Maximalism
An aesthetic of literary excess — long novels that pack in everything (multiple plotlines, sprawling casts, encyclopedic digressions on disparate subjects, ornate syntax, lists, footnotes) in deliberate opposition to the lean, pared-back style associated with modernist minimalism. Practitioners include Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, Don DeLillo, and Roberto Bolaño; Gravity's Rainbow, with its 400-character cast and excursions through rocket science, conspiracy, history and pop song, is often cited as the archetype.