"I am unable to prove that lay readers enjoy books more than the professional critics, but I can say what is the advantage we have in relation to them. We can not forget. They suffer the curse of memory, never to be erased their brains books about which they teach and write. For them become part of the family. Perhaps that is the reason why some critics have just acquired a slightly paternalistic relationship with their subjects [...] the average reader, but enthusiasts to forget, to go, being unfaithful with other authors, and feel back again in ecstasy. "
Julian Barnes' Emma Bovary's eyes "in Flaubert's Parrot
