Short versus long fiction

I've been trying to read Benjamin Markovits's The Syme Papers, because I loved his Either Side of Winter, and thought Imposture was good too. It's a big book about a modern scholar trying to make his reputation by rescuing that of a nineteenth-century amateur geologist who might have come up with some important ideas before they became mainstream. I'm finding it rather heavy going, even though most of it is set in the British Library's newspaper library at Colindale, which is endearing. (It's an excellent building, full of old art deco style reading lamps and fittings, not through any conscious decision but simply because there has never been the money to replace them.)

In contrast I am also reading Félix Fénéon's Novels in Three Lines, which are very short factual pieces he wrote for the news-in-brief column of a French newspaper in 1906. They give a gloomy picture of early twentieth-century France, full of strikes, suicides, violence, and random death. For example:

In Le Havre, a sailor, Scouarnec, threw himself under a locomotive. His intestines were gathered up in a cloth.

or

A madman from the Arab village of Beni-Ramasses has deserted his family, albeit belatedly since he was tormenting them. He is being sought.

or

Before jumping into the Seine, where he died, M. Doucrain had written in his notebook "Forgive me Dad. I like you."

or

The sinister prowler seen by the mechanic Gicquel near Herblay train station has been identified: Jules Ménard, snail collector.