[good characterization] can get you through 1168 pages

Commenting on Ayn Rand being adept with her prose, Tom Paine commented:

That's true, but she's a hopeless novelist, and for precisely the reason Juliette nailed in the first quote. Rand cannot create a convincing character. Having slogged painfully through 1168 pages, I admire her as a thinker but I cannot begin to imagine why she chose this vehicle for her thoughts.

Tom continues:

Great writers create living, breathing characters. Sherlock Holmes is as real as you or I and will outlast both us and his author. Dickens populated a small town with his characters, each of them - even the minor ones - a recognisable individual. John Irving is the greatest living author in English precisely because he creates magnificent characters we can love, hate and care about.

He hits the nail on the head with "we can love, hate and care about". Indeed and not only that but the author has to let his characters run free, to emote freely. There's nothing worse than a contrived plot where the characters are so obviously controlled by the prejudices of the author, like marionettes on a string.

An example is this:

"There won't be any revolution in America," said Isadore. Nikita agreed. [Linklater, Juan in America, 1933]

Chesterton was one to contrive to place characters woodenly, have them stand or sit, immobile in one place, get them suddenly angry and then drop back to being calm again. P.G. Wodehouse was not immune either. I've just conceded defeat on Money for Nothing and The Girl in Blue.

The trouble is characterization. There is a female, Pat, whose first move is to urge her male friend to confront a bull in a field, just to see if the bull is as dangerous as depicted. Even if we overlook the no doubt lovely name Pat, lovely in real life but hardly the thing for a novel, there is her nasty nature and she's one of the central protagonists.

I lost all interest at that point. There was no anger, no resentment, just indifference to anything she subsequently did or how many men were going to die for her. And when a succession of Johns and Hughs and whoever then appeared, that was that - the books will be returned to the library today.

So, it's quite a thing to engage the reader.

In my own novel, the problem, it seems to me, is not in the action - things happen at random and I don't direct them but just type and record them as they unfold ... but the problem is in the characters and in the basic premise in the first place. Not everyone wants to read the doings of a glutton for punishment and the feisty females around him, especially if, erroneously, they think the main character is the author. Also, the premise that society is progressively disintegrating and the characters are trying to adjust to that, seems far fetched to many.

It's a fine line, this matter of which characters "grab" us and which we can take or leave. Maugham had this habit of making himself obnoxiously cold and unforgiving in his short stories. This from the Lotus Eater:

On the way he asked me what I had thought of Wilson.

"Nothing," I said. "I don`t believe there`s a word of truth in your story."

"Why not?"

"He isn`t the sort of man to do that sort of thing."

"How does anyone know what anyone is capable of?"

"I should put him down as an absolutely normal man of business who`s retired on a comfortable income from ill-edged securities, I think your story`s just the ordinary Capri tittle- little."

This was upfront near the beginning of the story. Now I can tell you, if I had a "friend" like this, he'd soon be an ex-friend. It's all well and good not to believe someone but he could have said, "Well, let's wait and see," or "Well, I don't know if I can agree with you there," or, "I'd be interested to know for sure."

As it is, one loses all interest in what Maugham's first person character thinks after that. It's so difficult to engage a reader in the first person, unless it is a brave tale of woe.

So yes, Tom, 1168 pages of Ayn Rand seems a tall order to me as well. 1168 pages of Dreiser would also seem a tall order. 1168 pages of, say, Josephine Tey, would be a delight.