And now for something completely different

In a world a-Twitter with texting and sound bites, the epic poet has given way to the sloganeering pitchman. Writers are distilling works to their fortune-cookie essence, from memoirs to novels, sermons to plays. While this is a new-school phenomenon, the practice goes back at least as far as Hemingway, who once declared his greatest story to be the untitled six-word fiction: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Today there are Web sites dedicated to producing six-word literature and poetry. Many are quite good, especially Smith Magazine’s memoirs (life stories in six words), a collection of which was published under the title “Not Quite What I Was Planning.” There are advantages to hearing a six-word sermon – as anyone who has sat on hard pews enduring 60,000 words on one of the "Thou Shalt Nots" might attest. Although such a restriction would have forced Jonathan Edwards to alter the title of perhaps the most famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” (an exhausting eight words), to something pithier – “Sinners: Be Good or Be Smote.”

Consider how much more time the old Anglo-Saxon storytellers would have had for building mead halls if they didn’t have to spend days memorizing kennings and inventing alliteration to recite epics such as “Beowulf.” They could’ve just blurted, “Kill the monster. Make momma mad,” and moved onto the next flagon.

Shakespeare, who might’ve actually made something of his life if he didn’t have to write so many sonnets and soliloquies, could have summed up “Hamlet” with “I guess it’s not to be.”

One day all writers will jump on the six-word bandwagon. We’ll have six-word travels (“Stonehenge: Giant rocks and gift shop.”), six-word news (“Cheney leaves bunker, now on Fox.”), even six-word obituaries, although it’s hard to imagine topping Saturday Night Live’s first-season catchphrase: “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.”

Criticism also has six-word potential. My six-word review of the six-word phenomenon? “Less is more, more or less.”

And can a six-word blog be far behind? I’ve already got the first post: “Everything is measured in Rhode Islands.”

This week’s question takes its cue from those old back-to-school assignments of yore: In six words, what did you do on your summer vacation?

Wishing everyone reading this earlier-than-usual post a cheery Labor Day weekend, even those of you who do not labor…