Modern Novel Quotes

“Readers have been so conditioned that they feel embarrassed to admit that they find it hard to stomach the work of a literary giant for fear it would betray their plebian taste. The fact is that a few read, and fewer enjoy, the novels of those who sit on the literary pedestal. We have allowed ourselves to be persuaded that a book with a story can't be quite in the same class as a book that leaves us to interpret what is unsaid.”
― Zia Mohyeddin, A Carrot is a Carrot

“We have turned fiction into a lukewarm mirror, reflecting back at us our most pedestrian fears, anxieties, and quirks—because heaven forbid we be challenged by something we don’t immediately understand. The cult of relatability is suffocating creativity, killing the ambition of the novel, and dragging literature into a pit of shallow, self-referential mediocrity. A bunch of YouTubers armed with syntax.”
― Jay Sreekumar

“The meaning of the world around us can no longer be considered as other than fragmentary, temporary, and even contradictory, and is always in dispute. How can a work of art set out to illustrate any sort of meaning which is known in advance? The modern movel is an enquiry, but an enquiry which creates its own meaning as it goes along.”
― Alain Robbe-Grillet, The Novel Today: Edinburgh International Festival 1962: Programme and Notes, International Writer's Conference