Of the female black authors, I really like Morrison's early books a lot. But she's really become so much a clone of Faulkner. He did it better.

Cooper wrote a novel which is absolutely indistinguishable from Austen, completely from a female point of view, completely English, no sense that he was an American.

The novel is the first art form that is an honest-to-god commodity. That's what makes it different from both high art and folk art.

Jane Austen is at the end of the line that begins with Samuel Richardson, which takes wonder and magic out of the novel, treats not the past but the present.