times better (plus more to make up giving a single story that much time?)

If 'Mice and Men' were heroic fantasy, we would have a prequel trilogy, where we get to see George and Lennie in better days. Maybe a long quest as they search for work before coming to work in the evil wizard's farm where Lenny is trapped by the witch and even the talking mouse can't save him. I am not sure where you could add 2,970,000 words to Of Mice and Men and make it better than it is, apart perhaps by adding more about the baby rabbits.

Life's too short for sagas. Jean Jorge Luis Borges never wrote a novel because he could not see the point in spending that long writing a single story. If you can't tell a fulfilling story in a book then you should probably be doing something else.

The only consolation for this vision of the ten-volume saga of Mice and Men is that, if it was heroic fantasy, the end might have been more cheerful.

(*) Nor can Robin Cook. He opposed an early day motion about the House of Commons having a cat by "arguing that his animal-loving colleagues might spoil and over-feed the parliamentary pet" ([link] )

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Random pedantic observation: it's _Jorge_ LB.

And now guilt demands that I say something less snippy, so how about "How about Proust, then?" It is precisely the length of it that has put me off, but I wouldn't necessarily assume it wouldn't be good - I'm just waiting for a rainy decade. (See also Tolstoy - people who've read it insist that Anna Karenina is the best novel ever, but I am not one of them because it is also too long.)

des on January 8, 2003 11:15 AM

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