The economy of words is a literary device that is difficult to come by. It was accorded a prominent place in modernist literature, the most masterful writers of which deployed the artistry to an extent that rivals the beauty of poetry. Language had by then transcended its traditional role as a tool of expression, and revealed its nature as something akin to a magician’s trick. Novelists of this period began to explore and experiment with the various facets and potentials of language. In the case of D.H. Lawrence, for example, there would be no better way to articulate the complex human conditions than resorting to the repetition of a few significant epithets. Conversely, Ernest Hemingway would advice the aspiring writers to steer clear of superfluity at all costs- for him an absence of words always generates the loudest bang. The development of modernism coincided at some point with the advent of motion picture, and curiously both share this penchant for textual ...