I haven’t read all of The Sheltering Sky, or even half of it, but my first impressions were, I’m afraid, of a commercial and self-pitying nature, i.e., No one will let you write anything this boring anymore. No one’s interested in your worlds, with their ambiguous types and specific moods, no one wants you to nail something that was out there but never captured before, no one wants you to create a thing out of the nothingness around you.

If I can't bore the pants off of everyone, how am I going to make great art?