Fate of novels and novelists

"It was Orwell who said the only real critic of literature is Time. It winnows out the grain from the chaff. Unfortunately, where novels are concerned, it doesn’t. Novels that “last” typically do so by happenstance. Take, for example, the classic book of our year, 2013, the novel that has done wonders for the sale of silk shirts in Jermyn Street. Have a guess. How much money did The Great Gatsby make for Scott Fitzgerald in his lifetime? Eight thousand dollars (less than the cost of Jay Gatsby’s “custom Duesenberg” automobile). In the last year of Fitzgerald’s life, Gatsby earned its author barely enough to buy him lunch. Fitzgerald was, he said, when he received that last royalty statement, “a forgotten man”.