A novel wouldn't be a book if there weren't some flights of fancy on the part of the author, stopping time to examine things, or to tell a joke.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
To me, novels are a trip of discovery, and you discover things that you don't know and you assume that many of your readers don't know, and you try to bring them to life on the page.
The fact is that in this day and age I don't think any novelist can assume that a book will get attention.
A book is a journey: It's a thing you agree to go on with somebody, and I think every reader's experience of a book is going to be different.
In terms of fiction, I'd rather go out and have a good time than read a book about someone having a good or bad time.
A novel is a big thing. It's difficult to hold the whole story in your mind, especially when you've finished a first draft and are still giddy from the flow of creative juices.
I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
A novel is a conversation starter, and if the author isn't there for the after-party, both the writer and the reader are missing a lot.
A lot of the time writers are just sponges... for what's around them, and so books are helpful for focusing your mind and literally putting it into words.
A novel ensures that we can look before and after, take action at whatever pace we choose, read again and again, skip and go back. The story in a book is humble and serviceable, available, friendly, is not switched on and off but taken up and put down, lasts a lifetime.
To me, a book is a book. A novel is a novel, and you have hundreds of possibilities, options, and they may all be fine. Charles Dickens or Ingeborg Bachmann, Claude Simon or later writers. The one and only condition is that it has to be good: it has to have quality, substance, atmosphere.