As authors, we all have to learn not to be reactive to public statements about our books. It's really not our business what each reader thinks of them.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We really set out in all our books to say something. Every one is an effort to bring the reader over and show them our theory as to why what we're talking about needs to be talked about.
Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it.
The writer's job is to let the books speak for themselves eventually.
Personally I don't like it when writers become excessively proscriptive about the way that people read their books.
We need to write books that publicists and marketers and booksellers and book club leaders and librarians and readers can get excited about. That have something about them that makes them stand out. That makes them shine.
Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.
The fact people think that when you sell a lot of books you are not a serious writer is a great insult to the readership. I get a little angry when people try to say such a thing.
I do think that books are invaluable as a reservoir of what we call the human space. And this is why I think that, even if they're threatened, the work that they do has an incalculable merit.
I think almost every writer in the world would hope that books would be always talked about with respect and civility and depth and seriousness.
Ah yes, the paradox of publicity is that even as we do it, we know it's killing off the chance of another reader happening across our book in the ideal state of innocence.
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