New Year's Resolutions and Captive Audiences

Two part blog- first I need to give my New Year's Resolutions, at least the ones relating to writing: I hereby resolve to get a short story and a novel ready and submit them to a publisher by the end of 2009. There.
As for captive audiences, I just want to complain briefly about my role as one in two audios I listened to lately. First, "Castle in the Forest" by Norman Mailer. A book that imagines Hitler's family before and after he was born, up to age about 17. Kind of slimy- you feel unwashed afterward, is what I mean. Still, kind of interesting, from the point of view of a devil who has possessed him. Anyway, in the middle of the novel, actually more toward the beginning, the 'devil' takes time out from the story to take us on a side trip to the marriage of Nicholas and Alexandria of Russia. And what, do you say, does that have to do with Hitler? Nothing, I tell you, the author just does it because he can. Captive audience. This 'devil' even apologizes to his readership while he's doing it. But it's never justified in the end.
The other example is "Dreamer of the Day" by Mary Doria Russell. She tells the story of an ordinary spinster in 1921 who takes a fantastic trip to Egypt and accidently meets up with Lawrence of Arabia and Churchill at the Cairo Conference to settle the
future of the middle east. I love this kind of novel, it reimagines history in a personal way. BUT in the end, the novelist takes us to a ghost Nile after the woman dies and she and other dead people proceed to pontificate on the state of world today. Just because she can.
The lesson in this, of course, is never to do this in my own writing. It's annoying and it's a power trip. And these are both fine writers. "Thread of Grace" by Mary Doria Russell is very good.
OK, now I'm done with my own pontificating.