Friday, March 7, 2008

The Book according to Rick

George Harrison once wrote a song that had so few lyrics that it was lampooned on SNL as a song with only six words just rearranged. I want to write a novel like that, shove in two hundred blank pages with a fancy ambiguous picture on the cover and blurbs from Stephen King, Amy Tan, John Grisham, Cormac McCarthy, Evil Knievel, Jr., and Oprah tauting its brilliance.

Let me try...



God gave. Left. Returned. Cried forever.




At least I don't have a graven image of him/her/it. (I've got to stop watching "Dogma".)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I understand the Green Eggs and Ham was the result of a bet that a good book couldn't be written with fewer than 100 words.

Jack Getze said...

Hare hare, krishna krishna

Larry Kollar said...

Haiku is like that. Seventeen syllables (traditionally), but a well-crafted verse can paint a scene in your head using multiple senses.

Of course, the other extreme is Stephen R. Donaldson's works, in which you need a dictionary close at hand if you're not willing to guess at the meaning of words like "incondign" by the context.

Hey, I got it: write your story with six words, add 200 pages of commentary by literary scholars, and you're golden!

Rick Bylina said...

Hmmm. Good thoughts, all.

I was thinking of letting Sydney walk on the remaining 200 pages. His claw marks look remarkedly like clustered teardrops. Unfortunately, he wants 95% of the royalties because he feels he's doing all the work. The odd thing is, he doesn't know what a royalty is.