His advice has nothing to do with page count. I imagine that he would think Anna Karenina a work of genius. The book he recommends at the end, The Elements of S

His advice has nothing to do with page count. I imagine that he would think Anna Karenina a work of genius. The book he recommends at the end, The Elements of Style, goes into more detail about exactly how to prune. Here's one of its popular quotes: "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell." Of course that just is an introduction. The books goes on with many guidelines and lots of examples that really made it sink in for me.