I think there is a kernel of truth here (popularity != quality) but that being a truism the rest of the article is just justifying why the author doesn't read b

I think there is a kernel of truth here (popularity != quality) but that being a truism the rest of the article is just justifying why the author doesn't read books that are considered good books. It's entirely true that large books command more attention than small ones, but I think writing a really good large book is much more difficult than writing a really good small book, which seems reductionist but just considering how quickly you an iterate on a shorter book vs. the time it takes to revise or rewrite a longer one. There's a quote from a review of some Franzen or Safran-Foer novel that talks about how a new writer's first page is brilliant, first chapter is great, and how it basically trails off from there most of the time. Maintaining the prose quality and style and complexity of narrative that Wallace does in Infinite Jest is no mean feat, and this may seem controversial but I think in that sense it is a greater accomplishment than some shorter works. This isn't to say I don't see the value in brevity or that I don't believe it's difficult to write good short books: I do think it's difficult. However because reading a 1000-page book does take more time (I don't think it's necessarily harder word for word) you have to make the writing worth it, which is undeniably difficult.