Question any thinking person as to why he ‘never reads novels’, and you will usually find that, at bottom, it is because of the disgusting tripe that is written by the blurb-reviewers. The trouble is that the novel is being shouted out of existence. It is there fore worth while to analyze one of the many causes - in my opinion, the main cause - of the novel’s lapse in prestige. At any rate, I am taking it for granted that the novel is worth salvaging and that in order to salvage it you have got to persuade intelligent people to take it seriously.

I doubt whether that opinion is even worth disputing. It is, of course, easy to argue ( vide for instance Belloc’s queerly rancorous essay) that the novel is a contemptible form of art and that its fate does not matter. Even now the novel is visibly deteriorating, and it would deteriorate much faster if most novelists had any idea who reads their books. There are two quite obvious reasons why this must presently make it impossible for good novels to be written. This means that if you write novels you automatically command a less intelligent public than you would command if you had chosen some other form. It is true that there are still a few contemporary or roughly contemporary novelists whom the intelligentsia considers it permissible to read but the point is that the ordinary good-bad novel is habitually ignored while the ordinary good-bad books of verse or criticism is still taken seriously. Which even a dozen years ago were generally uttered with a hint of apology, are now always uttered in a tone of conscious pride. It hardly needs pointing out that at this moment the prestige of the novel is extremely low, so low that the words ‘I never read novels’,

George orwell books