Better, probably, to read it less inquisitorially, remembering Henry James's description of novels as loose and baggy monsters and taking this one's ending as a part of the bag that needn't be looked into too closely.

Somewhere within this loose, baggy monster there has to be a slim, cogently argued treatise struggling to get out.

"David Lynch Keeps His Head" is a baggy monster of a profile that suffers from too much rumination on Mr. Lynch's significance to the budding artistic sensibility of the young Mr. Wallace.

That Angus Wilson respected the baggy monsters of the Victorian era is unquestionable.

Several critics take Rushdie to task for what they see as his sloppiness: Michiko Kakutani calls the novel a "loose, baggy monster" and "a decidedly disappointing performance" (the New York Times ).

"The Ground Beneath Her Feet," Salman Rushdie's loose, baggy monster of a new novel, is a retelling of the Orpheus myth that recasts both the doomed musician and his lost lady love as rock stars.

Epic novels can be loose, baggy monsters, but this one is stuffed with enough goodies to keep us entertained for days.

More than 2,500 artists to date have stayed - about 35 each summer, a dozen in the seasons that require heating - in this "loose, baggy monster" of a house (Henry James's term for "War and Peace," but it applies).

By turns fascinating and irritating, the novel is one of those loose and baggy monsters that can try one's patience even as it impresses itself in memory.

Is it open season on Henry James's baggy monster?