“To be identified with the public is the divine gift of the best-sellers in popular Romance and, no doubt, in popular realism. E. M. Forster once spoke of the novelist as sending down a bucket into the unconscious; the author of She installed a suction pump. He drained the whole reservoir of the public's secret desires. Critics speak of the reader suspending unbelief; the best-seller knows better; man is a believing animal.”

—  V.S. Pritchett

"Rider Haggard: Still Riding", p. 25
The Tale Bearers: English and American Writers (1980)

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V.S. Pritchett23
British writer and critic 1900–1997

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