Cormac McCarthy, in an interview by the Wall Street Journal, denounces short fiction as too easy for writers and modern readers as too fickle for epics:

“I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.”

And,

“If you think you’re going to write something like “The Brothers Karamazov” or “Moby-Dick,” go ahead. Nobody will read it. I don’t care how good it is, or how smart the readers are. Their intentions, their brains are different.”

What, though, could McCarthy say to Le Clézio’s painstaking “The Boy Who Had Never Seen the Sea” (oh, it’s so outstanding) or the transcendent popularity of Bolaño‘s sprawling 2666? And I’m not being creative–that’s just what pops to mind.