I've come to think of Dunnett as the literary equivalent of the Velvet Underground; Not many people bought the books, but everyone who did wrote a novel.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The hours I spent attempting to decipher some of Dunnett's more oblique passages opened me to the possibilities of romantic storytelling.
Books on horse racing subjects have never done well, and I am told that publishers had come to think of them as the literary version of box office poison.
The novel has always been a contradictory form. Here is a long form narrative mainly read originally by consumers who were only newly literate or limited in their literacy. The novel ranked below poetry, essay and history in prestige for a long time.
I don't know who said that novelists read the novels of others only to figure out how they are written. I believe it's true. We aren't satisfied with the secrets exposed on the surface of the page: we turn the book around to find the seams.
I read more books for research purposes, whether it's a fictionalized biography of Johannes Gutenberg or a stack of urban fantasies.
I've always looked at independent booksellers in a romantic light.
People respect nonfiction but they read novels.
In ages past, there was less of a dichotomy between good literature and fun reads. In the twentieth century, I think, it split apart, so that you had serious fiction and genre fiction.
Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies.
It's probably true that everyone has a book in them, although it may not be a very good one.
No opposing quotes found.