[NicholasV]

I look at most novels that can be popular as only being pulp quality, they just charge alot more for them now and perhaps take longer to write. I remember this article or interview I found by some European writer(was he a Czech?) horrified by his popularity, considering it an insult to his craft that his writing became popularized, because it denotes it is of deficient quality if his work can satisfy the low threshold of the modern public. I really wish I bookmarked that article, if someone has read that same article and can remember it from my hazy paraphrasing PM it to me.

I don't think you will see any authors of the stature of a Dickens, Camus, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Orwell, Huxley, etc. with a prospect to become widely read anymore. Writers who had something to say to us about the human condition, and the social context that this condition finds itself in a given society. If writers of such stature emerge today of necessity they must remain hidden given the societal predilections, I think Kurt Cobain summed it up well: "here we are now, entertain us." Or perhaps Huxley with, "Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today." The debased public of today can only send writers like Koontz, J.K. Rowling, Dan Brown, King, Palahniuk*, etc. to the top of the bestseller lists with their cheap gimmicks and otherwise lack of literary merit.

*Perhaps this is not so fair with him because he has no seeming pretensions and uses a more down to earth writing style closer to the colloquial. At least in his debut novel Fight Club, he actually had some incisive social commentary.