In Alasdair Gray’s ‘Lanark, the protagonist and aspiring writer is reflecting on the two main types of novels he found in his local public library:
“One kind was a sort or written cinema, with plenty of action and hardly any thought. The other kind was about clever unhappy people, often authors themselves, who thought a lot but didn’t do very much”.
A sweeping generalization perhaps, but there is a lot of truth in this.