So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

``It was dark. He lay on his left side for a good hour.

``After that he moved restlessly in his sleep for a moment and then turned over to sleep on his right side. Another hour after this his eyes flickered briefly and he slightly scratched his nose, though there was still a good twenty minutes to go before he turned back on to his left side. And so he whiled the night away, sleeping.

``At four he got up and went to the lavatory again. He opened the door to the lavatory ...'' and so on.

It's guff. It doesn't advance the action. It makes for nice fat books such as the American market thrives on, but it doesn't actually get you anywhere. You don't, in short, want to know.

This is the perfect description of American Literary Fiction. I have been trying to read The Goldfinch, and have managed to read 500 pages of it, and there's still a book left. (That is, over 200 pages... yes, it's almost 800 pages long, and 1/3 at least could have been left out. :-( Because it's mostly him wandering and wondering about something he's been wondering about all the previous pages and probably the rest of the book.) Any way...

The love story between Arthur and Fenchurch is wonderful. So soft and warm and lovely and delightful and sweet and sigh