“When I was a boy, the bestselling books were often the books that were on your piano teacher's shelf. I mean, Steinbeck, Hemingway, some Faulkner. Faulkner actually had, considering how hard he is to read and how drastic the experiments are, quite a middle-class readership. But certainly someone like Steinbeck was a bestseller as well as a Nobel Prize-winning author of high intent. You don't feel that now. I don't feel that we have the merger of serious and pop — it's gone, dissolving. Tastes have coarsened. People read less, they're less comfortable with the written word.”

— John Updike

Salon interview (2000)

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John Updike 240

American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, an… 1932–2009

William McKeen (1954) American academic

Preface, The End, p. xv
Outlaw Journalist (2008)

“Lately, I feel like my life is a book written in a language I don't know how to read.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Hero of Ages

“The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule.”

Mark Helprin book Winter's Tale

Source: Winter's Tale

“[About whether critics have influenced his work:] None could have, because I don't read them. I doubt anyone does, except other critics. It seems like a sealed-off field with its own lieutenants, pretty much preoccupied with its own intrigues. I got a glimpse into the uses of a certain kind of criticism this past summer at a writers' conference – into how the avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph. D. I saw how it was possible to gain a chair of literature on no qualification other than persistence in nipping the heels of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Steinbeck. I know, of course, that there are true critics, one or two. For the rest all I can say is, “Deal around me.””

Nelson Algren (1909–1981) American novelist, short story writer

"The Art of Fiction No. 11" (1955)

“Bill [=Willem de Kooning ] was working on a huge canvas. It was black and white. And I said to him, 'It's very curious.' You know, I came into the studio. I had my separate studio and I walked in and I said, 'It's very curious. There are no treelike shapes in that painting. The forms are all like animals more or less and organic shapes that don't resemble the forest at all, but I get the feeling of Faulkner forest from that painting.' Bill said, 'That's extraordinary.' And he went over and lifted up a pile of papers and underneath was a book by Faulkner and later he named a painting 'Light in August”

Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) American painter

he painted in 1946
1972 - 1989
Source: an tape-recorded interview with Elaine de Kooning on August 27, 1981 http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-elaine-de-kooning-11999; conducted by Phyllis Tuchman, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution: Oral Histories.

“Its that vast middle ground where people actually live, you know, that we have to reclaim; and in that area, everybody should be able to live together. And I don't think that God sent us prophets and books to fight about these books and these prophets. But they were telling us, actually, how to live together.”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Interview on CBS News Sunday Morning (30 November 2006)
Context: Here's a chance, I think, for us to kind of remind ourselves, of those things we all commonly enjoy and love and share, try to get back together. You know, singing out for a more peaceful world today, I think, can only do good. … I do believe that … a lot of Muslims have yet to learn, you know, the incredible great history and contribution of Islamic civilization — and its become very, if you like, in some way puritanical — that puritanical approach will become narrower and narrower and even become more fragmented. Its that vast middle ground where people actually live, you know, that we have to reclaim; and in that area, everybody should be able to live together. And I don't think that God sent us prophets and books to fight about these books and these prophets. But they were telling us, actually, how to live together. If we ignore those teachings — whichever faith you belong, you profess, then I think we'll be finding ourselves in an even deeper mess.