“I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?”

— Irwin Shaw

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Irwin Shaw 4

American politician 1913–1984

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“My novels are what is known as popular and sell very well, but I am not a critic’s favourite, indeed I am generally dismissed with a sneer as a bestseller and not reviewed at all.”

Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989) British writer

On how her novels are typically received by critics (as quoted in “Why Daphne du Maurier was Britain’s mistress of suspense” http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170609-why-daphne-du-maurier-was-britains-mistress-of-suspense in The Guardian; 2017 Jun 13)

“When I start, I have a story that tends to have a lesson to be learnt. A lot of the time my novels are called novels for young adults and I think one of the reasons they are popular with young adults is because they read them and understand it…”

Benjamin Zephaniah (1958) English poet and author

On the appeal of his writings in “Interview | Benjamin Zephaniah” https://www.thelondonmagazine.org/interview-benjamin-zephaniah/ in the London Magazine (2018 Mar 5)

“It was the mass sale and distribution of novels and newspapers that was critical to the rise of the imagined nation.”

George Ritzer (1940) American sociologist

Source: Globalization - A Basic Text (2010), Chapter 6, Global Political Structures and Processes, p. 148

“I'm hopeless about novels just now”

Rose Macaulay (1881–1958) English novelist and writer

Potterism (1921) p.196. https://books.google.com/books?id=9tDSm2WzQxsC&pg=PA196
Context: Jane: What do you think of his book Arthur?
Gideon: I don't think of it. I've had no reason to, particularly. I've not had to review it.... I'm afraid I'm hopeless about novels just now, that's the fact. I'm sick of the form—slices of life served up cold in three hundred pages. Oh, it's very nice; it makes nice reading for people. But what's the use? Except, of course, to kill time for those who prefer it dead. But as things in themselves, as art, they've been ruined by excess. My critical sense is blunted just now. I can hardly feel the difference, though I can see it, between a good novel and a bad one. I couldn't write one, good or bad, to save my life, I know that. And I've got to the stage when I wish other people wouldn't. I wish everyone would shut up, so that we could hear ourselves think...

“Sometimes I don't know whether I'm real or whether I'm a character in one of my novels.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Variant: Sometimes I don't know whether Zelda and I are real or just characters in one of my novels.

“When I want to read a novel, I write one.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

“The Chinese novel was written primarily to amuse the common people. And when I say amuse I do not mean only to make them laugh, though laughter is also one of the aims of the Chinese novel. I mean amusement in the sense of absorbing and occupying the whole attention of the mind. I mean enlightening that mind by pictures of life and what that life means.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

The Chinese Novel (1938)

“I have retired to Nemours to work upon a novel called The Age for Love, and it is on this subject that I wished to consult you, my dear master.”

Paul Bourget (1852–1935) French writer

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“Believe me, when I say;
There are no two powers
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One is God
The other is the tide.
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From the novel Abarat”

Clive Barker book Abarat

Source: Abarat

“After Olympia Press, in Paris, published the book, an American critic suggested that Lolita was the record of my love affair with the romantic novel. The substitution "English language" for "romantic novel" would make this elegant formula more correct.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

As quoted in "Nabokov's Love Affairs" by R. W. Flint http://www.powells.com/review/2003_07_17.html in The New Republic (17 June 1957).
On a Book Entitled Lolita (1956)

“I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?”

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Irwin Shaw 4

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