In defense of long books

Read my essay on Head Butler: In Defense of Long Books

Are you familiar with Head Butler? It’s a wonderful newsletter and website I subscribe to that makes recommendations about books, movies, music and even products. When I like it, I really like. It introduces me to popular culture I might otherwise miss. Like Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy or Michael Caine’s Acting in Film: An Actor’s Take on Moviemaking.

When it rankles me, though, it really rankles me. In mid-January, for example, the Head Butler, aka Jesse Kornbluth, published a glancing swipe at long novels. Now, a woman can take but just so much. So I fired off a (polite) note to JK telling him that I, for one, read long books that are well-written and interesting and named several I had just bought through Amazon. JK took my comments like a gent and graciously invited me to write a guest essay.

So, here’s In Defense of Long Books. I wouldn’t mind if you let JK know how delighted you were with my essay so that he can put me in touch with other culture websites that actually pay something, if only in the high two figures, as Calvin Trillin famously said about Victor Navasky’s pay scale. Not complaining a whit, JK! Happy to do it.

Note: In a couple of weeks, I’m going to publish an audio essay by Jessie Sholl. She wrote a memoir called Dirty Secret about her mother’s compulsive hoarding. All I can say is you’ll be itching to get to the last page.

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