It surprised me with good intentions and then waylaid me with examples of the "big" novels that I've never read. I'm not as widely read as I thought...and I'm embarrassed to say that I did read one of the examples because of the pink dress on the cover. It wasn't one that I enjoyed and I didn't keep reading the rest of the author's books. Still, the pink dress was lovely.
At least I've come to realize that in taste and inclination, I'm not a novelist. There is something in the best novelists that is interested in the wide and deep, the currency with which we pay for modernity or for whatever time in which we live. A novelist doesn't let cost or fears or other restrictions prevent her traveling or her listening in at Starbucks and watching the entire ebb and flow of a day. She relinquishes the structures of control to the extent that she rides the rails of the time or the place and the characters without steering them. This is a habit of perception that is not native to me, nor do I anticipate that it will become so.
Minor quibbles pile up--how often do I pick up a modern novel and become exhausted by the pace or by the way the author keeps beating up on his main character? If I disagree with your taste do I disagree with your premise? Do I want to read about a flawed, damaged, weatherbeaten character for a break? Maybe. Sometimes. However, I don't want to write them.
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