I think a lot of people who read fiction are interested in subtlety. But they wouldn't like my stuff. It's a bit too violent for many tastes.
Seeing one's books on the shelf tells you so much about the way somebody has, over the years, put together their private library, which is a reflection of their minds and their selves.
She liked things that had been written by people who had lived short, ugly, and tragic lives. Or, who at least, were English.
... the subjective viewpoint is the only one to use regarding a library. Your true library is a collection of the books you want.You may have deplorably poor taste or bad judgment. Never mind. Correct those traits before you exchange your books.
The choices a writer makes within a tradition - preferring Milton to Moliere, caring for Barth over Barthelme - constitute some of the most personal information we can have about him.
Readers of novels are a strange folk, upon whose probable or even possible tastes no wise book-maker would ever venture to bet.
A man ought to inquire and find out what he really and truly has an appetite for; what suits his constitution; and that, doctors tell him, is the very thing he ought to have in general. And so with books.
I am so constituted that I had rather read bad stuff than nothing.
A writer's style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias...it is the Self escaping into the open.
