Recently I gave - I finished a draft of a novel, and I gave it to my husband to read, and about two weeks later I said to him oh, you know, it's just complete garbage.

NPR: Could You Be the Great American Novelist?

My college boyfriend the same one who took me to Niagara once refused to speak to me for a full day because I declined to hike in the Rockies with him and instead read a Russian novel in the car.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Inventing Niagara'

But the plot moves so quickly and smoothly that I read it in a fraction of the time it took to complete his last novel, the slightly shorter (but much heavier) Anathem.

FORBES: Connect

But the novel, initially a flop, was not much read or even appreciated until after World War I, long after Ryder had finished the painting, so it is almost certain, scholars agree, that the biblical tale was the artist's sole starting point.

WSJ: Tale Told by a Modern Romantic | Jonah | Albert Pinkham Ryder | By Sidney Lawrence