There is now this fashion for mega books. The only book that is 800 pages long or thereabout that I can seriously contemplate reading is War and Peace. I suppose also the great Dostoevsky novels. I cannot read novels of huge length, with no characters, no intelligible plot, and really no point except as a compendium of private jokes and obsessions.
- Louis Begley in an interview with Robert Birnbaum at indentitytheory.com
