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Pet Shop Boys: Very and Relentless

Stuart Maconie, Select, November 1993

WAY BACK WHEN, a sneering critic once challenged the writer F Scott Fitzgerald to write a novel in six words. Fitzgerald went away and came back with the following: "For Sale. Baby's shoes. Never used". Six little words but what mystery and meaning lurking behind the economy of those three sentences. In the '70s. someone asked Harold Robbins, master of the doorstop blockbuster, to go one better and write a three-word novel. He came up with "I love you". That's why F Scott Fitzgerald was a genius and Harold Robbins is a...well, why Harold Robbins isn't.

Total word count of piece: 632

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