Some people frown on long sentences regardless of whether their structure is easy to grasp. I find that attitude more prevalent among genre readers than literary readers, and more prevalent among genre critique groups even than among the general genre reading populous. But that’s a weakness of critique groups, I think, that you have to weight for in revisions: you’re never going to get your target audience.

This is going to sound nitpicky, and I apologize in advance, but it speaks to a very important point, which is that long sentences are not, per se, difficult. It is the structure of sentences that can make them difficult to understand. As long as the phrases flow in order, without interpolations, a sentence can go on and on. Beautiful as the quoted passage is, I do believe that Crowley slipped up in the “behemoth” sentence. The use of commas to partition off an interjection is somewhat subjective, particularly following a coordinating conjunction (to avoid a clustering of commas), but consider this passage:
“…and still there were no answers, only the fuller and fuller form of the question, evolving as Auberon had described to her all life evolving, reaching out to limbs and inventing organs…” It’s almost impossible, on first read, to get that sentence right. The phrase, “as Auberon had described to her,” is an interjection and really needs to be set off by commas. It’s quite obvious when you read the sentence out loud to someone else; you really need to inflect that phrase differently. Otherwise, you assume that it is a continuation from the verb “evolving” which it is not.

One more thing (I’m hopeless). The word “evolving” appears twice in that paragraph. It would make more sense if the first of those were “involving.” Are you sure you quoted it right?

Anyway. Yes. It is a positively monumental book. And I wish I had read it earlier. Maybe this way I’m getting a better chance to appreciate the nuance of his style, but on the other hand, like Smoky Barnable, I’m missing out on the opportunity to be a kid and believe in fairies.

The first time I read it was in 1991, introduced to it by a Pre-Raphaelite dream of a boy who willo’-the-wisped through my life in the space of a month. Although we touched each other’s lives only briefly, Crowley’s book wove its way through our brief cosmic romance.

I recommended it to people (helps when you work in a bookstore), eventually coming to realize that it’s not something that suits everyone, and it was out of print for a long time. When I met my now closest friend in 1996, we were two of the only people that we knew of at the time who had read it, causing an instant bond between us. Then I found out that John Crowley lives, well, where he lives, and that her mom had typed the manuscript for Aegypt a few years before Little, Big came out. Then more years went by and I re-read it (um, three times in a row) about 3 winters ago, and I really wondered what I’d read the first time, because there were things I remembered that weren’t in the book, and things in the book–major parts of the plot–that I completely didn’t remember, which makes me highly suspicious of what actually is going on in my head and/or what this book actually is, and covetous of the 25th anniversary edition, if it ever comes out.

And, finally, to bring this back to earth again, I went to see John Crowley (and Elizabeth Hand) read at that reading you mentioned, and I heard you read, too, then looked you up, found out you had a blog, and that, in a roundabout way, is why I’m posting a comment now, isn’t it? Heh.

There are lots of books I love, but Little, Big has actually been less like a book and more like a touchstone, or an event, or the sky.

I feel all funny and weird now, like part of my brain has gone to live someplace else for awhile.