The rareness of good readers?

Question 7, Richard Flanagan

Of the many necessary illusions that enable a writer to write, two are paramount—one, the vanity they can write a good book, and the other the conceit that a good book will be read by good readers, people with the insight to recognise what is good within it. But, of course, good readers are s rare as good writers, perhaps even more so, and most books inconsequence find only poor readers. Writers rail against misunderstanding, but poor writers prosper by being misunderstood, some even accidentally elevated into the pantheon of greatness in consequence, the bad clay of their work forever after glazed with the good fortune of brilliant readings.

That is from Question 7, by Richard Flanagan, which is a memoir of Flanagan’s father, who spent time in a Japanese war camp. I am seventy pages in and it has already covered the atomic bomb and H.G. Wells and Rebecca West as well as being one of the better memoirs I have read for some time. It would have been on my favourite books of 2024 but I only started it today. I would say more but I need to go and read the rest of it…