A great literary work can be completely, completely unpredictable. Which can sometimes make them very hard to read, but it gives them a great originality.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.
Everybody's idea of a great book is different, of course. For me it's one that makes my jaw drop on every page, the writing is so original.
If it is good literature, the reader and the writer will connect. It's inevitable.
One of the things I love, and I'm a voracious reader as well as a writer, is books that surprise me, that are not predictable.
All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool.
Oftentimes when you see adaptations of books you like, you're let down. As an author, you assume that they are going to suck. A little bit of hope is dangerous.
Every reader re-creates a novel - in their own imagination, anyway. It's only entirely the writer's when nobody else has read it.
You can write a great book and be ignored. Literary history is full of classics that were under-appreciated in their own time.
The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.
I find that most novels are not good all the way through. A story can be good all the way through, every sentence.