Moretti’s answer is “‘Because they offer the kind of narrative pleasure compatible with the new regularity of bourgeois life. Fillers turn the novel into a ‘calm passion’ . . . they are part of what Weber called the ‘rationalization’ of modern life: a process that begins in the economy and in the administration, but eventually pervades the sphere of free time, private life, entertainment, feelings. . . . Or in other words: fillers are an attempt at rationalizing the novelistic universe: turning it into a world of few surprises, fewer adventures, and no miracles at
