Couldn't make it through Cities of the Red Night?

The man could turn a phrase like ...Dickens..."Nothing is true, everything is permitted" or Chandler "Something off about him, like an old refrigerator". He brought his own dry cynical twist to almost every line.

In addition to being a controlled enough writer that somehow the structure of his later novels became part of their theme.

I agree he is a pithy and engaging personality but his writing and his art shouldn't take a back seat to his personality.