A good novelist can make sense of the senseless.

Which does not mean he thinks there are no good novelists anymore.

This book had a moderate success, but Taylor was not considered so good a novelist as a poet and essayist.

But not every good novelist is also a good critic.

He claims that "most good novelists have been women or homosexuals" (what about Tolstoy?

Mainly because it's very rare for a good novelist to be a good poet.

Perhaps if you are one of nature's good novelists whatever you write will hold the reader's attention fixed.

With a slightly different background he might have been a good novelist or a superlative writer of music-hall songs.

During a period of three hundred years, how many people have been at once good novelists and good Catholics?

That's why there are more good novelists than good short story writers.