economies of scale
Today is one of those despondent days when it seems that this book will be completely unpublishable; it's just getting too long and weird. I'm still forecasting that it will sail into harbor at 200,000 words or slightly above, and it happens that Amazon has started posting word counts for much of their inventory, so it's now possible to see just where this fits in the Doorstop Novel Sweepstakes.
Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude: 148,189
Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh: 155,506
Thomas Pynchon, V.: 159,508
Jonathan Lethem, The Fortress of Solitude: 175,245
Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections: 196,857
Donna Tartt, The Secret History: 200,772
Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: 221,865
Elliot Perlman, Seven Types of Ambiguity: 247,601
James Joyce, Ulysses: 261,873
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest: 479,198
Already past those first two, and much farther to go. Paper costs money. This all seems grim.
