Perhaps they are not quite dead just yet
/Cormac McCarthy was recently quoted as saying:
“…the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore and people need to get used to that. 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.”
Might be a bit of bad timing on his part, considering Stephen King’s new novel, UNDER THE DOME, is 1,088 pages long and ranked #2 on Amazon.