“When you read the kind of novel that promises to increase the strength of your upper-body as much as the height of your brow […] there’s an awe about the scale of the work which, rightly, informs your response to it but which, more problematically, is often difficult to separate from an awe at the fact of your own surmounting of it.”
The Millions has posted an essay on the long and seemingly treacherous novels that make us consider our commitment issues while inflating our sense of accomplishments as readers when we finally finish. Our Stockholm Syndrome-esque devotion to these novels are often what helps us get through the classics.
