What do you think modern people expect out of a great novel? Great in the way Hemingway was great, not Brown.

Answer 1

I don't think people really know what to expect. Many people have not read so-called "classics anymore ... really, students are not required to learn as much now as they were in the past. That's why people graduate high school and are functionally illiterate. So that's why someone might believe Dan Brown could even be compared to someone like Hemingway. I like Bown's stuff, but I don't consider it to be "great literature." To become a classic, a work should make a broader connection and it should make a more significant commentary on some aspect of society.

Answer 2

Most of the people describe a great novel as a piece of writing that they felt to be addressed to them. While reading, they place themselves in the world of the novel, and are completely satisfied if the hero (who personifies their thoughts, aspirations, and who is the person they would like to be) 'succeeds', or if some other (who is weaker, more fallible then the reader) 'fails'.
For others a great novel is reduced to a good, exciting, perhaps funny story that chills them out after a hard day at work.

And there are people for whom a great book means (intellectual)challenge. A quest for meaning, depth, another dimension. 'Modern people' belonging to this group might also expect a new, a different approach to literature (be that genre, structure, theme), self-reflexivity of the text.

But there is no 'ideal reader'. We all carry something of these reader types, so our expectation is a mixture of all these (in diff rent proportions) I would say.

Answer 3

A timeless story that is well written. It needs to be something that a large quantity of people can identify with. People should feel deep emotion and generally they feel that have actually learned something important.

It should be able to stand equal to the great writer's novels of the past--Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald. It will not necessarily be a mega best seller than plays on popular culture or sensationalism.

Answer 4

In the average "great" novel, e.g. bestseller and even prize winner, people want recognizable characters in situations not too removed from their own experiences or possibilities.

A great novel presents universal truths dressed in language and circumstance that takes the reader outside him/herself to an experience of heightened awareness s/he would not have imagined or found alone.