This list is still in flux and provisional. More to come…
theories of the novel
- Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971), especially chapter four (“The Inner Form of the Novel”) and chapter five (“The Historico-philosophical Conditioning of the Novel and its Significance”)
- M. M. Bakhtin, “Epic and Novel.” In The Dialogic Imagination (eds. Holquist & Emerson), Univ. of Texas Press (1981; orig. 1941).
the phenomenology of reading
- Georges Poulet, “Phenomenology of Reading”. New Literary History 1.1 (October 1969): 53-68.
- Rita Felski, Hooked: Art and Attachment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), especially chapter one (“On Being Attached”) and chapter two (“Art and Attunement”)
increaing length in novels and other genres
- Sam Adams, “What the Debate Over Long Movies Gets Wrong”
- Nick Clark, “Novels ‘have been getting substantially longer over last two decades'”
- Constance Grady, You’re not imagining it — movies are getting longer”
- Natalie Jarvey, “Why Are Movies Sooooo Long? An Investigation”
- Richard Lea, “The big question: are books getting longer?”
- Sarah Shaffi, “What’s the perfect length for a book?”
- Peter Shawn Taylor, “Books Just Keep Getting Longer”
long books
- Stefano Ercolino, The Maximalist Novel: From Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow to Roberto Bolano’s 2666
- Catherine Gallagher, “Formalism and Time”. Modern Language Quarterly 61.1 (March 2000): 229–51.
- Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, eds., Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives (The MIT Press: 2009).
- Colin Marshall, “An Introduction to Outsider Artist Henry Darger and His Bizarre 15,000-Page Illustrated Masterwork” Open Culture (February 18, 2026).
- Adam Mars-Jones, “Big Books”. London Review of Books 40.21 (November 8, 2018).
- Franco Moretti, The Modern Epic: The World System from Goethe to García Máquez
- nostalgebraist, “About Henry Darger” (May 26 2011).
- Lindsay Thomas, “Modeling Long Novels: Network Analysis and A Brief History of Seven Killings“. The Palgrave Handbook of Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature and Science (2020): 653–67.
- Mario Vargas Llosa, García Márquez: Historia de un deicidio
distraction and reading endurance
- Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (1994)
- Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (2011)
- Emma Loffhagen, “‘Last year I read 137 books’: could setting targets help you put down your phone and pick up a book?”. The Guardian (February 21, 2026).
students and teaching a post-literate population
- Adam Kotsko, “The Loss of Things I Took for Granted: Ten years into my college teaching career, students stopped being able to read effectively”. Slate (February 11, 2024).
- Beth McMurtrie, “Is This the End of Reading?” The Chronicle of Higher Education (May 9, 2024).
- Erik Hoel, “Fiction in the Age of Screens”
- Jack Stripling, “Is Reading Over for Gen Z Students? What happens when students come to college less willing and able to do the work?” The Chronicle of Higher Education (September 10, 2024).
- Walt Hunter, “Stop Meeting Students Where They Are” The Atlantic (February 2, 2026).