Nabokov’s Favorite Color, Stephen King’s Adverb Bullshit, Language’s Value Only As A Measure of Time
I won’t go into all the random things that triggered a week’s worth of conversation about this topic except to mention they were as varied as getting a manufacturer approved Bosendorfer 280VC grand piano model on sale, adverbs, shitty literature, academic criticism, hero worship, Nabokov’s Favorite Color is Mauve, consumer passivity requirements and boundaries, art, surprise ingenuity, “value”, and negative space. Tying those together is a tome in itself. I’ll bypass most of them because they boil down to what’s a word worth.
Original Argument – The old yes/no adverb debate. (For clarity, this discussion is only concerned with -ly adverbs.) On the naysayers’ side, we have (most) of our teachers, editors, shelves of writing guides preaching clarity. Spare is the obsession of Lanham, Strunk and White, Williams, Joseph and Joseph, Norton, Oxford, Edinburgh, Harvard, Zinsser, King and Leonard. From what I can tell, every scientific, academic, and business subculture has their own writing guides. Whether writing for science, government, car wash owners, consumers, the imperative is not on style or grace but CLARITY. According to “they” decent lit, tech writing, reports and correspondence don’t need the clutter of fluff and adverbs.
The “Truth” – As exposed in Nabokov’s Favorite Color is Mauve shows the “best” literature, as defined by prestigious awards, consensus by critics and populace over decades, centuries, even millennia of an author’s contribution to the literary lexicon points to the “best” having fewer adverbs. Notice I did not append “sellers” to “best.” God knows everyone loves a hit, but Oneders are Oneders. I don’t recall anyone celebrating the 50 Shades of Gray author’s birthday. In fact, I don’t recall his name or age. But Shakespeare? 461 on April 23rd.
Hero Worship – Many of the prolific and vitriolic “I speak from the mountaintop of sales and wisdom,” either rich and/or famous, professorial, self-help or by claimed personal commitment adverb haters are all pretty much full of shit. A list from Nabokov’s of both award-winning and popular authors in the 20th Century claims 60% of books considered “great” had less than 50 adverbs per 10k words. The breakpoint between “great” and “bestseller” is 110, plus or minus. Hello, Stephen King. Still, 108 to 110 is respectable. Until you hit Nobel territory with Hemingway (52-67) and Faulkner (31-42) and Morrison (39-76), Steinbeck (79-87), Rushdie (104). Non-Nobel but badass anyway like Amy Tan (83), Mark Twain (81), Vonnegut (101), Updike (102). Even Dickens (110). Enough data. The “good” books contain fewer than 1% adverbs per 10k. The average Best Seller runs around 12 per 1,000. Road to Hell adverb hater King 10.8. Per 1,000. Don’t do as I do, do as I say. Elmore Leonard? Practicing what he preaches at .49 per 1,000. Gotta hit 2k to get a whole adverb out of the man.
Contrary Argument – Adverbs, adjectives and flowery prose not only infuse a work with sensory depth, but also a possibly a higher word count bullshit factor. However, adverbs properly used have a push – pull effect. They curtail the reader’s imagination investment, with the benefit of defining and refining the basic language. How? Picking out the weight, the resonance, a deeper meaning of the words they modify. Personal investment (active) may be lost to immersive (passive) participation in a work. Adverbs (and their kin) possess the power to accelerate, decelerate, open, or close. One article metaphorically described adverbs and their brethren as a wall, another likened them to soldiers, both resisting the modern view of language as a “bare conveyance of information.”
Does It Really Fucking Matter – “A bare conveyance of information.” Holy shit. How sad is that? The point of that line – We live in a data driven age that requires us to cram the most information into the smallest, most easily digested form. And that form has boiled over into what we consume for entertainment. Everything we read or watch or listen to comes with the digestion formula (Mature, YA, Language, Behavior) and a timestamp. Movies and music tell us up front what our time investment will be if we choose to watch or listen. Sites like Medium have done the same for language. X amount of words, X amount of time commitment. They promise depth and nuance, fewer words, more power words. Looks good on paper, (pun intended) but have you read any of it? Same old looking for a diamond in the cesspool. Outside of Medium’s noble aspirations, the same equations appear in webpages and eBooks/readers that also display word count and consumption time. My Kindle Paperwhite tells me percentage read, time to next chapter, time to end. Name your AI assistant that promises to save you more time and ask it to summarize already skeletal content. Who needs mauve? Or yellow or red. Or dark to light turquoise cascading into orange? No. These days even show don’t tell gets a haircut. The criticism is “sunrise/sunset is simpler” not Chekov’s “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
The most demeaning part of this tragedy? It’s based on a model that assumes all words have equal value. Nothing needs to be re-read (for joy or clarity). No reference/simile/metaphor/allusion needs research or understanding, no logic untangled.
Here’s the Rub – What is a word worth? A syllable? The measure of time required to consume it. Temporal value equivalent, time invested equivalent, depending on what sort of reader you are. As devil’s advocate, and let’s take the “ideal” of 750 + or – 100 word count. Words are still words. In any given 750 there might be 30% or more I shouldn’t have had to read. Redundant set ups, sterile dialog, stupid tropes. Compare the six important words in Chekov’s quote to “the moon was out and bright.” So what’s the “worth” of those six? What if the 750 words are brilliant and need swirling around our brain like a fine wine? What the algorithms can’t rate is the time investment being the same for a piece of shit as it is for 750 of brilliance. When “they” finally start pigeonholing content “if you are easily entertained”, “if you like being led around by the nose”, “if you liked the Hardy Boys”, “this is brilliant word painting by a postmodernist master” then this is for you! “They” will have gotten somewhere.
Not Very Deep Thoughts 
