These days, most of us are busy as hell. Even when we do have uninterrupted free time, our attention spans are too short to let us enjoy it. You’d think these circumstances would push fiction readers toward lean novellas and quick stories that we can gobble up in under an hour. Somehow, you’d be wrong. Short fiction venues struggle to stay afloat by begging for donations and charging writers submission fees. And great big books are great big sellers, particularly in speculative fiction. NYT Bestseller Leigh Bardugo’s dark academic
Years ago, not too long after the "worldbuilding is the clomping foot of nerdism" post (and whew did that one rile people up!), M. John Harrison made another blogpost on the same subject as your piece here: he compared the big chonky books of your Pynchon and Wallace and others, with the vast series you found then too in epic fantasy. It always stuck with me when he wrote that with enough effort, you could build a world in a line and stuff the rest of the book full of things.
This is an excellent article. I’ve always wondered how so many readers,Bookstagrammers, and YouTube literati consume so much content. I’ve never considered that they might just be devouring books whole in order to knock them off their lists or to review them for their fans.
The trick with Infinite Jest is to start it on page 140, then loop around and finish the beginning after you finish the rest. The first 140 pages are what always alienates everyone, but at least it will make sense after you've read the rest, which is not intentionally disorienting
Years ago, not too long after the "worldbuilding is the clomping foot of nerdism" post (and whew did that one rile people up!), M. John Harrison made another blogpost on the same subject as your piece here: he compared the big chonky books of your Pynchon and Wallace and others, with the vast series you found then too in epic fantasy. It always stuck with me when he wrote that with enough effort, you could build a world in a line and stuff the rest of the book full of things.
This is an excellent article. I’ve always wondered how so many readers,Bookstagrammers, and YouTube literati consume so much content. I’ve never considered that they might just be devouring books whole in order to knock them off their lists or to review them for their fans.
The trick with Infinite Jest is to start it on page 140, then loop around and finish the beginning after you finish the rest. The first 140 pages are what always alienates everyone, but at least it will make sense after you've read the rest, which is not intentionally disorienting