The unattainable for me was closely bound up with the person who had written it. Thomas Bernhard, for instance, what he wrote and achieved was completely out of my reach. Jon Fosse the same. But not a writer like Jonathan Franzen. Him I could match, and probably even surpass. The same was true of Coetzee, he also was a writer who lacked the distinctive aspect of personality that could take his writing that final stretch of the way;
