Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
History proves that most writers get forgotten anyway. That's very likely to happen to my books, and if I'm extremely lucky, maybe one of my books will survive.
The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is a metaphor, not just for books but for ideas, for language, for knowledge, for beauty, for all the things that make us human, for collecting memory.
In a certain way, novelists become unacknowledged historians, because we talk about small, tiny, little anonymous moments that won't necessarily make it into the history books.
That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.
The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.
I have another aspect of my career where I'm a scholar of Yiddish and Hebrew literature, and I'll say that when you study Yiddish literature, you know a whole lot about forgotten writers. Most of the books on my shelves were literally saved from the garbage. I am sort of very aware of what it means to be a forgotten artist in that sense.
Forgotten is forgiven.
If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.
Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.
The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.