I agree with your line of thought in particular about the male pretentiousness part. I was also thinking about the readership — who reads these long novels? Or who buys and never reads them? I still have an unread copy of Gravity’s Rainbow in my shelf. I checked out The Pale King twice from the library and never finished. I did buy Bolaño 2666 and finished it. I cannot think of a long novel by a woman writer that I read recently…that is bad….

Since moving to the Netherlands from the USA I also noticed popular novels that are longish…in particular these books (both in English and Dutch) are prominently displayed at the bookstores located in the train stations. Currently, a 512 page novel by the Dutch writer Arnon Grunberg and 574 page dutch translation of Imogen Hermes Gowar’s new book are prominently displayed at all the train station book stores.