Ah, world enough and time to read a long-winded novel, full of speechifying, and laden with detail down to the last curtain fringe and freckle. I wonder who read Scott even in Scott's time? Who was the readership for another run-at-the-quill, Trollope?
I confess I don't know and never wondered until your post, Richard. Who had world enough and time, even then, for such works, before the era of the electric light offered more night hours for reading, and when most people owned only two books, the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress. The idle rich, probably. Delicate ladies with nothing else to do except crochet.
Today, almost everyone is overextended. People have no time for tomes, and no inclination to read them. I'm afraid one of my boss's at Big Bank Inc. said it all when he told me one of his favorite novels was novelette The Bridges of Madison County. Why? Because you could read the whole thing on the plane ride between Calif. and NYC!
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