Life & Wisdom Quote by Robert B. Parker

Parker’s punchline lands because it refuses the comforting myth that quality and success naturally converge. “Unquestionably” sounds like an artist’s hard-won certainty, the rare moment when a working writer - a guy known for dependable craft and cadence - admits, without coyness, that he reached the ceiling of his own ability. Then he torpedoes the confession with a deadpan reversal: the public “stayed away in droves.” The phrase is perfect Parker: colloquial, slightly abrasive, and funny in a way that carries a bruise underneath. Droves are for crowds, not absences; he turns nonattendance into its own mass movement, as if readers organized a boycott by apathy.

The subtext is a trade veteran talking about the marketplace with zero romance. Parker built a career in genre fiction where loyalty is real but expectations are narrow: give people the voice, the rhythm, the familiar satisfactions. “All Our Yesterdays” (one of his non-Spenser novels) likely asked for a different kind of attention - structurally, tonally, morally - and the reward for that risk was silence. Not outrage, not debate, just no-show.

There’s intent here beyond self-pity: it’s a warning to writers and a jab at publishing culture. The industry likes the story of the brave departure from formula, but readers often buy the brand they already know. Parker’s irony is a quiet protest against that economy - and a way of protecting his pride. If your best book fails, you can either call it a tragedy or a joke. He chooses the joke because it tells the harsher truth.