Delany’s 872-page Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders - and feel that it couldn’t do without a page.

Most of the time when I read a long novel, even a reasonably good one, I find myself thinking, “This would be better if it were one or two hundred pages shorter.” It’s distressingly rare to read a massive work - Marguerite Young’s 1,200-page Miss MacIntosh, My Darling comes to mind, or Samuel R. They’re bloated and prolix and don’t provide the satisfaction that a lengthy, ambitious novel ideally would. As a result, there are many novels still being published, and even lauded, that are artificially long. The doorstop tome remains the metric by which careers are measured and reputations are made. The masterwork of a genius, Miss Macintosh stands by itself as one of the greatest works of our time.SOMEHOW, DESPITE OUR LIVING in the age of Twitter and texting and shout-outs and memes, the cultural imperative that bigger is better is still going strong, particularly in the literary world. Weed of the Wabash River Valley, a very efficient Christian hangman and many others. Spitzer, a lawyer, composer and mystical space traveller who is wholly unsure of himself and of reality his twin brother Peron, the raffish gambler and sports virtuoso Cousin Hannah, the horsewoman, balloonist, mountain-climber and militant Boston feminist Titus Bonebreaker of Chicago, a wildman of God dreaming of a heavenly crown Mr. With precise detail, Young defines the characters in this phantasmagorical journey: Miss Macintosh herself, from What Cheer, Iowa, a seemingly forthright and normal woman with an incorruptible sense of humor and the desire to put an end to phantoms the opium lady Catherine Cartwheel, a recluse who entertains imaginary guests in a great New England seaside house the gentle Mr. In prose that is poetic, incantatory, and extraordinarily rich, Marguerite Young takes us on a search for reality in a world of illusion and nightmare, touching on subjects as varied as drug addiction, women's suffrage, murder, suicide, pregnancy (both real and imagined), schizophrenia, love, gambling, and perfectionism.

One of the most ambitious and remarkable literary achievements of the twentieth century, Miss Macintosh, My Darling might be called the Arabian Nights of American life.

Miss macintosh my darling review