The Author Guy blog by Larry B. Gildersleeve

 8 th December 2023

Hey, out there,

Welcome back. Today, a word about words.

A few weeks ago, the autobiography My Name is Barbra was released. No need to identify the author – who else could it be? But here’s the thing. Isn’t 992 pages a bit much, even for someone with such a stellar stage, film and music career? I think it is.

The comparisons I’m about to make are by no means parallel or comparable, but they are, I believe, illustrative about the verbosity trap into which so many people in the public eye are prone to fall.

The account of creation in Genisis is told in only 400 words; the Ten Commandments in 313; the Lord’s Prayer in 66. The Declaration of Independence, written in 1776, contains a mere 1,322 words, yet the
2010 Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) extends to almost twelve million words with all of its associated regulations.

Whether written or spoken, I believe more words don’t always, or even usually, equate to better. 

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr’s largely extemporaneous I Have A Dream speech in August of 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of 250,000 lasted just seventeen minutes. Stadium sermons to assemblages in the tens of thousands over many decades all over the world by the late Reverend Billy Graham were almost always under fifteen minutes.

The Gettysburg Address, written on a train enroute to the event, contained a mere 286 words and lasted only a few minutes when spoken. The man immediately preceding President Lincoln spoke for an hour and a half. Does anyone know his name? Over 150 years later, speakers and writers still persist all too often in floating a battleship of words around a rowboat of thought. 

As I promised in my first posting a few weeks ago, with my books, my columns, my blog and elsewhere, I’ll never feel such a need or entitlement

Until next week … Vaya con Dios

Larry B. Gildersleeve