'Beware the novelist intimate and indiscreet pompous, prophetic airs here is the fact of fiction an American tale where, naturally, evil conquers good, and none live happily ever after, for the complicated pangs of the empty experiences of flesh-and-blood human figures are the reason why nothing can ever be enough To read a book is to let a root sink down List of the lost is the reality of what is true battling against what is permitted to be true' Morrissey