[bizzyskillet]

Anyone read Gödel, Escher, Bach (GEB)? I gave up halfway through, and shamefully admitted it to a really smart guy named Chris I met at a conference.

He said "duh, you aren't supposed to finish it - you should only get to the parable about book length, a couple chapters in!"

The parable explores the idea that a reader always has a piece of information you don't want them to have: the amount of remaining pages! If the bad guy dies and you still have 3/4 of the book in your right hand you can be sure it's not over... So as an author what do you do? Add a bunch of Lorem Ipsum? The reader will flip through and figure out where that starts. Splice in an unrelated story? The reader can still find the boundary. So you have to continue the story, but have nothing important happen (e.g., 'the next day Harry Potter ate some toast and watched Friends'). Chris was arguing that GEB talked about doing this, and then actually did it.

The author was clear that he makes his point early on and then just explains it many different ways, so maybe I believe Chris... Or maybe Chris and I are just happy to rationalize our laziness however we can :P