Conclusion: The Girl On The Train, and Goodness vs. Greatness

Fast, furious, and as devoid of spoilers as I can manage: though it hung up slightly for me in the middle, and the strength of its characters waned just slightly (the "kidnapping" scene specifically), The Girl on the Train turned out to be a fun ride with a few good twists along the way. The parallels to Gillian Flynn are merited, not undesirably. On "Palmer's Scale of 1-10", I'd give it a solid 6 - better than the average novel, but short of greatness. Some will disagree with me here: it is, in fact, well written, with finely crafted story elements, honed structure, and satisfying in the heroic journeys of its characters. 

I wouldn't argue with that rebuttal. It is on par with other first novels by several authors I enjoy - Peter Heller's Dog Stars, Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore, Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, and Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding, for example. My argument is only that it lacked a certain quality to elevate it from simply "entertaining" to some transcendent form of reading, which few books actually achieve. 

I theorize that it's hard to get a sense of the greatness in a book until I read more from an author. It takes time with them, and developing a relationship of sorts to understand their experience and worldview. Perhaps they need a period of getting comfortable in writing before they achieve it. Let's use David Mitchell as an example. Cloud Atlas is perhaps his finest novel, made deeper and richer through reading his first novels, and the ones which follow it, even when they don't achieve a similar greatness (or maybe, especially because of it). Why? Because I have more context for David Mitchell. I begin to understand how he got to Cloud Atlas, and where it has taken him since.

There's a line in Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, which the protagonist states firmly that he will not read any author which has not been dead for 20 years. It is a curious statement which stands out from the rest of the narrative. There is no expressed conclusion to draw from it, and certainly Murakami was not endorsing the opinion by voicing it (he wants us to read his books today, not in 20 years). Nevertheless, I've thought a lot about that quote. The quote is really about selecting books to read that have been set apart by time, truth and authenticity: meaningful contact with readers across the dimension of time, how much the human experience rings true, and to what degree the author projects his own thoughts and feelings into it. By conclusion, he is making a statement as to what defines greatness in a book, and also making a qualitative judgment that we cannot determine it while the author is still living. 

No publisher wants to sell that book from a living author which will not be popular yet for many years. I have read a lot about the publishing market being over-saturated. There are still plenty of digital-era readers out there, but there are also a lot of books. Because there are a lot of books, authors must write with the broadest appeal possible so that their publishers make money, and the authors can continue to write. Only reputed authors have much freedom with their material, and then with a pseudonym if deemed too divergent. If Oprah endorses that book, or a blockbuster trilogy (or maybe quadrilogy!) is based on their series, the author has really hit it big, and achieved a different sort of "greatness", a financial one. So an aspiring writer is incentivized to write in such a way if they want a chance at achieving popular greatness. Experience tells us that said author need not even write great books, or even good ones (I'm looking at you, Divergence, Mockingbird, and Twilight). Good screenwriting/acting/directing/CGI can overcome bad books to make good movies for the sake of selling more of them. 

For better or worse, this is the world we live in. Writers must write, and publishers must publish accordingly, to minimize risks and make money. Cloud Atlas, in this sense, is an obscure Wachowski film that failed to make much money. The Girl on the Train should be viewed as a product of our time: it is a good book which has achieved commercial (and perhaps momentary) greatness. Dreamworks has already acquired the rights to film it. And it is a good enough story that I would watch the film, as well as read more of Hawkins. Underneath it all, however, is a lingering feeling that there is greatness waiting still for the one who would boldly write transcendent truth with authenticity.