I weep when contemporary culture applies without rebuke the aphorism, “A picture is worth a thousand words” to Literature. I understand the history of the sentiment, but could any number of pictures truly capture the personal journey we each go through when we read Shakespeare’s twenty-six-thousand-word, Romeo and Juliet? Could thirty pictures take even one person to the depths of Steinbeck’s thirty-thousand word, Of Mice and Men? I think not. Moreover, when we’re talking about the greats, even the shortest of short stories evades pictorial summation.
The picture-to-word-count exchange rate was probably first negotiated by early cave men artists grunting it out over mastodon burgers, but the debate echoed through the ages, migrated, and found a home in advertising. Fred R. Barnard famously stated, “One look is worth a thousand words,” in a 1921 pitch for the benefits of visuals in a trade journal. Arthur Brisbane, an editor, insisted, “Use a picture. It’s worth a thousand words,” in 1911. Today, no TikTok post would be complete without a photo of a kitten eating pudding or the trendiest influencer demonstrating that no number of words could do justice to her cleavage.
Artists of the written word, particularly those who paint with an economy of linguistic brushstrokes, amaze me. Move me. Powerfully compelling, grievously tragic… horror, despair, love; all have been presented on a literary canvas no larger than a thumbnail. Following are a few of my favorites.
Controversy surrounds the six-word short story, Baby Shoes. Many have attributed the moving work of flash fiction to Ernest Hemingway, saying he won a bar-bet with a group of writers who were struck dumb with the force of his brevity. Just as many others argue that versions of the story predate Hemingway, but the authorship is irrelevant. The story is the thing.
“For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
Wow. If six words didn’t break your heart, you’re a monster.
Another short story that leaps to mind does as much with less, four words, in fact. When I read it, I imagine the dustbowl depression of a starving 1930s America. Families displaced and emaciated, men struggling to find identity after losing the ability to perform their one job-provide. The story was ultimately penned on cardboard and popularized in a 1987 Associated Press photo commentary on homelessness, but, for me, it reverberates through time. It speaks for every man in history who has reached a desperation deep enough to sell his dignity.
“Will work for food.”
I cannot read that without thinking of the great John Wayne line from McClintock, “I don’t give jobs, I hire men.”
My favorite, one of the shortest of short stories, has been an inspiration to millions. It has triumphed over death and given new meaning to life. It has personally changed everything in me, and I could re-read it every day. In fact, I do.
“He is risen!”
I’m not trying to take anything away from the visual artists. I have been moved by the Old Masters and fallen in love with the Impressionists. Who could possibly look at Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day, and not feel the Victorian era raindrops falling on a city transitioning from antiquity to modernity?
Rather, I lament the fast-food conversion of Literature to pixels, possibly super-sizing the truly hungry to a reel of people getting hit in the crotch with footballs. This food will not satisfy.I hope that society will re-embrace the written word. Find the solace, the humor, the adventure on the page. Have your thoughts provoked. If you made it to the end of this Blog, it’s already happening, and it happened in about half a pictures-worth or words.
