This is the quality of resonance that we’re after, such that the book means one thing to ourselves, and one thing to the next person, and continuing communities of readers are able to project their own meanings onto it, and if you’re really lucky, or really good, continuing generations of readers. Staying in print is really about the ability to continue resonating long after the historical moment in which you made your novel.
“Allowed to cast themselves for great tragic roles, they were experiencing the exhilaration felt by great tragic actors. It was not lack of control, lack of taste, lack of knowledge that accounted for permission of what was not permitted in the West. Rather was it the reverse. Our people could not have handled patients full of the dangerous thoughts of death and love; these people had such resources that they did not need to empty their patients of such freight.”
Rebecca West | Black Lamb and Grey Falcon