Continuing the discussion of brick lit, a term for bloated tomes by "genius" authors, one critic who prefers to remain anonymous suggested we add Don Delillo's Underworld and Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks to the list, even though she admits that she likes both authors when they write shorter. Then somebody kicked around The Corrections, although I have to admit that I didn't find that completely impenetrable.

And then came two variant definitions for the term. First somebody told me that the term had been applied years ago to massive commercial fiction by the likes of Michener and Clavell, which seemed plausible enough. Then I stumbled onto a profile of author Peter Kerr which appears to define "brick-lit" as a genre populated by, among others, "every other emigrant Brit [who] believes he's the next Peter Mayle or Chris Stewart."