Smaller portions, fewer pints.
Life is diminution.
It is virtually impossible to think of any literary works, even of great historical importance, that would not benefit from being cut down to size. Marx, Spengler, Rabelais - all of these are crying out for editing, abridging and repackaging in a handy pocket format. One might even eliminate large parts of Ulysses . In Britain in particular, where the prevailing fictional mode remains 19th-century realism, the shelves are filled with books as thick as bricks, and as pigshit. The rest are destined to be remaindered before the epilogue is drying in the laser printer's output tray.