From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.
I always felt a little worm inside me: 'Now you need to write a novel with a woman protagonist.'
The people are not satisfied with life alone but demand literature and art as well.
I think that there are empty ecological niches in the literary landscape crying to be filled and when a book more or less fills a niche it's seized on, even when it's a far from perfect fit.
Children's books are often seen as the poor relation of literature. But children are just as demanding as adult readers, if not more so. I should know. I'm a children's writer myself.
I don't think poetry will die, but I think that poetry does demand a certain kind of attention to language.
There's a lot of demand to hear the new Kanye West album before it hits the streets. There's much less demand to read the new Phillip Roth novel.
Complex literary works demand an effort from the reader that is becoming harder to justify, given the sink-or-swim pressures to make profitable products for a global marketplace.
The new novel is sought more eagerly, and devoured more greedily, the New Testament.
Books on horse racing subjects have never done well, and I am told that publishers had come to think of them as the literary version of box office poison.
