"Readers are what it's all about, aren't they? If not, why am I writing?"
About this Quote
A brisk little gut-check masquerading as a rhetorical question, Evan Hunter’s line is both sincere and quietly combative. It sounds like a warm nod to the audience, but the real work happens in the second sentence, where the politeness drops and the existential stakes appear: if readers aren’t the point, the whole enterprise collapses into vanity, habit, or mere production. Hunter frames writing not as self-expression but as a transaction - attention for craft, time for meaning - and he makes that bargain feel non-negotiable.
The subtext is a rebuke to the romantic myth of the author as solitary genius. Hunter, who moved easily between “serious” fiction and mass-market storytelling (and who wrote as Ed McBain), understood the machinery: genre expectations, deadlines, editors, bookstores, the invisible pressure to keep pages turning. “Readers” here isn’t a flattering abstraction; it’s a professional constraint. The question implies accountability. If you’re writing with no one in mind, you may be polishing sentences into a sealed room.
There’s also a hint of anxiety buried under the confidence. The line reads like something you tell yourself when the market shifts, reviews sting, or the culture’s attention fractures. It’s a credo that doubles as self-defense: I’m not selling out; I’m showing up. Hunter distills a pragmatic ethics of authorship - not worship of the audience, but respect for the fact that literature only becomes real when someone else takes it in.
The subtext is a rebuke to the romantic myth of the author as solitary genius. Hunter, who moved easily between “serious” fiction and mass-market storytelling (and who wrote as Ed McBain), understood the machinery: genre expectations, deadlines, editors, bookstores, the invisible pressure to keep pages turning. “Readers” here isn’t a flattering abstraction; it’s a professional constraint. The question implies accountability. If you’re writing with no one in mind, you may be polishing sentences into a sealed room.
There’s also a hint of anxiety buried under the confidence. The line reads like something you tell yourself when the market shifts, reviews sting, or the culture’s attention fractures. It’s a credo that doubles as self-defense: I’m not selling out; I’m showing up. Hunter distills a pragmatic ethics of authorship - not worship of the audience, but respect for the fact that literature only becomes real when someone else takes it in.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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