It is quite painful to plough through your wordy article about the rise of knifing in Britain (“Island Savages,” July 12, 2008). Here you philosophize that “there is more to life than death,” and there you sociologize that many prefer “an after-dinner fight to mints.” Luckily, you touch on the only solution to the growing problem in your last and shortest paragraph, where you mention “the public obsession with putting more bobbies on the beat.” Once ridiculed by criminologists, it is now the rage as “neighborhood policing.” Although labor-intensive, and thus expensive, this solution is surely the only viable one, and your long-winded article should have started with it. In defense of the British Isles, more bobbies on the beat would work wonders everywhere around the world, as well.

Addendum (July 18, 2008)

“Thank you for your letter about my recent article in The Economist,” wrote Tom Wainwright, the correspondent for Britain. “I’m sorry that you found it so painful and wordy, but I’m glad that you persevered with it, and that you agreed with its conclusion.” “Incidentally,” he continued, “I just googled your name to check the gender of the name Ranko before addressing this email. I was interested to see that you are in the process of writing a thirty-three-year-old, one-million-word-long “collection of notes, essays, epistles, stories, aperçus, diary entries, tales, epigrams, vignettes, parables, poems, quips, fables, snippets of conversation, maxims, slogans, quotes, jokes, and aphorisms, as well as the addenda that extend all of the above.” And then he concluded: “It is indeed an honor to have my article described as ‘long-winded’ by someone who is obviously such a pro!” “Well put,” I wrote back. “As I complained to myself years ago, one ends up writing too much even when one sticks to a few words at a time. Alas!” “Thanks for taking my joke in good part,” he responded. “Here’s to the next million!” “By the way,” I wrote back, “I am already close to two-million words. If I live as long as my parents, I will end up polluting the World Wide Web with about three-million words.” Of course, I concluded my last message with a few additional words in support of bobbies on the beat. Great to banter with the mighty newspaper’s able correspondents!