And I think we switched criteria somewhere. Yesterday’s great writers were people of keen analytical insight who saw to the heart of the human condition. And how keen that insight is depends a lot on what one thinks the human condition is.
Today’s great writers seem to be great stylists, which is by no means the same thing. I will happily concede that one may be a great stylist and in all other respects a blithering idiot.

Music for style above all else, writing for story and ideas. Painting and sculpture somewhere in between.

Or the Philistine motto (all together now): “A tune you can whistle, a story with a plot, and a picture that looks like the little brass plaque.”